Book Excerpt from: Nawabs, Nudes, Noodles

The crown for the most popular advertising by an Indian automotive brand, car and two-wheeler, would undoubtedly go to the Bajaj scooter film Hamara Bajaj, created by Lintas. This was the year 1989. The country was heading towards a crisis and the government was trying its best to prop up the morale of the country. The famous Mile sur mera tumhara had been unveiled on Independence Day, 1988. The time was indeed ripe for a brand to appropriate the national aspirations and desires. Which better brand than the brand that was the cynosure of every middle-class Indian, the Bajaj scooter.

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During the '70s and '80s, a scooter was the most prized possession of every Indian. I remember my father buying a new Lambretta scooter and booking his next one the day he took delivery of the new one. There are stories about a young father of a three-year-old girl booking a Bajaj scooter for his to be son-in-law; planning ahead for more than a decade and a half. There were also schemes for NRIs to get a Bajaj Chetak scooter under a special dollar payment offer. My father got his first Bajaj Chetak scooter by cajoling my cousin who was returning to India from Malaysia!

In this milieu, it was appropriate for Bajaj to send out a message about the brand being in the heart of every Indian. The film, a montage of everyday use of the scooter, cutting across religious groups, regional differences, dress cultures, urban and NAWABS, NUDES, NOODLES98 rural etc., was a great hit with the masses. The jingle spoke about how the scooter was a part of India, today and tomorrow, a strong India's strong picture, our very own Bajaj. If you sit and counted the number of situations and people you will run out of fingers. I could spot a Parsi, a Muslim, a Sikh, a villager, an urban father, a running coach, a young lady and even a dog taking a ride on the Bajaj scooter.

Thanks to the spread of television and blockbuster programmes such as Ramayana and Mahabharat, the jingle was on everyone's lips. The company even managed to get a stay order from the court preventing a film production company in 2013 from using the title 'Hamara Bajaj'; almost twenty-five years after the film first aired. That was the power of the jingle and the film. In advertising parlance, this genre of advertising where a brand is shown being used across the country, in different situations is known as the 'Mera Brand Mahan – Hamara Bajaj' type film, immortalized by the ad agency Lowe Lintas.

Why was Bajaj prompted into advertising, if their scooters were still in waiting list?

For an answer, one has to drive from Pune, where Bajaj was being manufactured, to Delhi, the headquarters of the company that was set to dethrone Bajaj – Hero Honda.

RL Ravichandran, the then marketing head at Bajaj, made an interesting observation at the Pan IIT Conference at Delhi. He spoke about the challenges faced by Bajaj and how they were overcoming it. He mentioned that the day Hero Honda was launched, June 1984 to be precise, and started tom-toming fuel efficiency with its iconic campaign 'Fill it, shut it, forget it' – created by FCB Ulka Delhi, by the way – he realized that the scooter category's dominance may not last forever. He explained that scooters and motorcycles had co-existed in the Indian market for decades. In fact, motorcycles like Enfield Bullet even had iconic advertising– 'Bullet meri jaan, manzilon ka nishan' (The Bullet is my life, the aim of my destinations) made by film-maker Prahlad Kakkar for the agency Sistas (incidentally Prahlad used to ride a Bullet in the mid-'80s). The Bullet had also been featured in superhit movies like Sholay in the song 'Yeh dosti' featuring Dharmendra and Amitabh Bachchan. New-age Japanese motorcycles like Yamaha had also entered the market. But Bajaj scooters remained the all-time favourite. The reason: it made a sensible choice in terms of safety, fuel efficiency, maintenance etc. The motorcycle was always seen as a young man's vehicle, not meant for a family man.

Here comes Hero Honda with its model CD 100 claiming a fuel efficiency of eighty kilometres per litre as against other motorcycles and even scooters that offered 30 kmpl. In addition, the CD 100 shied away from any macho imagery, clearly signalling to the middle-class married man to get off his scooter and get on to a motorbike.

The story of motorbike vs scooter in the Indian market has many twists and turns and you could write a potboiler just by tracing the many characters and their moves, but suffice it to say that Bajaj decided to exit the scooter business after losing the fight to modern motorbikes. However, after the launch of Honda's gearless scooter Activa, scooters became the fastest growing segment in the Indian two-wheeler market in the year 2013-14, rising to become almost one-third of the total market1. I am sure Bajaj is wondering that 'Hamara scooter, hamara na raha' (Our scooter did not stay ours alone). In addition to Honda, all other players too have scooter offerings including Hero, Suzuki, TVS, Mahindra, Piagio; all except Bajaj.

The Indian's journey from the humble cycle to the scooter to the motorbike was, in fact, facilitated by the success of yet another category of two-wheelers, the moped. Kinetic launched its first moped in 1972 and even had iconic advertising 'Chal meri Luna' in the mid-'80s. TVS too launched a moped, TVS 50. Bajaj had Bajaj Sunny. Enfield launched a 32cc mini-moped Mofa that did not require a driving license.

The rise of Bajaj and later of Hero Honda, rang a death knell of the moped. Except for Tamil Nadu, where TVS 50 continues to sell – and even had some wonderful advertising to support it with 'Namma ooru vandi, TVS 50' (The vehicle of our land, TVS 50) – the moped category has virtually disappeared. So while cycles have continued to flourish, scooters have had a second coming; even the mighty Enfield, powered by some real smart marketing communication piloted by V Sunil of Wieden & Kennedy and RL Ravichandran – formerly with Bajaj – has risen from the ashes. Mahindra Group which bought Kinetic's scooter operations may be wondering if they should have bid for Enfield when it was a possible acquisition target. But before we lament the demise of the humble mopeds, don't be too surprised if a smart company is able to create an Indian 'frugally-engineered' moped that can deliver 150 kmpl efficiency or maybe an electrically-powered moped!

(See interview: Retracing the journey of Indian advertising )