Nano Drive Campaign with MTV India : A social road trip

Don’t we all wish to go on a sponsored road trip? Life has been busy for several years, building career, hunting for a high paying job and peer pressure of loving parents to get you settled down. Where is the fun in all this? Where is that feeling when you said to your ambitious self, one day I will travel the world?

People love to travel, see different places, meet different people, and savor the beauty of nature. It gives them a feeling of having conquered something. But, there is the daily routine that stops them from backpacking.

MTV India teamed up with Tata Nano to launch a road trip campaign and make this travelling experience possible.

Nano Drive Campaign : The Concept

Nano Drive with MTV is India's first social road trip. It captures the 21 day, 2000km journey of 4 teams from 4 different zones of the country on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. During the course of journey, the teams will face several challenges. For instance, every team is allocated with a budget of Rs 4000 a day. This includes the expense for food, stay, petrol etc. Led by a MTV VJ, every team is allotted with a Tata Nano.

Positives

The campaign is aptly named, Nano Drive with MTV – A Social Road Trip.

The road trip will be covered on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. This Social Media connect given to the campaign is a unique positive.

Most of the content is generated by the participants on the road. Daily posts on Facebook page Drive with MTV keep users updated on the status of each team on the road.

Videos for each zone are posted daily on the YouTube channel.

The participants tweet their activities from their personal accounts on twitter and also update their Facebook accounts. The four teams compete with each other to garner maximum support from the online community.

Points are allotted based on likes, comments and mentions the teams manage to gather from their fans. The team with the most number of points at the end of the campaign wins a Tata Nano each.

Here’s looking at some positive interaction between the participants and the twitter audience:

 Points Format:

The format of the show is such that it allows participants to reach out to friends and acquaintances and ask for help. Since the team works on a budget constraint (Rs 4000/day) they can always ask friends

for shelter, food etc. Note that this makes the social connect not only online but offline too.

The biggest supporter from the community who helped a team also stands to win a Tata Nano Car.

Negatives

While there were positive sentiments to the campaigns, there were negative too. The first thing everybody seems to be asking is, why Nano?

The claim made by most people above cannot be ignored. Let’s ask ourselves, what is Nano’s positioning in the market? A family car? What did Ratan Tata say about Nano?

"I saw families riding around on scooters with kids standing up and the mother carrying a baby and sitting pillion and decided to do something about it. It started as a quest for an affordable transportation solution."

Had it been a SUV the question would have not popped in the first place. People have not forgotten about the early controversies that Nano was involved in. Somehow they have found a reason to toss the same questions again. And like in the above case, nobody has stepped in to answer the queries.

Another claim raised is: 

Did I say it was unique campaign? I take it back. Just so you guys know, Ford Figo Smart Drive has completed its second season. In my opinion, there is a stunning similarity between the two campaigns. However, MTV India was quick to counter this claim with: 

Finally, since it is a travel related campaign, we cannot authenticate whether or not the participants selected for the road trip are travel enthusiasts or simply playing for a car. This we will never know.

Nevertheless, where big brands experiment, questions will be raised. Only time will tell if the victory was sweet or sour.

Prediction

I won’t deny that the campaign is exciting. Maybe it’s the “MTV” thing. My only concern is that the trip is 21days long. And I am not sure if the online community will stick around for that long. The worst case scenario would be to see that the participants are the only people left tweeting about their own campaign while the world has moved on to better things.

The campaign currently is in its first week. None of the official hashtags have trended yet. It may be too early to say whether it will or not. As for me, I think, in spite of some errors, MTV Nano Drive campaign deserves applause for bringing in the social connect to a road trip. The videos are appreciable and the effort put in by the participants online as well as the responses by the fans is commendable.

For any details related to the campaign, visit MTVIndia.com/Drive

Here’s a quick look at the participating teams:

#NanoNorth -  @RavikantPotdar @nikhilkashyap0 @Dramitdang @Netra

#NanoEast - @mokshjuneja @SherrinVarghese @Nikitravel @ssjain911

#NanoWest - @GonzoShaheen @inkv @arindammohanty @vally2211

#NanoSouth - @EatingSadhu @nehavnano @Flyfiddlesticks @kalakaarsingh

Good luck to all of 'em!