Women. In top gear.

One of my early memories of college was the tuitions that I had to drag myself to every morning. While the majority of boys use to come either on their bikes/scooters, the girls invariably used to have a designated driver in the form of brother or father dropping them and picking them up dutifully on their scooters. A rare case would be a girl on a kinetic Honda, whom everybody saw her as be the ‘fast’ girl! (The term ‘liberated’ wasn’t in vogue then!)
Cut to today, you find girls zipping past on their scooterette like nobody’s business.
Let’s look at the women buyers and their needs. Primarily (applying the rule of three):
1. The Young girls going out to college
2. The working Woman to her office
3. The housewife moving around for errands and picking up children from school types.
I will primarily look at two brands which have been successful at wooing the above segments. TVS Scooty and Hero Honda Pleasure.
TVS Scooty was an early entrant in the market and it quickly established a niche for itself with the women segment. Simple to use, light weight and trendy, it had all that women were looking for. It suddenly ‘rescued’ them from three things:
1. Depending on their father/brother to drop them
2. Harrowing bus rides
3. Scary Auto rickshaws
In short giving them the ‘wings’ to fly!

One of the key decisions that TVS would have had to make was the choice was a brand ambassador. In Preity Zinta, they found the perfect match. She was a fresh face, had made a mark in bollywood and was somebody who spoke her mind. Coming from a Army background and getting into bollywood, thereby doing her own thing/taking her own decisions.
The TVC clearly established the key point of getting ahead of others (read not depending on others) and calling the shots.

After a long hiatus, TVS Scooty launched another campaign, this time taking Minisha Lamba, young face, very new to Bollywood.

Just a film old and having done a fair bit of modelling, she was more of an ‘aspirer’ than a ‘struggler’ in real life. The TVC explores a story of a small time girl somewhere in Banaras who along with her friend look at the ‘what if’ scenario in life if she hadn’t got her independence (read Scooty). It beautifully drives home the point that parents would have been happy either ways but are now proud of their daughter’s achievements.

Hero Honda entered the market much later with a powerful variant (pleasure) and a even powerful proposition.

By roping in Priyanka Chopra, who had established herself with hits to her credit, Hero Honda Pleasure took the discussion one step forward. From independence factor to the equal rights factor. In a society where a girl child is looked as ‘paraya dhan’, boys are the favoured/pampered lot. They get to stay late, have all fun and seldom questioned.
The campaign literally questioned – why should boys have all the fun? The TVC literally showed Priyanka not only having fun but took the boy for a ride!
Now that the girls are firmly in the front seat, when will we see them graduate to the four wheels in ads? Any car maker around, listening?