For TATA.ev, we're focusing on community, sustainability & technology: Vivek Srivatsa 

Tata Passenger Electric Mobility has launched its new brand identity TATA.ev for the EV business. This new identity is aligned to Tata Motors' commitment on sustainability and pioneering innovation as well as Tata Group’s focus towards community development. 

Concerning the necessity for fresh brand design, Vivek Srivatsa, Head, Marketing, Sales and Service Strategy, Tata Passenger Electric Mobility stated that it is all about what people want, and they want a highly unique brand experience across all touchpoints.

"The new brand design provides us with the vehicle to execute that customer experience, whether it's sales, website, or after sales. The three pillars that we're going to focus on are community, sustainability, and technology, which, combined with a new brand design, allows us to deliver a much superior customer experience. At the end of the day, if customers are satisfied, it will affect business. All we're doing is accelerating EV adoption in the country, and this is a firm step in that direction.”

Communication around new brand identity

According to Srivatsa, for the new brand identity, the focus is more on action rather than communication. “The focus now is to expand this brand identity across all touchpoints. It will start reflecting in the next weeks and months in all our communications both internal and external. He said that the other touchpoints like website, retail, and after-sale will start getting impacted by this in the future. “Focus now is to not talk about it, but ensure it is visible to customers which is a very big task and maybe sometime after that we get into communication.”

He also highlighted that for the new brand identity, Tata Motors is not looking to make a campaign out of it. “It is more about acting and getting it visible to customers. We will use our own media vehicles in terms of expansion and all our advertising will follow some guidelines but there is not going to be a completely new advertising campaign for that.”

He further added, “We are not going to spend money on advertising, we rather want to focus on implementing it.”

Doubling down on its commitment to sustainability, TATA.ev has been designed with key actions, which ensure it follows an environmentally friendly approach: To reduce ink usage, print collaterals are designed on a white base - To reduce battery consumption and energy usage, all digital collaterals follow a dark mode approach and are designed on a Black base - To ensure wide accessibility, smaller file sizes, quicker loading times, and optimized performance, the font family used is Inter, an open-license and variable font family, to further align with the sustainable approach.

Difference between the buyer of EV vs traditional vehicle 

Speaking of buyer profiles, Srivatsa stated that the EV customer is more like a gadget shopper, and wants a very fluid and easy buying journey. Also expects service to be highly digitalized, easy to execute and expects the company to be always in touch. “Traditionally, in automotive, the only touchpoint you have after you buy a car is the service but with gadgets, you are always on forums, keep getting software updates, feedback from the manufacturer. So that is the expectation and this is something we realized after we've spoken to all our customers actually. This brand-new design allows us to provide a vehicle to deliver this. We want to be seen more as a tech company and want our customer experience to reflect the speed and ease of a tech company.”

Since communication is also very different for EV buyers from traditional buyers, Srivatsa shared that they use influencers a lot to educate potential buyers.  “We also use our current owners a lot to educate new prospects. We have to earn every EV customer, it's not that there are already some customers and you just take them. We have to earn customers by convincing them that EVs are future-proof, economical, robust, safe mobility solution and for that a lot of education and myth-busting that has to be done. It's more about education, rather than communication. So we use influencers, long-form videos and our own communities to educate other people.”

Core TG

The brand’s core TG is between the age of 25 and 44 years. “It's also important to start getting into the mind of people who are younger. Today's youngsters are far more aware of being sustainable and they want to make a difference to society. “We want to influence people from a little younger age because they see the value of sustainability. Women have started adopting us a lot. The tiago.EV that we launched recently, more than 25% of our buyers are women, which is double the normal industry size.”

With a dominating market share of over 70% in the four-wheeler EV segment, Tata Passenger Electric Mobility has crossed the milestone of selling 1 lakh Tata EVs. Srivatsa shared that the first 10,000 EVs they sold over 44 months, the next 40,000 were sold over 15 months, and the last 50,000 had been sold nine months. “More and more people are getting onto the EV bandwagon. Also, internationally, it has become clear that EVs are the future whether it's sustainability or ease of driving. People who travel abroad know that sooner or later they will buy an EV. It's about when to buy an EV and that is generally the motivating factor.”