Mahindra hits marathon course with new tagline — Rise

In a major makeover, the $7.1 billion Mahindra & Mahindra group, India’s biggest utility vehicles and tractor maker, on Monday unveiled its new brand positioning — ‘Rise’ — as it seeks to project a singular voice for various businesses under its umbrella.

“Rise isn’t just a word — it is a rallying cry,” group vice chairman and managing director Anand Mahindra said.

The brand positioning will span geographies as diverse as the US, South Africa and India, and sectors from aerospace to automotive, farm equipment to information technology and logistics.

This is a milestone as big as the launch of Mahindra Scorpio, the sport utility vehicle that redefined M&M from a maker of stodgy utility vehicles and tractors to a contemporary sports utility vehicle maker, he said, adding, “There is an opportunity to become tomorrow’s company.”

By evolving into a multinational corporation, Mahindra said, the change the company desires is fundamental. “The reason why people come to work is going to change, and why people are going to buy a Mahindra product.”

M&M has been an outperformer over the last decade. The first half of 2001-2005 saw M&M (Mahindra prefers to address it as a “federation of companies”) blitz a compounded annual growth of 25% in revenues and 118% in profits.

The second half of the decade saw the company maintain the brisk growth on a high base, growing at 26%, with profits growing at 29%. Naturally, the growth was reflected in its share price, which grew 60 times by 2010.

“These were our sprints, but we need to run the marathon,” said Bharat Doshi, group chief financial officer.

The group, which has zeroed in on ‘Rise’ after a nine-month search, said it will spend Rs120 crore in the next three years, promoting the new initiative.

It had hired New York-based advertising agency StrawberryFrog two years back to create a new brand positioning.

MNCs have long used taglines to convey their core purpose. Apple Inc’s tagline reads “think different,” General Electric’s “Imagination at work,” Harley Davidson’s “American by birth, rebel by choice.”

Sony redeemed Japan by building a world-class corporation, by focusing singularly on the country. “For Mahindra, ‘Rise’ means achieving world class standards in everything we do, setting new benchmarks of excellence and conquering tough global markets,” Mahindra said.

Unnikrishnan of Brand Finance, a London-based consultancy specialising in brand valuation, feels brand positioning has nothing to do with advertising and everything to do with business strategy.

“It is a good attempt. It could give some spectacular results.”
But Unnikrishnan,managing director of the India office, warns that the group should hold a mirror and peer into it regularly and review whether promises are being kept.