The last two years have been all about the transition towards digital, whether for necessities, premium, or luxury purchases. Luxury vehicles company Mercedes-Benz India claims that its direct-to-consumer (D2C) channel accounts for about 20% of its sales. “Our D2C business model helped us to have a standard pricing, show the full inventory as well as offer discounts at the point of sales,” Santosh Iyer, vice-president, sales and marketing, Mercedes-Benz India, told BrandWagon Online. The company further claims that digital including videos, content, display ads, social and search, will account for more than 50-60% share of the overall marketing spend in CY22, as compared to 35-40% earlier. However, the company has no plans to increase its marketing and advertising spend for CY22. According to Iyer, 2022 will be the first time when digital will overtake other platforms in terms of marketing spend and the focus will be on efficiency, sharp targeting, as well as personalisation. “Prior to this, the marketing spends was predominantly split between print, TV, and digital,” he added.
Interestingly, the company recently opted for a social media route by launching an Instagram-only campaign ‘Are you AMG-ready?’ for its performance car range, Mercedes-AMG. Conceptualised by Rankin Agency London, the campaign aims to tap into GenZ and millennials who are yet to buy their first car, besides reaching out to their existing customer base in the age group of 32-38 years old. “The entire AMG campaign is targeted to expand the customer base for performance cars in India. The medium allows us to have feedback when compared to TV,” Iyer said. As per the company, 90% of the traffic on the company’s website and commerce platform/portal comes from mobile phones, making Instagram the best choice for the launch of its new campaign.
For Mercedes-Benz, the campaign will allow it to engage with its existing 1.3 million followers on Instagram, thereby driving conversations among customers. Furthermore, it aims to leverage influencers to draw the attention of its customers. “India has an appetite for more performance cars. This is due to two key reasons – one, the road infrastructure is improving and second, young millennials and GenZs are looking at performance cars as well as using the same car for daily commute. There is an untapped potential in the market,” Iyer elaborated.
Mercedes-Benz India claims to have delivered 11,242 units in the January-December 2021 period, registering a 42.5% year-on-year sales growth, underlining a significant volume recovery from 2020. “2022 will be another milestone year as we aim to lead the luxury electric vehicles (EV) segment by expanding our EV portfolio with the debut of the first-ever all-electric luxury sedan from Mercedes-Benz, the EQS. We have decided to start the local production of the EQS, a step in the right direction for us towards mainstreaming luxury EVs. The start of local production of the EQS will be pivotal in driving the penetration of luxury EVs in the market,” Martin Schwenk, managing director and CEO, Mercedes-Benz India, stated.
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