Tata Motors' human-centric ads aim to redefine storytelling in the commercial vehicle space

Tata Motors has unveiled a new, five-part content line-up which compliments the ongoing 'Desh ke Trucks' campaign.

With this phase, Tata Motors has attempted to redefine storytelling through engaging advertising, ongoing influencer engagement and on-ground activations. In September 2022, it launched its ‘Desh ke Trucks’ campaign.

For ‘Desh ke Trucks’ campaign, the in-house brand team of Tata Motors worked on the insights development, planning and conceptualisation whereas the creative development and campaign execution was done by Black or White Brand Communication.

The campaign was intended to showcase its trucks, innovations, enhanced facets and features, digitalisation, fuel efficiency, safety, technology, connectivity, driver productivity and cabin comfort via entertaining, slice-of-life commercials.

Encouraged by the response to the original campaign, Tata Motors has now released the five-part extension. The first commercial of this new content series showcases multiple comfort features of Tata Motors trucks which enhances driver productivity. The second and third films highlight the benefits of Tata Motors’ own connected telematics platform, Fleet Edge, which is developed for both fleet owners and drivers. With safety being a key attribute of Tata Motors trucks, the fourth and fifth advertisement portray the usage of Collision Mitigation System (CMS) and Lane Departure Warning System (LDWS) respectively.

Shubhranshu Singh

Shubhranshu Singh, Vice-President, Marketing, Commercial Vehicle Business, Tata Motors, said, “Tata Motors is a pioneer and industry leader in commercial vehicles. Our endeavour is to engage our stakeholders with continuous communications. With customer centricity at the core of our business, we have evolved from showcasing distinct campaigns around the product applications to advanced storytelling about our mobility solutions that establish an emotional bond with our audiences. With the ‘Desh ke Trucks’ campaign, we are confident that our simple messaging and subtle humour will appeal to our customers.

He also said, “The belief for a long period of time was that we sell heavy commercial trucks to large fleet owners and that they are gigantic corporations in their own rights.” 

So, there is limited scope for advertising in the sense that the commitment to buy after awareness and interest happen face to face. There is a well-established protocol for beat plans, meetings and customer relationship management. So, whatever Tata Motors has, is presented to the customer as a brochure.

Tata Motors’ theoretical position was that because everybody knows the plain vanilla truths about products, it is only through storytelling that one can engage them, he stated.

“Another thing that was close to a myth was in B2B selling or in the commercial vehicle business, people don't have a very deep emotional involvement with the product. We know a legendary number of big fleet owners who never sell off the first Tata vehicle they bought because they think that is the foundation stone with which they had grown their business,” Singh said. 

“The third thing we realised was that people don't compare product to product. We are trying to be always on when it comes to digital involvement. We are trying to tell a story from very facets not only from the product but testimonial, efficacy, safety, reliability, culture on being on wheels aspects,” he added.

Lastly, Tata Motors is not relying only on advertising, the ambition is to go big on influencer programs, Singh said.

“So, it's done in three parts, for all the major national influencers we rely on our corporate communications team to get them to tell our stories. But at Tier 2 and regional level or even in the case of nano influencers, we are going right down to choosing and picking up partners who we feel are credible and who do work in their genre and then try to tell the story from their eyes without being prescriptive about the content. So, that becomes the long tail on our product launch or feature launch story,” Singh stated.

He went on to state that only Tata can claim to have that legacy, history and commitment to the sector to genuinely claim that they manufacture 'Desh ke Trucks'. 

The TVCs:

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