Car rivals zero in on quality to drive India sales

NEW DELHI: Rival US car manufacturers GM and Ford are aggressively playing up the quality angle in an effort to drive up sales in India's shaky vehicle purchase market.

GM India is using clippings of news articles about its vehicles. The print ad, developed by McCann-Erickson, aims to reassure potential buyers that GM cars have a range of in-built quality features. This is underlined by the tagline, 'With General Motors, quality is standard equipment', and newspaper clippings, which are pinned alongside the visuals of three GM cars available in India. Johnny Oommen, GMI advertising manager, said: "We had earlier released similar campaigns on spare parts prices, which are lowest. These ads are about the overall quality of the car."

Ford, which is launching the Mondeo, is emphasising its quality promise more aggresively. The Hindustan Thompson ad claims: ' It's a gene pool anyone would envy. How does one explain such a line-up?'