Mobile Marketing Tool for Reaching the Rural Hinterlands

By R V Rajan, Chairman & Managing Director, Anugrah Madison (Nov 22, 2002)

Since my agency joined hands with Madison and positioned itself as the rural advertising unit of Madison, we have been making our credentials presentation to prospects outlining the combined experience of the agency’s top management in rural communication during the last two and half decades. Almost at the end of every presentation, clients ask us if we own A V Van for rural operation because in their minds Rural communication is synonymous with A V Van operation in rural markets. Many of them have used the medium in the past and believe that it offers poor value for money. Probing further one finds that many of them have not used the medium properly and hence their opinion about the medium is skewed. Van operation if planned well and done as a part of a bigger multimedia campaign, has much greater value than if it is used by itself.

Anugrah’s experience with the use of this medium in the rural areas has been quite revealing. In fact it has been more than rewarding to the clients who used the medium based on our recommendations.

I would like to share with you our experience with this medium and the lessons we have learnt over a period of time.

Traditional Method
In the mid fiftees and early sixtees the van operations were used in the rural areas for audio publicity – going from village to village making announcements and in some cases carrying performers (magicians and street play groups) who would perform shows in street corners or chandies / village markets to attract crowds and communicate the intended messages to the audience.

This phase was followed by a period when vans carried with them 16 mm film projectors to show a popular feature film in a selected village. During the day the van would go around publicising the event in several surrounding villages, while simultaneously doing merchandising activities on behalf of the client who hired the van. The show itself was interspersed with commercials for products produced by client. The van followed a journey cycle which started from one end of the state and ended at the opposite end – traversing the rural hinterland over a period of 3 to 4 months. Even today many companies follow this traditional method of van operation (except that 16 mm projector has been replaced by video projection technology).

There are several weaknesses in this method. The journey cycle is so strenuous and demanding that the van crew, who are out of touch with their families for extended periods, lose their morale leading to frequent breakdown in the operation and also result in losses in terms of time and money for the companies hiring such vans. The shows were also disappointing if you looked at the composition of the audience which consisted mostly children. Travelling with the van of a leading fertilizer company, I was shocked to find that show after show the men – particularly farmers who were the main target audience for the company’s product were conspicuously absent. Most of them, after a hard day’s work, had a couple of ‘Nautak’ or ‘Millie’ (as they call it in Tamilnadu) and were fast asleep. The women folk stood in groups in some corner and walked away after some time. What a waste of time and effort!!

Gimmicks – the attention grabber
For the same client, we had also conducted an experiment using the services of a magician to promote the products in chandies, where large no. of adults gather and where the opportunity to conduct more no. of shows per day, thereby reaching a wider audience was possible, resulting in lesser cost per contact.
Based on this experience and the earlier experience of the Fertilizer company, we recommended for a leading tyre company which wanted to promote its bullock cart tyres in the rural areas, an A V Van operation to be conducted during day time in chandies. This was almost 17 years ago when video technology had not come in to the country and we had to rely on the good old slide and tape presentation for the AV show. The van had to be provided with black cloth canopy above the screen portion to make the show visible on the rear of the van for an audience of about 50 to 60 people at a time. After reaching a chandy the van positioned itself in a strategic point to make a lot of noise through Audio tapes and announcements to attract the crowd. As the main task given to the agency was to create brand awareness, we came up with a gimmick which forced the audience to mouth the brand name.

In this case, the gimmick was a weighing machine. Everybody likes to see his/her weight the moment one spots a weighing machine. The catch here was that you had to spell out the name of the company promoting the tyres, before you were eligible to see your weight. This lead to a lot of excitement, resulting in participation of the audience in the event and mouthing the brand by a no. of people in the audience. A fortune card was distributed to the people who had seen the weight. The card carried an annual calendar on one side and the campaign message on the other side, along with the weight of the person noted down. This helped the company leave behind a residual impact and at the same time the addresses collected during the show were used for follow up efforts by the dealers.

Logistics – the key
The agency also worked out a journey cycle for the van, which was centered around a district headquarters for atleast a week at a time. The van crew would check into a hotel in the town, report to the nearest lead dealer of the company – visit chandies located within 50 kms radius every day. Since the chandies (weekly markets) are day time affairs the van always returned to the hotel in the evening, the crew rested and recouped before they moved to another chandy the next day. Since the whole programme was pre-planned, the crew had an address where they could receive letters from their families. The morale of the crew was very high and there was hardly any breakdown in the operation. Besides, as the dealer in the town knew where the van was going every day, the company executive coming for a surprise check was not forced to go on a wild goose chase, but reached the right spot after checking with the dealer.

Think on your feet
For this tyre company we had included sugarcane factories also as opportunity areas as we found that a large no. of farmers come to the sugarcane factories with their bullock carts loaded with produce with the idea of delivering the same and collecting their payment. Some times they had to wait upto 48 hours to get their turn to deliver the sugarcane. While waiting outside the factory in groups, doing nothing, they became a captive audience for the van operation. This van campaign as a part of a planned media campaign (Radio and Rural cinema) helped the tyre company in taking its brand to leadership position in a matter of 3 to 4 years. Today they are still way ahead of the competition.

Changing times
Though we started with slide / tape projector, with the advent of video technology, the van started carrying a VCR and TV monitor and in some cases the vans were fitted with portable large screen so that video films could be projected to attract larger audience. In fact this method is the most commonly used, by many van operators today.

