Vivek Nayer, a seasoned marketing professional, is the Chief Marketing Officer, Automotive Division, Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd. With over two decades of experience with some of the country's blue chip companies and experience in the FMCG sector, Nayer also has extensive sales experience from his stint at Voltas.

He joined Mahindra & Mahindra in August 2005 and ever since he has been instrumental in changing the face of the brand. Under his management, Mahindra & Mahindra is aiming to woo young consumers with an array of digital initiatives. In an exclusive interaction with India Digital Review, Nayer talks about Mahindra & Mahindra's digital story, initiatives and plans for future.

How does the digital medium - both internet and mobile figure in Mahindra & Mahindra India’s plans to reach out to consumers?

Both internet and mobile are extremely important when it comes to reaching out to our consumers and fans. Of all the industries, automobile industry has the potential to leverage the digital medium the most – given it’s a high involvement category (and most likely the second most expensive purchase in a consumer’s life). Globally and in India too, people have been flocking to these mediums. And we have to be where the people are. Plus it’s a great medium to engage youth – who are the ‘influencers of today and buyers of tomorrow’.

Mahindra has recently released its TVC for XUV500 especially on its social media platforms then incorporated changes in the campaign based on fans’ feedback. Do you think it is time for digital first in advertising?

Yes, absolutely. It was a great learning experience for us. And it’s a best practice at Mahindra Auto now – all our TV ads get released online first. It gives us a real-time response from viewers which was missing in all these years. And if possible we do make changes to our communication to ensure we get it ‘first time right’ when released in traditional media with much bigger spends. Furthermore, on digital media we have the opportunity to release larger format 1-2 min ads for better impact and engagement.

What answers do you seek from your digital advertising agencies and digital media partners while promoting your brand on internet?

We seek engagement and buzz through interactivity. This is why this medium is great at and scores over all other medium. For example in our past two campaigns we’ve converted our TV ads into Facebook app where people can place themselves and their friends in the actual TV ads and then share it with their friends online.

Please share with us some of the most exciting online campaigns Mahindra has launched recently.

XUV online film festival was one campaign which took forward our digital marketing very innovatively with respect to brand building initiatives. We collaborated with “48 hour” film festival to create multiple films around XUV500 ‘Memorable stories’ theme – using their network of amateur and professional filmmakers. We received huge response from the community and very good quality films with seamless integration of our brand in it. A great step forward in terms of pushing the frontiers when it comes to content marketing. There have been many more exciting campaigns. In fact our digital efforts received 18 external awards this year – including eight Abbys!

Digital medium might just work well for SUV buyers who most certainly will also be online consumers too. But for some small car buyers, it would not make much sense. So how would you penetrate in those segments?

A Google study of buyers of small cars at showrooms in India contradicts this assumption. A large chunk of them are researching online. In fact a huge challenge for automobile companies is how to upgrade your sales force to deal with these walk-ins who are extremely knowledgeable about the purchase – thanks to their online research.

M&M India has strong presence on Facebook with 10M fan base. What scope do you see social media has for the brand?

Yes, we are delighted to be India’s first automotive company to cross 10 M mark on Facebook. Social media is no more just the future - It is the present and future. It will only grow stronger – maybe in a different format but the ethos of social media – connecting with people – will remain. Huge part of social media is about sharing. Social media especially Facebook has helped us connect with our fans – we knew there were many but they were just not visible before. And it has helped us connect fans to fans. All our exciting SUVs and adventure events have a ready-made audience on FB – all hungry for exciting content – especially from our brands which are such great lifestyle-enablers for the new India. Facebook goes a long way in strengthening the bonds with your customers and fans as you can reach out to them consistently.

The brand also has a dedicated YouTube channel how has been its uptake?

We have crossed 20 million video views on our YouTube channels – and again we are the pioneers here and first automotive company to achieve this feat. Videos help tell brand stories – from every angle- in more than 30 sec. And therein lies its tremendous potential. Video is natural media format for human beings – we see the real world as video, right! Hence there has been a great uptake for our video content. We have more than 500 videos around our brands on the channels – ranging from TV ads, virals and event videos to demo.

In a category like automobile, visual brand building works the best. With newer forms on visual content such as video and apps coming up on internet, how does Mahindra plans to leverage these?

We spoke about video. Apps are more challenging given the multiple platform they have to be customized to, thereby increasing the time, effort and cost. Plus with more than half million apps on app stores – it’s extremely challenging to promote then. However, if you can make your apps - entertaining or engaging (relevant to your brand and end user), there’s a great chance of a strong uptake. We have created India’s first I-Pad adventure e-zine with over 5k downloads. This is meant for serious offroading and adventure enthusiasts. Games as apps could be another route. We created an offroading game which was a huge hit with online casual gamers with more than 10 million gameplays! But with apps – advertisers should think many times before a leap. It needs to be done nicely and that’s not easy.

What are Mahindra India’s current digital spends? Do you see them moving in terms of growth and scope?

The spends have to move up in future for sure. For us it’s never been this medium vs that medium as both the traditional and new media will co-exist in the foreseeable future. It’s always been about putting the money where people are. And we know that digital is the future. We cannot reveal our spends but we are up there when it comes to being one of the largest digital spenders in the country (when taken in proportion to our overall marketing budgets). And it’s not about how much you spend in digital; rather it’s about HOW smartly you spend in digital and WHAT you spend on – since there are multiple channels where the consumers are.

How do you see your marketing objectives aligning with what the online medium offers from two years down the line?

We believe in the story telling ability of the medium – and wherever right story telling happens, great brands get built. Content marketing is definitely one of the key areas of marketing where we will focus. Also, Digital is getting used and will be used in delivering customer value proposition through series of brand building initiatives tailored to the medium.

More and more car buyers will be using the medium be it 2014 or 2016 or 2020. We need to be absolutely prepared to meet this challenge; rather a huge opportunity – social winds have always been the guiding factor when it comes to marketing trends.