Our client needed to communicate with an audience who had become dangerously disconnected.

Our solution was rooted in the insight that people feel most emotionally connected to things that they have created themselves. Visualise a parent’s love for their exquisite newborn; an artist’s pride in their latest work. It’s natural to feel a sense of connection to the fruits of our own labours.

Normal practice in the formulaic automotive sector would have been to rename the car and run a straightforward name change campaign. But that wouldn’t have resonated deeply, or evoked the emotional response that was needed.

So we invited Tata Motors’ audience to become the decision makers and creators in this impromptu campaign. We saw an opportunity to take a bold, honest and inclusive approach, building a level of empathy that doesn’t just sell cars, but creates relationships.

We created online videos to set the context and lay down the ground rules of The Fantastico Name Hunt, conveying the car’s features in detail.

We took the story far and wide across the 22 selected markets, promoting the videos across search, social, display and mobile.

We used retargeting activity for maximum efficiency, hitting just those people who had viewed NameHunt videos with a message encouraging them to contribute their suggested names.

To make it easy, we created multiple participation mechanisms for suggesting names. Social media was the main engine to enter, or simply via SMS.

Tata Motors’ audience delivered 37,000 new names. With the clock still ticking, we scanned the name suggestion bank based on Tata’s selected parameters (number of letters, meaning and logic) to create a shortlist of three top contenders. The final list went back out to the public vote via Tata’s social channels…and the votes were counted.

The Fantastico Name Hunt reached 48 million people across 22 countries.

The campaign generated 13 million video views in just three days. People watched, listened…and then responded: 37,000 brand name suggestions flooded in for ‘the name the world prefers’…and Tiago was born.

The campaign racked up an earned media worth $410,000. Media coverage of the campaign guaranteed fame for both Tiago’s launch and for Tata Motors.

The Tiago was Tata’s most successful car launch of the past 10 years, garnering 120,000 test drive requests within just four months.

This is three times more requests than that generated by any Tata Motors launch over the last decade.

‘From Zica to Tiago’ effectively salvaged potential reputation damage and cemented Tata Motors’ position as a socially responsible, empathetic brand.