Anurag Mehrotra is the vice president, Marketing at Ford India. With more than more than 15 years of experience in marketing communications, Anurag in his current profile looks after the product and consumer marketing of the company. Prior to joining Ford India, he was vice president – Corporate Marketing at WNS Global Services where he was responsible for lead generation and brand building in North America and Europe. He has also worked as vice president with Accenture India handling marketing and communication for company's delivery centers for Technology and the India consulting business.

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

At Ford India, we focus on digital and interactive media in order to strike a chord with our consumers. We have found out that more than television or print, our consumers consume a lot of information from the internet, mobile phones and tablets, and therefore, our endeavour is to ensure that our communication is in sync with the media consumption patterns of our consumers. According to industry reports, today 65 percent of Indians use the Internet as the first place to do their research before deciding on the vehicle of their choice.

This is ahead of consumers in mature markets like US and Europe where only 62 percent of users use Internet as their first stop. Given this trend, Ford in India has continued to stay engaged with consumers – some of whom are first time buyers – through several innovative and pioneering campaigns. From engagement and experience to listening, there are several ways in which Ford is connected with customers across social media platforms

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?

With 70 percent of the Indian automotive market driven by small cars, strengthening our reach is a key priority and we have been doing just that in India. Our laser sharp focus on expansion of our sales and service network with opening of one new dealership in every 10 days in India is building the base to reach our consumers across the breadth and length of the country. Today Ford India has 247 sales and service outlets across 129 cities. Earlier this year on February 16th, following an aggressive expansion strategy in India we inaugurated 45 new sales and service outlets on a single day across 34 new locations pan India – an unprecedented activity geared towards our commitment in India of bringing eight new vehicles by mid-decade.

Ever since, Ford has managed to create cult social media campaigns from the likes of Discover Smart Drive involving real people driving across India in a Figo to the Fiesta Experience. While all these campaigns have helped us understand the target audience better from a product and benefit standpoint, the real people featured in them have become real-life brand endorsers helping us spread a positive word of mouth and tell the Ford story.

Regarding your query on how is internet relevant to small car buyers, according to industry reports, today 65 percent of Indians use the Internet as the first place to do their research before deciding on the vehicle of their choice. And these are not luxury cars or SUVs that we are talking about.

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 Ford plan to leverage these?

Social media is increasingly becoming visual and we at Ford have acknowledged and embraced this change. In Fact our recent experience with video sharing and live streaming saw us trending with #EcoSport on the launch day during the Auto Expo. A combination of inorganic and organic use of digital media such as HTML 5 and location-based ads during Fiesta launch has further helped us tell the Ford story in a smart and innovative manner. Apart from highly engaged communities around our products like Figo and Fiesta, we have stayed connected with our customers through microblogs and twitter channels as well.

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

We always seek to drive highly engaged campaigns while promoting our brand. There are however two answers that we seek from our digital advertising agency and media partners, firstly, how are we telling the Ford story in a smart as well as innovative manner and secondly, how are we driving high engagement through it. These answers play a key role in the communications and decision making. At Ford India, we have devised our social media approach as series of integrated and sustained initiatives, rather than an add-on, one time campaigns, and or something that can work in isolation.

Internet is said to be a measurable medium. What is your take on this? Have we overdone the measurement quotient and made this medium hard to understand for the brand marketers?

The importance of internet as a dominant medium cannot be underestimated. The measurement quotient has to be made smart as we integrated communications approach across all internet mediums. The brand marketers need to make better decisions with actionable brand metrics.

How do you see Ford India’s digital spends moving this year?

At Ford, the digital spends have doubled year-on-year in 2012 and we expect the digital spends to grow further in 2013.

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

Marketing objectives need to work seamlessly with the online mediums a brand uses to attain expected results. Ford’s social media approach is about Real People, Real Experiences. A recently done activity called FiestaHotWheels done by Ford India was an embodiment of the same, wherein avid car lovers from different walks of life came together to experience the recently launched Ford Fiesta Powershift Automatic and share their experiences with their online peer groups. India’s top online/social media influencers and avid car lovers were invited to be a part of the event. To make the content more sharable, Ford India installed RFID readers that replicated the Facebook and Twitter online experience in the offline world, and allowed users to seamlessly share their experiences with their social media peer groups.