Sierra is back: Tata Motors ditches celebs, bets on culture, brand tie-ups and an IPL push

New Delhi: Tata Motors is treating the return of Sierra not as a routine nameplate revival, but as a full-scale brand reboot built on lifestyle insight, collaborations, design and a sharply defined media play.

From calling India “finally ready for Sierra” to positioning the SUV as a “living room on the move”, the company is leaning on changed consumer behaviour, a braver colour palette, a web of culture-forward brand tie-ups and cricket’s biggest stage to turn a 1990s cult icon into a mainstream volume driver.

“We started with the brand, and then we said we’ll make a product around it,” said Vivek Srivatsa, Chief Commercial Officer, Tata Motors, at a media roundtable ahead of the launch. 

“First, we said, let’s get the brand name back,” he recalled, describing the original Sierra as the badge that introduced a new lifestyle idea to Indian automotive. He added, “In automotive circles, normally you see a category, see which brand is successful and what the formula is, then you create a me-too product. With Sierra, we flipped that.” 

The team first defined what Sierra should stand for today and then asked the product and design groups to modernise the old silhouette while keeping its glass area and character intact. “In 1991, it was a product and a brand way ahead of its time,” Srivatsa said. “Today, the Indian consumer is ready for a brand like Sierra.”

Watch the Sierra launch story here: 

Across a two-hour conversation, Srivatsa laid out a playbook that stretches from in-house films shot in South Africa and South Mumbai to limited-edition watches and sneakers, IPL and WPL prominence, and a conscious decision to let the car, not a celebrity, front the brand.

India is finally ready for Sierra

Srivatsa went back to 1991, when the original Sierra entered a market where a Maruti 800 cost about Rs 1.2 lakh, while the Sierra was around Rs 7 lakh, “seven times the cost.” “In my mind, if I am successful in my career, I’ll buy a Sierra. That was the thinking,” he said, calling it the “ultimate dream,” with a 2000cc diesel engine and a silhouette that made the car feel more like a lifestyle statement than just transport.

Three decades later, he argued, the context has flipped. Families are taking off every long weekend, highways are jammed at the end of holidays, and each member of a four-person family posts their own version of the same trip.

“At the same time, the consumer is much more experimental. There is a thing called a safe choice now. You want something absolutely suited to your personality,” he said. “For me, today, India is ready for Sierra.”

Brand-first, not product-first SUV

Most automotive launches still follow a formula, but with Sierra, Tata Motors said it flipped that approach, starting with the brand idea and then building the product around it.

“In automotive circles, you see a category that is the hotspot of the market, see what the formula for success is, and then you create a me-too product,” he said. “With Sierra, first we said we should bring the brand name back. We started with the brand, and then we said we’ll make a product around it.”

The new Sierra is broader and taller than the original, with modern cues yet “very hinged on the classic design, including the glass area and many other elements.” But the more important shift, he suggested, is strategic: using Sierra’s personality to satisfy a large mass market and still give buyers something they feel is distinctly theirs.

“Automotive, by definition, is a mass market. Unless we make a million cars, we don’t make money,” he said. “Sierra gives us that opportunity where you can cater to the personality and character the consumer wants, and at the same time target a mass of people by giving them something they are proud to own.”

Breaking SUV sameness in the automotive market

Inside Tata Motors, Srivatsa said, the team calls today’s SUV landscape the “white goat market,” a reference to categories where one successful product spawns a string of near-identical clones.

“If one washing machine is successful, within three months, you have 10 brands using the same formula. The same thing is happening in automotive, especially in the SUV segment. The way people pose with their cars is similar, the colours are similar, and the shapes are similar. There’s a lot of sameness,” he said.

India still thrives on familiarity and word of mouth, he conceded, but there is a parallel need to feel different even within the mass. “People want to say, ‘I want a mass, but I still want to be individual,’” he said. For Tata Motors, the Sierra badge, with its classic silhouette and emotional baggage, is the lever to inject “life and personality” into that crowded category.

Living room on wheels: Sierra’s “life space” interior

If the exterior carries forward Sierra’s iconic proportions, the marketing story is built squarely around the interior. Srivatsa called it a “life space” inspired by how people live at home today.

“The living room is the centre where each of us is doing our own thing but also being together. The car enables that,” he said. “The passenger in front can watch their own movie connected to their own earphones. You have a lounge-like rear seat. It’s a very different concept of a car, where you take the living room on the move.”

He pointed out that ten years ago, exterior styling was the top purchase driver; today, a good-looking exterior is “almost hygiene”, while interior comfort, ambience and convenience matter more because people are spending hours in traffic and on highways. “The Sierra is designed inside out,” he said, adding that much of the marketing will lean into this “living space on the move” idea rather than only design nostalgia.

A lifestyle ecosystem: watches, sneakers, coffee, fashion and Divine

One of the more distinctive pillars of Sierra’s brand plan is a cluster of lifestyle collaborations that sit outside the Tata universe. That is a departure in itself.

