Hero Motocorp have put millions of Indians on motorbikes for the last 40+ years, building along the way a legacy on arguably the toughest roads in the world.
So when things started going electric in the 2020, they decided to sit out the initial industry gold-rush. Instead, their debut electric scooter, named VIDA , focused on the fundamentals.
At a time when the competition’s scooters were exploding in the summer sun, their diligence was a bold decision, and one that needed to be highlighted.
I developed the nationwide launch campaign for the VIDA and the overarching brand voice and messaging.
For the post-2020 Indian, climate change is an undeniable reality. As such, EVs are an inevitability, being both cost-effective and socially responsible. And yet, for the vast majority of the country, their first tryst with EVs was memorable for the wrong reasons. Other brands moved fast to capitalize on the new category, shipping unsafe and poor quality scooters in the process. That meant that the first big launches were rushed market-grabs, being unsafe and of poor quality. It was common news to hear that an overheated electric scooter caught fire while parked under the Delhi sun, or that a scooter stopped functioning entirely following a rainstorm in Bengaluru.
The Not-First campaign wordlessly called out this mindless phenomenon, alluding to the unreliability of other EVs. There was also a riff on India’s obsession of “firsts”, a brag that shows up on ridiculous, hyper-specific achievements everywhere from sports to film award shows to political slogans.
India’s Not-First Electric Scooter ran front page in all leading dailies in the country.