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Indian Social Media

[Strategy Review] Driving through CEAT Tyres' social media journey

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Aishwaria Sonavane
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Taking a gigantic leap from reality to adventurous fantasy, CEAT Tyres leads towards the digital route by crafting its brand’s persona that rings synonymous to strength, rugged, and tough.  Attempting to reflect their product on social media and rhyme their voice with that of the young blood, the brand has taken up a well-scripted social media journey. Let’s drive through it.

Social mapping

There are only a few things one could do digitally when it revolves around a single product - well, absolutely wrong in this case, as CEAT tyres has embarked on a digital evolution ever since its debut on the social media giant back in 2009, when social media was all fun and play.

At large, the brand associated itself with topical themes and largely travel, which mostly consisted in the country-side or hill-bound locations which would boast about the resistance and utility of their product.

They went back and forth with their campaign kind yet keeping the broad picture in mind for building interactions, and encouraging travel and adventure. CEAT's social media page also conducted timely communicative campaigns asking them facts about tyres, preferred road trip locations, adventure or mostly keeping their social activities breathing through pictorial representations and most importantly taking up the responsibility of road safety in various ways

In customary scenarios, social media campaigns are basically a reflection of the brand's true voice and personality thus building, an intimate bond with their target audience. Over the period, for some social attention CEAT Tyres too executed a few digital masterpieces of their own.

To provide an overview, CEAT tyres has elevated its social media practices through their content strategies which ensures creativity, engagement and a definite growth in their digital presence. Social Samosa comprehensively dissects their performance on each platform.

Facebook journey

Currently boasting of 556,188 fans on Facebook, the brand has literally outgrown itself with the digital age.

Firstly, its association with cricket was naked, as they began sharing topical or candid event pictures through their social page earlier, before Facebook for business became a norm. They even produced a parallel handle titled CEAT Cricket Rating.

The brand though since the beginning was pretty much aware of its responsibilities considering its kind, thus back in 2013 the brand flourished its first formal initiative through bold, chirpy monsoon related creatives and now their strong association with the Indian Premier League cannot be ignored.

To further affirm its rough image, CEAT collaborated with the MTV youth orientated series Roadies, back in 2013, which also marks the maturing period of the brand where it discovered itself, fixed a path and went ahead with it.

In the age, when the concept of today’s movie marketing had no name was taken up by CEAT, wherein they collaborated with Yash Raj Films' production Dhoom 3, for which the brand produced computer game-like illustrations .

#SuperstitionsDebunked was a campaign held back in 2014 where in CEAT attempted to shun the age old believes and build a relationship with the youth by presenting itself to be very broad minded, which of course had no connection with their brand or product and clearly aimed at enhancing customer rapport.

The home-country is infamous for its unkept road conditions, which deepens the grievances especially during monsoon. Reaching out to their audiences, #MonsoonSmart was a campaign driven by the brand in 2014, which created awareness and imparted some information from their end to the other.

Quite similar if compared, with both these campaigns we sensed a pattern where the brand was hoping to show concern through their handle obviously aiming to build friendly ties at the beginning.

Next step - the brand's endeavors in the travel space had progressed as their campaign #CEATroadtrip took hold where people had to share their road trip stories to become a part of the campaign's next phase.

Gradual from safety guidelines to road trip anecdotes, the brand had ventured into the adventure zone to re-define its personality. #GuessTheStunt was another campaign which was undertaken, yet again crowd-sourced where content was created through silhouette illustations where they were motivated to generate interactions within a niche crowd, interested in biking or stunts.

Preaching seems to be their favorite kind, the brand yet again took the responsibility on their shoulders in 2015 by putting across visually pleasing traffic rules, coated with sentiments as the hashtag said #DriveSafeDad.

Elevating this campaign through thorough execution, the brand bagged 8 awards for the same.  CEAT Tyres received Gold awards for ‘Best Use of Mobile Media’ at the Media Abby Awards at Goafest, 2015, ‘Best Media Innovation – Digital – Mobile/Handheld devices’ at The Advertising Club, Emvies, 2015, they won a Silver for ‘Social cause supported by a corporate/brand’ at Campaign India Digital Crest Awards, 2015, they brand even won two Bronze awards for ‘Experiential’ at Campaign India Digital Crest Awards, 2015 and ‘Best Media Innovation – Digital – Multiple Platforms’ at The Advertising Club, Emvies, 2015. They also won Small Elephant- Kyoorius awards’16 – Best use of activation and Integrated media – Large scale companies.

Currently the brand is also running a campaign titled #OurGripYourStories which yet again speaks about travel and adventures at large with of course keeping cars, bikes and hilly, rugged in the background.

Comparable to an open diary, their Facebook page strongly surfaces their inclination towards adventure thus pushing their audience to hop on their vehicles and take up such quests also fitting the idea strongly in our heads that CEAT Tyres are supportive of such escapades. Speaking clearly of their intentions through the social media giant, the brand clearly puts across their point of view through posts.

The pictorial tale on Instagram

Over time, the brand emphasized on the aesthetics of the photos shared which definitely looked professional and visually very pleasing, which could be said for their Instagram handle.

Leveraging the crux of the application, CEAT tyres brings out their personality as adventurous through their rugged photographs. Though the brand comprises of mere 246 followers, their existence on the platform is not stagnant.

 

Clear skies and infinite roads - things that we live for #InstaDrive #InstaPic #instagram

A photo posted by CEAT TYRES INDIA (@ceat_tyresindia) on

Visually very luring and photographed by professionals, these photos shared on the brand’s handle focus on the product aspect.  Along with the photographs, the brand also shared about the campaigns they have been running digitally.

A photo-blog of high-end aesthetics, scenic hills, astounding captions and the subtle presence of their product creates a strong Instagram-presence for CEAT tyres.

CEAT Tyres tweeting

Almost mirroring the content of Facebook, the brand has managed to concise everything in 140 characters.

Currently possessing 2,955 followers the brand is tweeting wisely and has maintained casual interactions with their TG while staying topical through Independence Day, Friendship Day, and more campaigns.

Distinguishing the perks of each platform, Twitter is also leveraged to its utmost by ingeniously putting across their message within the limited characters.

The social competitor tiff      

According to data by, Unmetric, CEAT tyres had the highest social fan-base in July 2016, but TVS tyres showed the highest fan growth of 5.45%. CEAT had the maximum posts on digital platforms and also received the highest percentage of positive sentiments, yet MRF Tyres build highest average engagement with a score of 987, maybe because of its higher brand recall, afterall Sachin Tendulkar held the MRF bat for the longest time.

As far as the competitors like Apollo, Goodyear, JK Tyre, MRF Tyre or TVS Tyres are concered, CEAT Tyres received the highest engagement score in comparison.

Thriving despite limitations, CEAT over the years has created a niche and funneled their content through the rudimentary idea of adventure, travel, and visuals and commendably has risen above monotony.

Though the brand has maintained a high social presence, the desired engagement has always been missing despite visual pleasure and interesting content. Without much to play around, the content remained unanimous for pretty much all portals, trying to create variation, yet in adventure the brand has already found its oomph factor.

Apart from having a strong presence in the market, CEAT Tyres has managed to bring the same in the digital world by selectively placing their content strategically on each media, catering to its feature and the audience thus, placing itself above its competitors on all the social platforms and showing a definite growth.

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