Nearly 23 lakh readers of a major daily in cities of New Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore woke up to a virtual reality (VR) kit attached to a four-page supplement singing paeans about its latest offering—Tiago.

The company did not divulge details about the amount spent on this campaign but media planners , pegged the cost of this exercise between Rs 6-7 crore. A company official, who isn’t authorised to speak to the media, said, “This is purely a brand-building exercise. We want more people to know about Tiago and experience the car.”

The company official said, “Tata Motors will continue to use the print medium in innovative ways to market cars.” The ad is meant to generate leads and bring about ‘call to action’, in simpler words, draw people to the showrooms.

Deepak Netram, Senior Vice President at Lodestar Universal, the media agency which worked on the print ads for Tiago, Zest and Bolt said that they have got good results from the print campaigns that they have done for Tata Motors.

“Tata Motors is very ROI driven and they have won’t do such an ad without ROI,” said Netram. He added that the company had happy with the outcome with the key innovation they had done with the Zest ad.

Zica to Tiago

The company seem to be putting an aggressive marketing strategy for Tiago—erstwhile Zica—after the disastrous run-in with a deadly virus Zika that alarmed the world during December-January period.

The carmaker had already aired a teaser video with the Argentinian football player Lionel Messi in the second half of last year with the name Zica. However, the company swung into action swiftly and announced a change of name. The car made its way to the auto-expo held in New Delhi in February with the old name.

It is only in March that the company announced the new name for its cheap hatchback that is touted to turn the company’s fortunes in the small-car market in India.

Virtual reality bites

This is not the first time that Tata Motors has used the print media in such a unique way to advertise its cars.

Last year, with Zest and Bolt, the company had pasted a car-key and a loyalty-card, respectively. Each key had been assigned a bar code which registered them for a chance to win the base model of Zest. For Bolt, producing the card at a showroom would get a test drive of the car with a possibility of a free trip to England to the Tata Technical Centre and a chance to win a Bolt.

The print ad for Tata Motors’ Zest was featured at the Emvies 2015 case study. In the case study it highlighted that the company had 6 times more walk-ins than for previously launched car of the company. The company received 10,000 bookings in the first two weeks and sales worth Rs 520 crore with promotion spends of less than 1%.