Winner's Article: Re-branding of Hero Moto Corp by SK Lodha

I am no marketing guru, neither do I have any experience of building brands except for the little promotion I did for my startup Printbooth.in, but here, I would like to make a point. Maybe the argument I am about to present is technically flawed or maybe it has a very narrow scope, nonetheless I feel that it is a strong one and that I should put it forward to the aam janta. The brand under consideration here is Hero Honda, which is now Hero MotoCorp Ltd after it decided to exit its hugely successful JV with the giant from Japan (read HONDA).


Hero Honda has been an iconic Indian brand with a huge presence through the length and breadth of the country, and more importantly it owns a big pie of the two-wheeler market. Hero has a market share of 57% and it sells more bike than the 2^nd, 3^rd and 4^th players combined together. Hero from India and Honda from Japan have together created something very unique in terms of delivering what the middle class Indians wanted and aspired for. In this coalition that lasted 26 years (1984-2010), Honda was seen as the one with the technical geniuses while it was almost unanimously believed that strength Hero was that it exactly knew what its customers expected from it. Together, they were a force that the competitors dreaded.

As soon as people got to know about this separation with Hero deciding to go on its separate way, the initial reactions from the larger section of the “technically-sound” class were not very encouraging. They feared that somehow without the support of Honda, Hero will not be able to ramp up its R&D and thus will subsequently loose its market share to cut-throat competition. Though it’ll be very immature of me to comment on this issue, I feel that still Hero can be a strong force in the Indian market and can continue to do so as the association with Honda for such a long period of time must have surely modified the DNA of Hero, for good. Mr Pawan Munjal, MD & CEO ofHero Motocorp, himself is seen as one of the best corporate leaders of our time and we can trust him to make no mistakes that could negatively affect this brand in a big way.

The brand makeover task after the exit of Honda is no small task by any measures, and the creative agency (in this case, the famed Wolff Olins from London) that was handed over the contract for re-branding accept that their major challenge was to convince people that Hero still has got the technical expertise and the know-how to take the company higher. If you observe their new logo, you’ll see that it’s a 3D logo with sharp edges. The creative agency argues that that sharpness was essential to portray that Hero still has the engineering capabilities that is by no means any less advanced or inferior to what they initially had. When quizzed about the choice of colour for the logo, that is red and black, they were quick to state that this combination expresses the continuity with good old Hero Honda, since the old logo was also done in red and black.

A major part of this revamping/re-branding exercise is undoubtedly the song composed by the Mozhart, A.R.Rahman, “hum mein hai heroooo.......” This song has got a very nice feel to it and people picked it up quickly, humming it, singing it and enjoying it. This is exactly the part I would like to discuss here. Hero Motocorp gave this song enough airtime, ran it on all primetime TV shows & thus making it impossible for anybody to ignore it. The more they showed, the more we wanted because we genuinely liked the tune of it. It’s the same thing that Airtel is doing now with their youth connect song, “har ek friend zaroori hai yaar”. This too is a hugely popular and hugely successful campaign to come out of Airtel stable since long. These songs have only helped these brands create a very high recall value and thus underlining the popularity amongst Creative agencies to use jingles to draw consumer’s attention.

All izzzz well, you’d say. But now, let’s discuss the financial implication of running such blanket marketing campaigns, encompassing all possible channels of communication. Hero Motocorp reportedly spent close to INR 100 crores on this major overhaul, and according to me, that’s a huge price and more importantly a huge bet on advertisement, even for a company in the league of Hero Honda and Airtel. Ok, they spent 100 crores and achieved what they wanted to. Let’s take a moment here to analyze, what if Hero had developed some kind of campaign which would have rewarded their loyal customers along with creating a lot of buzz and educating people about the changes in the company that Hero wanted to portray. I like this idea a lot, and this has been running through my mind for the past one month. If I was in Mr Pawan Munjal’s shoes, I would have done something else, something different. “I would have spent only around 30% of what he spent on blanket marketing, just enough to let people know that things have changed a bit at our end. You need to recognize us through a newly designed logo and remember us by a fancier name-Hero Motocorp.” The bigger part of my message would have been that, “See, boss, our logo has changed and it’s no longer your old Hero Honda, aur to aur humara naam bhi badal chuka he. Toh mein yeh karta hu, mein aapko ek option deta hu ki aap apni bike ko humare service centre me le aao aur free me thoda denting-painting karwo lo. Aapka purana bike to chaka-chak ho hi jayega, uske saath saath mera bhi thoda publicity ho jayega. Aapka toh isme fayda hi fayda he, turant karwa lo.” And, then what I would have done is, I would have used this opportunity to repaint my brand identity (new logo and name) on millions of Hero motorcycles on the streets, running across the country. It would have been a viral marketing of its own kind, with sure shot positive results.

According to me, this would have had much higher impact on the consumers, maybe at the same cost of INR 100 crores, but also while making their loyal customers happier and merrier. This would fit very well into the loyalty program that they have already been running, called Hero Honda passport program. And I don’t think it would have been much of a task for Hero Motocorp with their huge network of more than 3000 dealers and service points across the country.

This was the simple argument that I wanted to convey through this post. If you think, there is some basic/serious flaw in my argument, or if I have missed something critical, do comment. Also write if you consider this to be valid argument that can be given a try the next time some brand plans a major overhaul. I would love to see reactions to this post, positive or negative.