The Middle Class has Moved on to Tata Nano

Today’s piece is not so much about an ad as it is about an idea. Well, it is not really about an idea in the abstract. Tata’s Nano is after all a car; not just a cute little

ladybird, but an automobile that aficionados across the world are watching very seriously. Yet, the Nano is an idea, and that is exactly how it has been marketed. There are print and digital ads out for the product, but no TV ad as yet (if I have missed out on one, please point out my ignorance). These ads however are not seeking to introduce the car. The Nano arrived long before it was launched last month.

We may laugh at the Americans for their obsession with cars. Among Germans there is the joke that whereas their autobahns are world class, their schools are not. Reason: families have more cars than children! Here in India, cars have never been iconic; farmers and soldiers have traditionally captured the national imagination, not cars. Yet in 1983, Maruti inaugurated the India envisioned by late prime minister Rajiv Gandhi. The middle class, it seemed, had arrived along with a little 800-cc car. On the one hand, Maruti was a car that everybody struggled hard to fit into the

image of India they had in mind. Would it survive our roads? Was it not a matchbox, unsuited to the great Indian family? Yet on the other, the little car heralded the Indian middle classes’ tryst with the future. Up to then, they were constantly reminded of the past, tied by guilt to India’s poverty and shortage economy. With Maruti, urban

India began to aspire for things that marked the modern world. I drove my father’s Maruti out of the showroom in 1984; I know the feeling. We had finally done owning a car; we now owned a Maruti!

Tata’s Nano is the next big thing for

India. The middle class has moved on; the next wave is rushing in to fill up the ever-widening space created by India’s economic boom. People have been booking the Nano with helmet in hand; a butcher arrived to book the Nano, it is reported, with cheque filled in and signed.

Nano defines the India of the aspiring classes. Interestingly, the Nano was born of the desire and conviction (Ratan Tata’s) that it could be done, like the Konkan Railway and the Delhi Metro. In these and many other ways, the Nano will provide a new vocabulary to define India as it unfolds in the years ahead. The ‘lakhtakia’ car (the ‘one lakh’ car, as it is known in north India) could, for example, replace our rickety three-wheeler ‘autos’. We’d probably call the new avatar the Mini Cab, or better still, the Nano Cab.

So Mr Tata, having sold his story and his dream to the nation, has made the task of his brand managers easy. The car seems to be selling itself. The print ad has been visualised as green and friendly with a crayon art touch to it.

The idea I would imagine, is to keep it simple. The pitch has been made. The aspiring classes are on board. The only thing left to do is to shake Singur off, and get the assembly line in shape.

Postscript: Singur returns 9,340,000 hits on Google. Any guesses why?
Sorece: expressbuzz.com