General Motors to enhance its ad expenditure in India

World’s largest maker of automobiles General Motors has not had a very good session in the Indian market. They started with the Opel brand of luxury cars, which did well initially but slowed down as the market got Japanese products from the popular brands like Honda and Toyota. Incidentally, these same companies are giving General Motors in their home market of United States of America.

The company restructured and launched products from the range of cheap value for money vehicles from the Daewoo which they acquired a couple of years ago. The company has been moderately successful with this approach. However, everyone knows that the Indian market is all about value for money products in the sub 10 lakh segment where the real sales chart really showcases the demand.

GM is now preparing to launch Chevrolet Spark and Chevrolet Aveo sometime next year and it becomes important for them to get their marketing strategy about these awesome products right for the Indian market. They cannot afford to go wrong one more time considering it just might be the last straw in their survival cycle here. The company has taken some steps to get their stuff right.

General Motors have raised their advertising budget by 35-40% to reach Rs 55-60 crore. That is around what the second largest automaker in India Hyundai spends on advertising. Maruti is the market leader around here and have a seriously impressive marketing budget of Rs 120-130 crore. A senior market executive talked about the marketing strategies of GM: “For auto companies with multiple brands, it’s becoming a practice to divide the creative business amongst competing agencies. Maruti and Hyundai have done that quite successfully.”

General Motors is also planning to split its advertising business, handled by Enterprise Nexus, between two or more agencies.