JCB India to kick off marketing campaign in Jan 2014

JCB India to kick off marketing campaign in Jan 2014

ENGALURU: Indian construction equipment manufacturer JCB India (JCB) plans to showcase 19 innovative made-in-India machines at Excon 2013 in Bengaluru on 20 November. The company also plans to kick off a campaign at the start of its financial year, which is January-December.

JCB’s marketing and communication plans are mainly BTL. “In the case of an automobile company, the spends would be around 70:30 skewed towards mass media, with BTL forming a small part of the spends. In the case of construction machinery companies such as ours, it would be around 85 per cent spends on BTL activities, and just 15 per cent towards mass media and that too generally in bursts,” revealed JCB Executive VP of marketing, business development and corporate affairs Amit Gossain to indiantelevision.com.

“Our communications on television make more sense on the regional channels where, maybe, my customer doesn’t even understand English, but could be a big buyer. We do use mass media such as television and newsprint and spend some money on news channels, etc., but our core communications are more the experiential kind,” said Gossain.

JCB takes part in events such as Excon 2013 where it claims to have booked the largest exhibition space of 4250 square meters this year. JCB holds customer-connect programmes, takes customers to visit its factories, gets dealer inputs, etc., as a part of its BTL activities. Besides, it subsidises a part of the marketing and communication expenses of its dealers.

Industry experts say that companies such as JCB could be spending anything from 0.5 to 3 per cent of annual turnover towards marketing, a figure range that Gossain agrees with for JCB, but refuses to peg the actual spends. In the case of a company such as JCB India with revenue of Rs 6000 crore, even the lower number would translate into marketing spends of Rs 30 crore per year.

“Despite an industry downturn of about 24 per cent, we have seen our revenue drop by just about 9-10 per cent, which means that our market share has grown,” said Gossain. “We are confident of the future in India and are setting up two new manufacturing plants in Rajasthan and have planned investments of Rs 500 crore over the next five years,” he revealed.

Stressing on quality, a strong customer support network and fuel efficiency, JCB’s tagline is ‘We care, that is why we are everywhere.’

New Delhi based Infinity handles the creative and media buying duties for JCB India.