Vivek Nayer hopped on to M&M after a vast experience in FMCG & consumer durables. And auto has been immensely exciting as well, as he discusses with Pawan Chabra of 4Ps B&M
Vivek Nayer
Executive Senior Vice President – Marketing (Automotive sector), Mahindra & Mahindra
It had been just a few days since the Marketing team of the automotive division at M&M was shifted to the Kandivali office at the Western Express highway from the Worli office when we landed for the interview with Vivek Nayer, Senior Vice President – Marketing (Automotive sector), M&M. However, even on a normal Wednesday afternoon, while the refreshing environment at the lush green facility was not matching with the usual scenario that one finds at the offices in the financial capital, the work was going in full flow.
Prior to this assignment, he was working with Reckitt Benckiser back in the UK, certainly one of the best names in the FMCG business. The decision to relocate to India was because of the India growth story. In fact, Nayer still misses his BMW 5-Series and the kind of Lebanese food he used to relish in London. He didn’t come into the automotive sector by design. The first offer that came to him was from M&M and he joined the company in 2005 to give it a shot for six months but comments, “Here I am five years hence, which clearly means that I am enjoying it a lot.” The kind of portfolio that Mahindra has is quite unique even compared to other players in the industry. However, he feels that the marketing foundations to engage with consumers remain largely the same.
Words like tough, rugged and solid are almost synonymous to the Scorpio, Xylo and Bolero models that Mahindra offers to Indian consumers. And that’s not all. The marketing philosophy that M&M follows in terms of advertising and positioning its brands is very different to what the rest of the industry follows. Be it the recent commercial featuring the ace photographer Atul Kasbekar for Xylo or the earlier campaigns, it has often followed the road less taken. “At Mahindra, we focus on the product and its positioning rather than the brand ambassador; unlike the case where the consumer has a recalls for the brand ambassador but not the products that he endorses,” avers Nayer. In fact, Nayer considers the success of Xylo without any cannibalisation in the Mahindra portfolio as one of the major successes that he has had so far in his M&M stint.
Nayer stepped into the corporate world after finishing his Master in Management Studies from the University of Mumbai back in 1987. After six years at Voltas, Nayer stepped into Reckitt’s premises in 1993 and was there for over a decade handling different brands and divisions. “But I was one of the lucky ones to handle Dettol in Reckitt,” recalls Nayer. He admits, “FMCG is one sector where one gets a clear understanding of marketing and sales concepts. Perhaps that’s why you see people with marketing and sales background in FMCG moving to the other sectors and not the other way round.”
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Source : IIPM Editorial, 2011.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri and Arindam chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).
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