NEW DELHI: Honda Motorcycle and Scooter India (HMSI) recently conducted a promotional-cum-response generation event - `The Great Eterno Yatra’ for its four-stroke scooter Eterno.
The yatra traversed through 10 cities covering the north, west and central India and a total distance of around 2000 kilometres. The campaign was devised by HMSI’s roster agency Triton Communications, Delhi.
The idea behind the rally, designed exclusively for Indian market, was to prove its mettle in a minimum span of time in a demonstrable manner. The rally was conceptualised after considering researches which indicated that the key concerns/expectations of the consumer were mileage in normal riding conditions, ability to carry load, breakdown factor and stability while riding.
Triton’s brand services director Anchal Duggal says, "Our idea was to demonstrate in a real manner - and not through mock stunts - the reliability aspect of Eterno. This provided HMSI an opportunity to test the Eterno under actual riding conditions on parameters like mileage, endurance, loading capacity, the unique one-direction gear system and riding comfort."
Along with these parameters, Eterno also scored on basic features of a Honda product like patented CLIC mechanism and Tuffup tube designed to assist during breakdowns Duggal states.
According to Vivek Srivastava, executive director of Triton, a 17-member team - including journalists from auto magazines, technicians from HMSI and a co-ordination team - the rally travelled from city to city, covering the entire distance in 16 days before coming back to their base, Delhi.
The 'Great Eterno Yatra' allowed the consumer to touch and feel the product locally and check out the performance. Each city witnessed a press conference with a local event organized by dealers along with HMSI.
"Keeping in view the conversion factors, a lot of focus was on test drives. Normally out of 1000 test drives, nearly 15-20 conversions would happen," Duggal says.
The campaign is part of a promotional strategy for Eterno. Triton’s mandate for Eterno includes inculcating confidence among the target audience as the category is known for usage in rugged manner.