“Normally, from the Tata group, we do not really welcome non-Tata brands too much, but with Sierra, we did make an exception,” Srivatsa said. “We thought about what kind of other brands reflect the current lifestyle and the current consumer mindset, and that is where we are. So, what you will see is a very selected set of brands that really showcase what India is today, both the Indian consumer mindset and the capability of India to create international-quality, internationally revered brands, I would say.”

The list includes Delhi Watch Company, Starbucks, homegrown sneaker brand Gully Labs, leather and travel label Nappa Dori, youth fashion brand Huemn and rapper Divine. 

Delhi Watch Company has created a limited-run Sierra-branded watch with yellow luminescence and Sierra-specific detailing. 

Starbucks is selling a Sierra thermos mug in its stores. 

Gully Labs has designed Sierra sneakers. 

Nappa Dori has created a line of travel accessories. 

Huuemn has launched a capsule of casual apparel

Divine’s music scores the launch communication. The Music Video: “You & I,” the Tata Sierra isn’t just a car; it’s a co-star. 

“It is about brand visibility and cross-pollination of audiences,” he said, arguing that Sierra puts these brands in front of a monthly catchment of over 10 million car intenders, while they lend Sierra a “contemporary, youthful India” vibe.

Media strategy: digital-first, outdoor-heavy, IPL and WPL as a big stage

On the media strategy front, Tata Motors is resisting a rigid mix but will lean heavily on digital and OOH. “We are going with a very on-the-move approach. It is going to evolve as we see how the brand lands,” he said.

The one certainty is out-of-home. “You are going to see a lot of outdoors,” he said. “We want the consumer to see it for what it is. Outdoor gives us the ability to really showcase the brand we want. It also allows longevity of visual appeal—consumers can keep seeing it for a month or two, which is not possible in a TVC or print.”

Television is not off the table, but the team wants consumers to “organically discover the product,” with Connected TV, music festivals and other touchpoints still under discussion.

The biggest burst of mass reach will come in the next IPL and WPL seasons, where Sierra will be the on-ground brand. 

No celebrity endorser, the car is the celebrity

In an auto market full of star-fronted campaigns, Sierra will be an outlier. Asked if Tata Motors would also sign a big Bollywood or cricket face, Srivatsa said the brief is to keep the spotlight on the SUV itself. 

“In the auto sector, a lot of brands are heavily endorsed by celebrities, but the car is a celebrity here,” he said. “There is no plan to have an endorser. The product has enough personality of its own.”

In-house creative over agencies, for the long haul

For Sierra, Tata Motors has also taken an unusual route on the creative side by not appointing an external creative agency for the launch. Created in-house along with a production house, the main brand film has been shot partly in South Africa for scale and logistics and partly in South Mumbai, with music by composer Kalmi, who has worked on earlier Tata films and also has a commercial music career.

He stressed that the choice was not driven by cost-cutting but by control over the idea. “Sometimes creative agencies don’t have the pulse of the market or of the business issue,” he said. “Rather than spending time wrestling with them to arrive at a creative solution, it’s better that we do it ourselves. It has nothing to do with cost. It’s only about the creative route and the purity of execution.”

Srivatsa added that Tata Motors’ internal marketing and creative team is now confident enough to take on this role more often, even if it adds pressure to their day jobs. “Our creative team is as good as any agency team now,” he said. “Fortunately, we have a great internal team who could take time out from their normal jobs, get together, jam, and come up with the approach. Hopefully, it’s long-term if you ask me… whenever it’s possible, we’ll do it this way.”

Nostalgia as garnish, not strategy

Given Sierra’s cult status, nostalgia is an inevitable ingredient in the launch film, but Srivatsa is clear that it is only the opening note.

“We are not entirely banking on nostalgia; we are reinvigorating the brand name for today,” he said. “Nostalgia is just the initial part. From now on, all communication will be about the new product.”

“You can’t launch a Sierra without paying an ode to the original Sierra,” he added. “But it is very contemporary. It is for the Divine age, I would say.”

That “Divine age” reference is literal as well as symbolic. Divine’s music and presence are embedded in the campaign, reflecting the youth culture the brand now wants to tap, far beyond those who remember the 1990s SUV.

He expects the new Sierra to “go back to becoming a legendary, iconic brand in the next two–three years,” but in a different way from the original. “It was never a volume player. So it was a brand appeal,” he said. “Now it will become iconic and legendary because of the sheer volumes it will be delivering in the market. It is brand plus business appeal.”

Launch timing and the core Sierra buyer

The launch range is petrol and diesel, with an EV to follow roughly six months later. 

The timing of the launch, after Diwali and in the run-up to IPL, is also deliberate. Diwali brings internal logistics pressure and high “cost of attention,” he said. “We wanted relatively little breathing space to launch it,” with room to build awareness and scale supply before the cricket season.

Asked who he sees as the core buyer, Srivatsa answered first with the demographic shorthand, “a 30-year-old married guy, probably both of them working, looking to set up a family and wanting a car which shows their status and taste.”