INEOS: The hard sales work starts now

British off-road specialist INEOS Automotive says its honeymoon period in the Australian 4x4 market is over.

The brand’s second model, the 2024 INEOS Grenadier Quartermaster, has finally arrived Down Under and is expected to prove more popular than its wagon sibling, but not before its makers double down on advertising and promotion.

According to INEOS Automotive Asia Pacific boss Justin Hocevar, the marque’s priority going forward is to improve local brand awareness across the broader 4x4 market rather than simply focusing on the purists who have gravitated to its product thus far.

“The awareness of our brand is still very, very low,” he said.

“We cracked high awareness with the 4x4 enthusiast early on. There’s still a portion (of the broader market) we could still attract.

“Those 4x4 enthusiasts absolutely sought us out. The next group of people are not as dialled in on some of that to have that immediate awareness.”

He said having cars on the road helped with brand awareness, but that traditional marketing also had to come into the mix.

“It’s a combination of the early adopters bringing the awareness out by what they’re doing. Secondly, we’ve had to lift our game in terms of our marketing communications to actually let people know who the hell we are, what we do, what are the principles of our brand, our product, etc,” he added.

According to the regional boss, early efforts have already paid off seeing as enquiries on both the Grenadier and Quartermaster having spiked in recent months, with the latter expected to do more of the heavy lifting going forward.

INEOS claims to have sold about 1500 vehicles in a little over a year Down Under, and that the next goal is to hit 2500 annually.

“I’d like to see us get beyond 1000 units of Quartermaster, up into the mid-teens. If we did 2500 (sales) between the two we’d be really happy,” Hocevar said.

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