How Cars24 CEO got Spinny-ed out!

I heard this story from a little bird. A very well informed little bird.

Himanshu Ratnoo, CEO of Cars24 quit a couple of days ago. No big news one would say - CEOs come and go. And Cars24 is one more company, so nothing to get excited about really. But therein in that quitting hangs a very juicy story.

Cars24 recently aired this spoof campaign on competitor Spinny's God Promise campaign featuring Sachin Tendulkar in the T20 World Cup - mother promise, mother-in-law promise and sister promise - three TVCs that featured their CEO and Co-founder Himanshu Ratnoo as the brand protagonist, and who acted out his role with much relish, and much flourish.

The Cars24 campaign started to air right at the beginning of the World Cup, with reasonably heavy spot buying on all matches. The ad spots were quite funny, and surely evinced a laugh or two when you first saw them. Ratnoo was energetic and fun. The scripts were sharp, attempting to ridicule Spinny and its God (read Sachin) and his/their Promise.

The backstory now on Spinny and Sachin. Spinny have been using Sachin Tendulkar as their brand face for the past 5-6 years. Initial campaigns featured him with Yuvraj Singh and Anil Kumble. But their most recent campaign a few months ago changed gears somewhat. Spinny launched a new campaign -  its "God Promise" ads featuring Sachin Tendulkar largely relied on ambient, calm music rather than a mainstream, lyrical song, focusing on a minimalist aesthetic to convey trust. God Promise. The ads, designed to highlight a 3-year warranty and a 5-day money-back guarantee, used in some versions, a calm instrumental, while others featured a song with lyrics such as "I Love You Baby, I Love You Doll" by Parekh & Singh. But the core message was God Promise - a promise of trust, quality and value endorsed by the God of cricket.

The ads were well acclaimed and well liked. Competitor Cars24 must have hurt. And felt the heat. They, knowing that Spinny would surely be present on  the World Cup, decided to spoof God Promise and launched Mother Promise, Mother-in-law Promise, Sister Promise ... and pre-empted Spinny by going out bold and aggressive as soon as the World Cup started.

And it is here that the script got a bit muddy and murky. Spinny went on air with Sachin Tendulkar, but changed the narrative from God Promise to The Master! Why The Master? Because Spinny wanted to announce that it had become No. 1 in per-used cars, overtaking all others including Cars24.

But Cars24 was still spoofing God Promise while Spinny had already moved on to new creatives.

And that is where CEO Ratnoo got into trouble. In trying to outsmart Spinny, he had second guessed them wrong. He was mimicking and lampooning a campaign his competitor had already dumped, and moved on.

Also after the first round of laughs, the public response was pretty negative for Cars24 - social media pointedly asked if the mother, mother-in-law and sister were actually his - and apparently they weren't - they were just hired help. So Cars24 got more flak for deception and lack of authenticity.

Result: Ratnoo was put to the sword by his Board and his investors. He got Spinny-ed out! And on the crucial World Cup final Spinny ran 15 odd spots on JioStar while Cars24 was conspicuously absent. Spinny had beaten Cars24 fair and square.

Cars24, a pre-used cars brand was  the undisputed market leader in that domain till 5 years ago. They reportedly raised their last round of funding at a reported $4.8 billion. Things though are perhaps not looking as rosy today, and the exit of Ratnoo has further tarnished the brand.

So the moot question is whether Ratnoo did anything wrong. Several CEOs of major companies have in the past featured in their own brand's advertisements, both within the Indian market and globally, to build trust, connect directly with consumers, and enhance brand visibility.  So nothing really wrong there. Peyush Bansal of Lenskart, Vineeta Singh of Sugar Cosmetics, Anupam Mittal of Shaadi.com, Manu Kumar Jain of Xiaomi, Mahasha DP Gulati of MDH, Shashank Mehta of The Whole Truth Foods and several others have emulated Lee Iacocca in becoming the brand faces of their companies. These "ad-venturous" CEOs used their personal charisma to strengthen brand positioning, and it mostly worked.

So where did Ratnoo go wrong? Me thinks he thought he would outmanoeuvre Spinny by junking God Promise and making it a joke. Unfortunately the joke misfired when Spinny spun out The Master nullifying what Ratnoo was chasing. One can't be sure if Spinny anticipated or knew of Ratnoo's intent and therefore side-stepped him; or they were in any case done with God Promise and just moved on Ratnoo or no Ratnoo.

As I said earlier a little birdie told me this story. There are more juicy details but we will leave them for another day.

Dr. Sandeep Goyal, Chairman of Rediffusion, is an industry veteran who writes on a wide variety of industry related subjects.

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are solely those of the author and do not in any way represent the views of exchange4media.com.