Maruti Suzuki Ritz

Category- Car

Segment- Premium Hatchback
Company- Maruti Suzuki

Campaign- "Why Choose?"

As usual Maruti Suzuki followed its line filling strategy of lengthening the product line by adding one more car within same product range. Line filling strategy is two edged sword, if it’s done nicely, it gives good results in terms of overall profits, but if it’s overdone, it results in self-cannibalisation & customer confusion. By introducing Ritz in premium hatchback segment where Swift is already present, Maruti Suzuki has again taken the same risk. Maruti Suzuki has been successful in converting this risk into opportunity by differentiating products which are in the same product range. And as usual it’s successful in differentiating Swift & Ritz by positioning Swift as an individualistic car & Ritz as a family car as well as by giving Ritz the sophisticated and luxury tinge.

This is all about strategies formulated within four walls but it’s very important to communicate these differential points to the target group to avoid self-cannibalisation & customer confusion. And I think Maruti Suzuki again won the battle of communication through the recent Maruti Suzuki Ritz campaign comprising TVC.
The first half of the TVC tells us about the trade-offs we do before arriving at any decision in the life and finally compromise on something. The film starts with a boy and a girl, both busy painting two walls: one with pink, and the other with blue. The voiceover says: "Pink or blue"? Second situation shows a lobby in a multi-storey, where an elevator is going up, while another is headed down. Voiceover: "Up or down"? The next vignette: A rose petal falls on a clean white bed, and an earthen pot is broken into pieces. Voiceover: "Apologise or argue"? The next shot is inside a car, where a husband is confused whether he should give time to his wife or his mother. "Wife or mother"? The following clip shows a glutton on a treadmill, while someone is relishing an orange. The voiceover: "Sweat or starve"? The last shot shows a man entering through the glass doors of an office, while another man with a smiling face comes out of it with a carton full of his belongings. The voiceover: "Quit or stick"? Second half the film shifts its focus to the Ritz, and says: "Why choose? When one car has it all: Performance and mileage, comfort and excitement, space and style."

According to me the campaign is successful in touching viewer’s emotional quotient as well as in focusing on product features. Most of the brands prefer to demonstrate product features in the first part of the campaign and then go for emotional appeal when the product is well known. In case of cars, display of the car by different angles as well as while performing is common strategy of communication but recently some of the car campaigns have directly gone for the emotional appeal rather going for display of product features, Volkswagen Beetle is one of the good examples in this category. Here Ritz has done both things and that too very effectively in the same campaign.

The only thing bothering me in this campaign is the frequency of TV commercials, it’s very less. As Ritz is in the phase of awareness it should come up with frequent ads on different TV channels. Also the campaign is going to come up with OOH & radio ads, but according to me all the medium should communicate at the same time to get place in the today’s customer’s mind who is suffering from short term memory syndrome due to bombardment of millions of ads.