Mahindra’s ‘Gio’ TVC to hit southern channels

Mahindra’s ‘Gio’ TVC to hit southern channels

BANGALORE: Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd (M&M) announced the launch of its small commercial vehicle (SCV) ‘Mahindra Gio’ (‘Gio’) for the southern states in Bangalore today.

The Gio had been launched north of the Vindhya’s a couple of months ago and a TVC created by Interface with the tagline ‘Jeeyo Naye Andaaz Main’ has been on air on some of the national GECs and news channels since then.
 
“We are targeting a mass segment. Our media plans for the south are being finalized right now, and the dubbing of the TVC that has been released on the national channels into the southern regional languages is complete. Over the next 5-7 days, we expect to complete the initial deliveries of ‘Gio’ to all our dealer outlets in the south. We will ask the channels to start running our TVC’s then,” informed M&M Senior Vice President of Sales and Customer Care, Automotive sector Arun Malhotra.

Company sources revealed that the some of the channels on which ad spots would be booked include the Sun group’s GEC and movie channels in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, TV9 group’s southern regional news channels, some of the channels of ETV in the southern states and Asianet in Kerala.
 
“The south is a big market for light commercial vehicles – it contributes 40 per cent to the national sales pie, and we wanted to be very sure about the availability of the vehicle in all the four states before we launched it, hence the delayed launch,” revealed Malhotra.

The ‘Gio’ is a new category creator, says Malhotra. M&M is targeting the buyers from the mini-truck segment which has an estimated annual national market size of 110,000 units and the three wheeler commercial carrier segment which has an annual national market size of 68,000 units. M&M’s current manufacturing capacity for the ‘Gio’ is 30,000 units per annum.
 
Media buying for the M&M ‘Gio’ is done through Lodestar.