TVS Ronin #Unscripted: Community Marketing playbook

This isn't a case study. This is a tale about a famous street-fight of the motorcycling world.

The year's 2023. A full blown turf war is on, in the Indian motorcycling world.
Legacy players are dominating every street corner. Foreign players are trickling in by the hour.
Enter TVS Ronin. A modern-retro motorcycle, with the legacy of a commuter bike.
This is the story of the 365 days, when this David fought the Goliath
for every inch of terrain of the motorcycling world.

In 2023, a new team took over the reigns to make an #unscripted bike a part of the riding community's identity.
We grew #Unscripted into a lifestyle. A philosophy for over100000 riders, across our channels.
Today it has its own annual music festival and the bike's been launched in over 7 countries worldwide.
The brand continues to grow from strength to strength.

So, how did the new team create such a tight-knit community of brand loyalists in such a brief period of time?
Scroll down to experience one of moto-world's most successful community-marketing playbook.

We started by identifying a face from pop culture who was the perfect blend of modern and retro. Someone who was famous for going off-script.

We placed our bets on Shubman. His classic style with modern technique
could inspire millions to march to their heart's tune.

From the choice of the brand ambassador to everyday trend jacking.
every interaction with the brand preached the gospel of #Unscripted to our audience.

Followers would regularly tune into the page to find inspiration
for rides, captions and even ideas for their own riding page.

We creates our own unpredictable and unprecedented IPs throughout the year.

Ronin Love Language was perhaps the most successful IP out of the lot. A simple idea to coin words
for motorcycling emotions, that have long existed yet never been expressed before.

It was launched during the Valentine's week, an unusual day for a motorcycling brand.
Going off-script however, reaped rich dividends. We enjoyed excellent TOM recall,
share of mind/voice and NSS during the Valentine's week.

A new motorcycling player got its name on the tip of millions of rider's tongue,
to the envy of the well established players. Even the results were #Unscripted.
1000s of riders engaged with the motorcycle's name
to coin words that went into their own motorcycling vocabulary.

Low budget, high impact spike ideas flourished on our page during the year.

During the cricket world cup when the official sponsors opened the floodgates of their marketing budgets, we did the exact opposite. We capitalised
on being the unofficial sponsor by composing the "unofficial anthem"
of the Cricket World Cup 24. All with our rider's comments and zero marketing spends.

The internet has rap ID generators, DJ name generators, even baby name generators.
But nothing to provide riders an identity for themselves. So on World Emoji Day,
we converted our IG page to a "Ride ID generator".

Ideas that attracted new followers organically and grew us into an irresistible community.

Directed this one for International Men's Day.
This raked in millions of views, thousands of likes, comments and shares

Found occasions to tell stories that were untold.
Bring the female rider to the limelight in a male dominated category.

Even something as tactical as a "test-ride was re-scripted and gamified" in a form never experienced before.

A big win for the brand among the cricket fans was the world cup edition TVS Ronin.
Only 5 of these were ever made and handed over to cricket fans who scored the highest
in their debut test-ride cricket match.

Test Ride Cricket bridged the gap between a strong online following and high walk-ins at the dealership.
Launched during the peak of cricketing fever, 1000s of cricket fans rode the bike for the first time.
Word of mouth from it got us great mileage and earned significant street-cred for the bike.

Regular editorial posts and unpredictable posts continued. Helping us connect with our audience at a deeper level.

The brand started to feel like a friend our followers liked hanging out with.

While zero-budget, in-house content continued to do its magic,
our paid content started fishing for new audience in uncharted waters.

Our marquee ride amplification got us the eyeballs and earned us the cool-creds.

We doubled down on our hunt for new followers with our tastefully handpicked influencer collabs.

@sana_shems | Dermatologist | National Stunt Athlete | Humanist
34.6K followers on IG
https://www.instagram.com/sana_shems/?hl=en

@joshidaniel | Motorcyclist | GoPro Award Winner | Photoblogger
70k followers on IG
https://www.instagram.com/joshidaniel/

@eforeshaan Marketer | Traveller | Rider
87.8K followers on IG
https://www.instagram.com/eforeshaan/

@Malludronetraveller - Traveller | Videographer | Drone Pilot
308K followers on IG
https://www.instagram.com/malludronetraveller/

Our festive greetings and our performance ads helped widen our reach far and beyond.

The mod community all across the world loved our custom variants
and decided to base their own modified designs, using the Ronin as the canvas.

In terms of the business, the motorcycle sold a steady 2000-2200 units a month and is only looking to go upwards.

It gave tough competition to bikes such as the RE Hunter, Jawa 42 and Honda CB 350.

The story of Moto-world's most loved underdog continues online.
Follow it on its social handles to spread the lore further.

You may also like