Today a no. of van operators target the chandies / wholesale mandies / melas, etc. in their journey cycle plan. The medium got a big impetus when a political party in the opposition used this medium on a massive scale in the late eighties resulting in the formation of Video on Wheels in 1989, a company which at one stage owned 125 vans across the country. This company, to lessen the burden on individual clients, tried to carry 3 or 4 clients’ messages at a time. Experience has shown that this does not result in effective usage of the medium for any one of the clients. It is better if it is used as an exclusive media by one client and more so if it is used as a total marketing tool, instead of as a mere propaganda media.

Van Operation is now an element of marketing mix
That takes us to the next stage in the development of the medium. Today it is not only used as an awareness creating medium, but also for merchandising activities, sampling, actual selling, identifying distribution outlets and also collecting valuable data from the villages which can be put to good use in the future. If imaginatively used and planned well, it is one of the most powerful marketing tool which prompted a leading light in the advertising world to refer to it as “Mobile Marketing Effort”. In fact a no. of FMCG and consumer durable companies today are beginning to understand the power of this medium.

Recently, my agency was involved in planning and helping in executing the van operation for Philips consumer electronics division in the rural markets of Tamilnadu as a part of a multimedia campaign. In this case, to get audience involvement, we had a karaoke contest, in which the first five volunteers from the audience in that show, had to sing the product jingle. This was taped in the opening portion of the audio tape containing the selected film songs and commercials for products being promoted. At the end of the show the tapes were given away as prizes to the participants. We had a painting contest for children who constitute a sizeable audience in such shows. The children were made to colour the company name and slogan printed on a white paper. To do this the children used colour crayons and invariably carried the colour sheets home. The video show had a 90 seconds commercial, a 10 mts video film and a couple of film sequences with dubbed voices of popular film stars featuring the company’s story. While the show was going on, the supervisor accompanying the van went about distributing posters, cassettes to important outlets in the villages. The same person also collected valuable data including names and addresses of about a dozen opinion leaders in the village, which later could be used for a direct mail campaign. The residual impact of the van operation lasted for several weeks after the programme. The van operation was supported by other media efforts like extensive wall painting, rural cinema screening and radio coverage. It was heartening to learn that in a depressed market scenario the company registered sizeable increase in sales for audio, B/W TV and Colour TV products promoted through this campaign.

Mobile Operation – an innovative distribution channel
Recently another Korean consumer durable company effectively used this mobile marketing concept to book orders for their brand of colour TVs, Refrigerators and washing machines. For this the company hired a Tata 407 and got it converted into a vehicle displaying one piece of each of their leading models. The van went around towns with 50000+ population where their distribution had not percolated. Apart from trying to create awareness, the van crew was expected to book orders for these expensive products in each town. As the company was offering attractive discounts, actual sales did take place with the van crew booking orders for 5 to 6 piece of high end expensive products in each town. Imaginative use of this mobile marketing medium can really give full value for money, for the companies using them.

A Checklist
I would now like to list a few points based on my team’s experience which the prospective users of this medium could keep in mind while considering this medium.

1. Do not own your own van. The productivity of such vans will be low but the headaches accompanying the ownership will be high. Many fertilizer companies in the past tried to own vans and gave up because of the hassles involved.
2. Choose the services of a local service provider in each region. There are many in each region, who have survived the initial problems and who are now offering excellent services. Besides, the regional service provider knows the local terrain and language which helps a lot in the smooth operation of the van programme.
3. Choose the right type of van depending on the purpose and the impact expected to be created. Decorate the van suitably to make it attractive, communicating the basic message of the product, when it is moving from town to town.
4. The software used in the audio cassette must be carefully prepared to attract the audience. It could contain apart from company’s jingle, parody songs (you take a popular tune, re-record the song with lyrics promoting companies products) mimicry featuring voice of famous film stars, politicians, etc. (nobody entertains better than film stars and politicians!)

5. Similarly the video programme played through the van must be carefully produced to make it a good “edutainment” film. It should not be more than 10 mts and hold the interest of the audience. Dubbing sequences from popular films with the campaign message using the services of mimicry artists has been found to be very effective.
6. An audience involvement gimmick and attractive prizes for the participants is a must. If the gimmick is centered around the product, it is even better. In fact the gimmick must be used to make the participants mouth the brand being promoted. This will leave a lasting impression on the crowd gathered.
7. Plan something for the children in the audience. They are important carriers of your message to their respective homes.

8. Select the target audience carefully and plan the van programme accordingly. If your target audience is children, there is no point in conducting the show in chandies. Select schools. If your target audience is women go to the residential areas to attract the women through events in which they can participate. If you are targeting men, go the villages in the evening. If your target audience cuts across age/income categories, choose places where the crowd gathers like chandies, village markets, near bus stands, etc.

9. The audio and video software for the van must be prepared with the help of professionals who understand the region’s peculiarities. If the van announcer is trained to adapt himself to local dialect it enhances the impact of the programme.
10. Van operation looks expensive on the face of it. But they are important to carry your messages to the interiors. So if your company is dealing with a no. of products, try to promote a group of products aimed at the same target audience.
11. Do not participate in van operations, dealing with multiple brands (of other companies)

12. Along with a professional agency you are working, plan the programme in such a way that you leave behind a residual impact of the brands for weeks, if not months.

13. It is also important to do a follow up operation after a couple of months. This could be done using local vehicle with the help of local dealers, featuring only audio messages. Or if you have collected database of addresses, do a direct mail campaign.
14. Use the medium, as a part of a well thought out, ad campaign covering several other media reaching the rural masses.

15. Most important, do not look on van operation merely as a propaganda vehicle but as a total MOBILE MARKETING TOOL.