CarDekho

The Problem:

Buying a car is a big-ticket decision involving hundreds of website scrolls, showroom visits & expert advice from family, friends & just about everyone.
Enter CarDekho, India’s premier auto portal. Its key aim was to plug this hole & establish itself as the “gaadi ka expert” & the only reliable resource required by consumers to buy their dream car.
Their 1st ever TVC looked to disrupt current buying behaviour & put decision-making back in the buyer’s hands. Car Dekho also had budget constraints and could only make a single ad to connect with their buyers in the north and south.
However, their main challenge was getting their communication right in South India, especially the humour. Their success hung on their ability to understand the culture & apply it to their TVC.
Hence, Car Dekho partnered with Ormax to help the creative team iterate and fine-tune the scripts before making the final TVC.

The Ormax Compass approach:

We used the Qualitative Research approach and did a total of 6 consumer focus group interactions, among first and second car buyers- both male and female.
Moving away from the traditional storyboarding method, we successfully used narramatics which brought down execution time and cost of the project (compared to using animatics which was a far more expensive option). The study was executed and delivered within a record time of 2 weeks.
But there were a couple of challenges along the way:

The Challenges:

1. Understanding the consumer mindset- The culture of asking for advice from everyone, especially for big-ticket purchases, is deeply ingrained in the Indian consumer. To take on the role of “expert” advisor, instead of friends & family, CarDekho had to establish the imagery of being “trustworthy”, “dependable”, & “authentic”.
2. Understanding the unique culture of Chennai- Specifically understanding the Chennai buyer in terms of sentiments, traditions and perceptions.

How Ormax Compass pointed the way:

The brand and creative team incorporated our directional recommendations in the communication – they worked on eliminating the distractions, which interfered with the core value proposition of Car Dekho being a ‘gaadi ka expert’.
They also took note of the culture-specific undertones -a difference in nuances and sensibilities in Chennai. For example, specific phrasing used in the TVC was considered crass & impolite. This was tweaked before the launch of the TVC to make it more “acceptable”.
Post the ad campaign, CarDekho saw a 25% increase in organic & direct daily traffic on their website & a 3.3x appointment growth.
All of the above translated into growth at the top end of the funnel for the C2D business, and the brand team attributed a chunk of this growth directly to understanding consumer behaviour.
In conclusion, this research study proved the only way for a brand to find its way to a consumer’s heart is through communication truly built keeping the consumer in mind. Ormax Compass is proud to have helped nail the CarDekho communication with its valuable research insights and, in the process, contributed to the company’s growth.