NEXA Maruti Suzuki Baleno TVC

A woman in a floor-length gown walks through a wall of light. A man stands with his arms out while sparks fly around him. A wheel turns. An eye opens. None of it is in colour, and none of it is on a road. That feeling, says the voice. That sensation. Let it begin.

The NEXA Baleno TVC is the 60-second black-and-white film that opened bookings for the Maruti Suzuki Baleno in October 2015, the first hatchback sold through NEXA, the premium showroom network Maruti had launched three months earlier. Written by Hakuhodo Percept and directed by Atul Kattukaran for First December Films, it was shot inside a NEXA showroom with the car and its buyers lit by projection. It was the film that proved the studio's Nike work was not a one-off.

At a glance

• Brand: NEXA, Maruti Suzuki
• Product: Baleno, pre-launch bookings
• Agency: Hakuhodo Percept
• Production house: First December Films
• Director: Atul Kattukaran
• Executive Producer: Ganesh Pareek
• Music: Ashutosh Pathak
• On air: 15 October 2015
• Running time: 60 seconds, with a 37-second cut for television
• Reach: 634,000 views for the television cut and 38,000 for the full film on the NEXA channel by September 2026

The brief

In July 2015 Maruti Suzuki, a company that sold India its family hatchbacks, opened NEXA: a separate chain of black-and-silver showrooms with relationship managers, lounges and none of the tyre-kicking of a regular dealership. The S-Cross went in first. The Baleno, launched in India ahead of the rest of the world, was the car that would decide whether Indian buyers believed a Maruti could be premium.

The launch had two films. Hakuhodo Percept's Baleno TVC, Made of Mettle, shot the car in a warehouse and sold the product. The NEXA film had the harder job: sell the experience of the showroom, and use it to open Baleno bookings before the car itself was on the road.

Sabuj Sengupta, Executive Creative Director at Hakuhodo Percept, described it at the time: "This TVC is all about high energy and the euphoria the consumers will experience at Nexa. It also acts as the perfect opportunity to prelaunch the Baleno."

The idea: light instead of a road

Car films drive. This one does not. The whole film happens inside a NEXA showroom at night, and the only thing that moves is light.

• A woman in a gown walks between slatted beams of light, then out onto the showroom floor past the lounge and the glass.
• A man stands in front of a projection that bursts outward like shattered glass, then like a spray of sparks around his outstretched arms.
• Fragments of the car, one at a time: the alloy wheel and its Suzuki badge, a tail lamp, the wing mirror, the front grille, the badge on the boot, a hand along a door line.
• Geometry in light. A woman's silhouette inside a chevron. A man inside a diamond. Patterns projected onto a dress, a shoulder, a face.
• A close-up of an eye. A hand on a bonnet.
• The showroom, full width and lit, the Baleno turning to face the camera with its lamps on. Bookings open at NEXA.
• The NEXA facade at night, and the line: a new destination, a new experience.

The voice says three lines in a minute. The film is carried by projection lighting, which is what let the studio show the showroom, the couple and the car as one continuous surface. Nothing is composited onto the people; the patterns you see on the dress are the patterns that were thrown onto it.

The car is never driven. The showroom is the road, and light is the speed.

Why black and white

NEXA's identity is monochrome, and a premium claim from a mass brand needed a look that could not be mistaken for the brand's other advertising. Black and white does that instantly. It also turns the projection into pure form: with colour gone, the eye reads only edges, beams and the gleam on metal, so a wheel and a cheekbone belong to the same film.

The Baleno's shape, the grille, the character line, the lamps, is shown in fragments rather than in a beauty pass, which is a decision about status. You are being shown a car the way a magazine shows a watch.

The shoot

The film was shot inside a NEXA showroom, using the space as the set. Everything that looks like an effect is lighting: the slatted beams, the burst behind the man, the sparks, the chevron and diamond frames. The couple wear evening dress, which is not what people wear to buy a hatchback, and that is the point of the brief: the showroom as somewhere you dress for.

Ashutosh Pathak scored it, the same composer who wrote the music for the Made of Mettle film, so the two launch films share a sound even though one is a warehouse in colour and the other a showroom in black and white.

Where it sat

• July 2015: NEXA showrooms open across India.
• 13 October 2015: NEXA publishes a Baleno making-of film ahead of the global-first Indian launch.
• 14 to 15 October 2015: The NEXA Baleno TVC goes on air, with the 37-second television cut and the full 60-second film on the NEXA channel. Bookings open.
• 26 October 2015: The Baleno launches. The Made of Mettle product TVC follows on 27 October.
• 2017: First December Films returns to NEXA for the Ciaz TVC, again with Atul Kattukaran.

What the film proves

This is the reference to reach for when a brief needs any of the following:

• a car film without a road, built on lighting and location
• a retail or showroom brand sold as an experience rather than a price
• projection lighting used in camera instead of post-production effects
• a monochrome look that separates a premium sub-brand from its parent
• a pre-launch film that opens bookings before the product is available

See more of our work, the director's reel and credits, or send us a script and a date.

Credits

• Client: NEXA, Maruti Suzuki
• Agency: Hakuhodo Percept
• Executive Creative Director: Sabuj Sengupta
• Art Director: Saurav Dasgupta
• Copy: Eranbemo Murry
• Production house: First December Films
• Director: Atul Kattukaran
• Executive Producer: Ganesh Pareek
• Music: Ashutosh Pathak
• Year: 2015