Hyundai’s ‘6 hai toh safe hai’ campaign intends to set a safety benchmark: Virat Khullar

Keeping passenger safety at the centre, Hyundai Motors has made six airbags the standard in its entire lineup, announcing it with a marketing campaign ‘6 Hai Toh Safe Hai’.

Virat Khullar, AVP and Vertical Head of Marketing, Hyundai Motors, told exchange4media how the brand saw the marketing campaign as an opportunity to set a safety benchmark for the industry and the media mix it leveraged to ensure that and more. 

Here are the excerpts:

What led to this new campaign ‘6 Hai Toh Safe Hai’? How does it reflect what your consumer is looking for?

Customer safety is a very important parameter for cars and has been a mission at Hyundai under the name safety for all and our purpose has been to democratise more and more safety features for our Indian consumer.

In early October, our company made six airbags mandatory across all 13 models that we produced and across every variant of those cars. This was a massive step. One of our flagship sedans, the Hyundai Verna, got a five-star global NCAP safety rating. Based on that, we came out with a campaign ‘6 Hai Toh Safe Hai’. We wrapped it around the World Cup and the festive season.

We got a three-pillar strategy for safety. The aim is to have some features that are available at the top of the line of our products. The big reason behind the campaign was we got six airbags coming across all our versions. From October 1, any car we produce for the Indian market will have six airbags as the standard and it will continue for all our future products and upgrades.

The aim was to make a big announcement around it as it is an opportunity to set a safety benchmark and that is how our creative agency came up with the tagline ‘6 Hai Toh Safe Hai’. In the world of cricket, if it’s a six, it is the biggest number you can get and it crosses the boundary line so it is very safe. We have come out with three TVCs.

What is your marketing strategy and media mix to advertise the campaign?

Beyond products, this is one of the large campaigns that we are doing this year. We are going with television, where we are doing impact properties. We are principal partners on Kaun Banega Crorepati and Bigg Boss 17, the top two reality properties in India. In cricket, we have taken the CTV route so we are targeting a kind of niche premium audience by doing active spotting on CTV.

On the digital side, a large campaign is running for one and a half months. We are also doing very strategic print, so after the next day of every India cricket match, you will see key newspapers carrying our half-page ad on the sports page. So we are doing TV, digital and print. We have not done any outdoor advertising for this campaign.

Can you please share your marketing and advertising budget for this campaign?

I would not be able to give a specific number but it is one of the large, if not the largest, campaigns we are doing this year. I am not comparing it with a product launch because that has a very different approach but it is a large-budget campaign with three media (TV, digital, print) being actively used.

How is the festive season coinciding with the World Cup this year turning out for Hyundai? What are your expectations?

We have been running a strong year-on-year performance till September. It is a bit early to comment on the festival. We have just come out of Navratras which has been very decent for us. I would not pick out a number to show year-on-year performance but we are very happy where we are on the sales numbers. It is as per our objectives but we have had a good decent festive time as we speak. Let the whole chunk go out and then we will get a bigger sense of how it played on a Y-o-Y basis. The numbers look very encouraging for us.

Are any new launches coming up?

Not looking at any launches this year. We have already had seven launches since January this year. Let us look at how 2024 comes out. In the next four months no new launches.