Tuesday, September 22, 2009, Sydney – Mahindra Automotive Australia (MAA) has unveiled its first TVC campaign since the Mahindra Pik-Up utility vehicle was launched in Australia. The ad’s content and tag line “Made for the hardest places on Earth” demonstrates the vehicle’s proven capability under some of the harshest conditions in the world, including its origin India, where the vehicle is manufactured by automotive giant Mahindra & Mahindra.
Claire Tynan, CEO, MAA said, “To date we have focussed on a mix of below-the-line, targeted print advertising, radio, web and sponsorship activities to ensure that we communicate with our key audience of farmers and tradies. After building the brand over the past two years we wanted to achieve a wider reach which TV delivers effectively in addition to these mediums.
“We’re really excited about this campaign and believe it will reinforce that this workhorse ute operates very successfully in some the most remote locations on the planet.”
The ad sees the Mahindra Pik-Up ‘journey’ around the world from the Pyrenees to the Sahara, Wadi Rum Desert to the Himalayas, and back to the Serengeti, where the Mahindra is used by many local drivers. ‘Hardest places’ is not only relegated to foreign locations; the ad demonstrates that the vehicle can also be found at comfortably at work in a mine, at a vineyard or on a worksite.
The TVC, was produced by Sydney agency Synchromesh Marketing in North Sydney.
In a recent true-to-life example of the Pik-Up’s triumph under harsh conditions, Brazilian motoring enthusiast Ricardo Augusto de Souza Campos, better known in the South American motor sport fraternity simply as Rasc, took third place in the production category of the tough Rally dos Sertoes in Brazil, in his Mahindra.
The Rally dos Sertoes is one of the toughest events in the world, second it’s said after the mighty Dakar, and this year it was run over 11 days, was 5,045 km long with featured events that totaled 2,605km of competitive stages between Goiania and Natal. 128 vehicles participated; among them were 66 cars and seven trucks, with the rest being motorcycles and quads.
Rasc wanted to do something different with his 16-year old son RASC Campos, better known as Rasquinho, and so he purchased a Mahindra pick-up. A veteran of over 25 years of motor sport in Brazil, Rasc has seen action not just in circuit racing (where he was Brazilian champion in the Speed 1600 series) but since 1990 had turned his hand to rallies, taking part in the tough Brazilian events in all forms of machinery, latterly trucks.
In this demanding event run across Brazilian jungles and swampy terrain, his placing of 22 overall and third in the production category was a true motoring success story and a testament to the Mahindra’s survival in one of the “Hardest places on Earth”.
