In Jan 2012, Mahindra XUV500 launched its brand campaign around the tagline "May Your Life be Full of Stories." The new tagline focused on the insight that people with interesting experiences were the ones with the richest lives. We extended that thought on digital with XUV500 Experiences – a website where users could share their own travel experiences, in their own words.
• Starting early 2012, the team was moving from product-centric promotion to consumer-centric communication. The campaign line for the same was: May Your Life be Full of Stories.
• At this juncture, it was critical for XUV500 to grow as a brand through the consumer.
• The marketing objectives:
• Focus on consumer engagement through its new tagline of 'May Your Life be Full of Stories."
• Translate the tagline into an action point for the brand
Today, the Internet gives everyone a voice and a platform. We realized that every story shared by one person would inspire and encourage another person to share his or her own. We conceptualized XUV500 Experiences to be the single destination that anyone can visit for interesting travel-related experiences.
The site made use of 2 popular APIs – Google Maps and Facebook.
Every user's journey across destinations was mapped out on a Google Map – thereby creating a travel map database.
The site was rich-media enabled – photographs and videos could be uploaded and viewed.
A user could personalize his browsing by using Facebook Connect on the site.
Facebook integration on each story also gave it a viral reach.
To launch with, we selected 10 destinations across India. The destinations covered the length and breadth of India. They were:
1. Goa
2. Pondicherry
3. Maharashtra
4. Rajashtan
5. Kerala
6. Himachal Pradesh
7. Uttarakhand
8. Ladakh
9. Sikkim
10. Gujarat
Each destination also had 2-3 real travel stories seeded for launch. These were not fabricated stories – they were collated from people who had actually gone on these trips and written about it.
We also did a contextual mapping of the features of the XUV500 to each destination. This meant that users could unobtrusively learn about the product while browsing the content.
Every story had a Facebook Like button and Facebook Comments integrated – this ensured social virality of each story.
In terms of design, the site was created with a fluid, dynamic layout for easy browsing. The entire site was also device-friendly and iPad compatible.
Furthermore, if any person wanted to visit the product site, he could do so through the Product Site dropdown menu integrated on the Experiences website.
Every month, 2 new destinations are added to the website, culled from what most users are writing about. In the first month, we received 1,200 user stories from across India, without any media campaign. The site was only promoted through brand-owned social media channels.
