Lintas Media Group, Red FM innovate for Wagon R's re-launch

Red FM, Lintas Media Group and Maruti Suzuki recently came together to relaunch the ‘improved’ Wagon R through a media innovation that saw the FM station turn blue for an entire day on April 23.

All this to celebrate the brand new features of the Wagon R, such as its blue eye shaped headlights, taller body amongst others features. Everything from the station jingle and bumpers to the RJ's sign off was modified to incorporate the Wagon R’s features.

Two days before the relaunch, a teaser campaign to search for the new "blue eyed boy in town" was kicked off on all 20 Red FM stations in the cities of Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Chennai, Pune, Nagpur, Jaipur, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Cochin, Bhopal, Lucknow, Kanpur, Guwahati, Bhubaneswar, Vijaywada, Vizag, Coimbatore and Baroda.

Red FM RJs led the hunt by enlisting the help of listeners in tracking down this elusive character by going out on the streets to look for "him" and share some clues about "his" identity.

Listeners called in sharing their ideas on the identity of this character, but the "blue eyed boy" remained untraceable as ever.

On the day of the launch, actor R Madhavan who is also Wagon R's brand ambassador, decided to put the RJs and listeners out of their misery and revealed the identity of the "blue eyed boy".

In a two hour long simulcast, Madhavan answered questions about the new Wagon R, highlighting its improved features. The RJs then decided to take the car out for a test drive and share their first hand review of the car with the listeners.

Commenting on the campaign, B Surendar, senior VP and national sales head, Red FM said, "Red FM’s Creative Solutions Cell is dedicated to providing brands with holistic promotional ideas that are unconventional and truly attention grabbing. This campaign to relaunch Wagon R in 20 key markets across the country fully capitalized on the strength of Red FM’s vast network. The innovative, fun manner in which the new Wagon R was introduced ensured that listeners sat up and took notice."

Shashank Srivastava, CGM - marketing, Maruti said, "MSIL has been a pioneer in creating path breaking brand communication campaigns, it has been our endeavor to consistently evolve our products innovatively which  requires out of box thinking to come up with clutter breaking ideas which would have an impact on the consumer mindset.  Human mind always takes cognizance of disruptions, Wagon R was an already well established brand perching high in the consumer mindscape; to communicate the arrival of this blue eyed boy required the power of disruption to make an impact. We came out with this idea of painting Red FM blue! and ride on the arrival of New Blue eyed Boy on this highly noticeable disruption."

Commenting on the innovation, V S Mani, senior vice president, Lintas Media Group said, "For the launch of the 'All New Wagon R', the challenge was to infuse newness into something you have always known. So the switch of Red FM to ‘Blue FM’ created a disruption from what you are always used to hearing and this was used to communicate about the All New Wagon R’ and thereby establishing the brand message."