Go Rural – Think Local

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

In recent months, Newspapers & Magazines are churning out stories, which are questioning the real potential of rural markets as projected by marketing Pundits. The Indian Demographic Report 1998 by the NCAER provided enough information for corporates who want to venture into new markets including the rural markets. While the report brings out the changing dynamics of rural markets and tries to establish the importance of rural markets, it also analyses the reasons for low penetrations in the rural market. If currently the ‘FMCG’ companies are ‘finding out that the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is not easy to find’, it is because the performance of agricultural sector which is a key driver of rural market well-being is on a roller coaster in the last few years.

This is the reason why companies like HLL, who admit to having a significant portion of their sales coming from rural markets, also agree that the volumes from the rural markets have shrunk. But the company is not giving up.

After successfully conducting ‘Operation Bharat’ covering 65,000 villages, HLL has now aggressive plans to expand the rural reach of their products through ‘Operation Mahabarat’. While ‘Operation Bharat’ was essentially an exercise aimed at generating demand at the grassroot level ‘through building category education brand salience and brand experience’, ‘Operation Mahabarat’ is expected to be a multi-pronged approach with multi tasks on a similar infrastructure as ‘Operation Bharat’- ‘It will not only generate demand, but also substantially increment the grass roots availability, visibility and salience’. This is expected to be done through extensive “Haatt” contact programmes and a saturation coverage drives in selected states, districts and rural ‘Pop Stratas’.

While HLL is one company with a long-term commitment to the rural market, there are a whole lot of companies – be it in the consumer expendables or durables who are doing just lip service to ‘going rural’. A board decision to ‘go rural’ is enough for the ‘spokesmen’ of the companies to wax eloquent on how the company is targeting the rural consumer in a big way. You get closer and try to know what the company’s plans are, you find that such companies have not even done their basic homework regarding their target markets or customers. Most of these companies talk about doing an experiment in a couple of Taluks in one or two districts of a particular state before going national. Most of them think that going rural means hiring a few ‘video on wheels’ and doing propaganda in selected villages. Some of them think that just going outside cities means going rural. The understanding of the rural market is so pathetic.

Many of the corporates in India have no clue that rural marketing needs a different ‘Mind-set’. Ideally you should have specially designed products with special packaging and prices for the rural market. Many articles have been written, in the business press on this subject.

But the most important point which many people miss out is that the communication package to deliver the product message has to be developed with special appeal to the identified target groups. This calls for a clear understanding of the rural consumer needs and aspirations, which could vary from State to State and in States like U.P. from region to region. For instance in Western UP. which has more prosperous pockets people speak Hindustani, where as in Eastern UP, which borders Bihar, people are poorer and speak Bhojpuri. Life styles in both these markets are quite different. While one can have a National strategy, the implementation has to take into account local / regional variations.

A good example of this understanding was reflected in what our agency did in developing a special rural campaign for Philips Consumer Electronics Division in Tamilnadu and AP. “The Enga Veetu Super Star – Philips” (Superstar of my home-Philips) a theme developed for Tamilnadu had to be changed to “Maa-Inty – Megastar – Philips” – (Megastar of my family – Philips). Research showed that the reigning king of Tamil screen was referred to as Super Star (our Campaign exploited the imagery of the Super Star) and in AP he was referred to as a Megastar and hence the need to modify the theme. Research also showed that the T.V spots that the company was featuring in satellite channels were not understood by the target audience – even the Telugu dubbed version went over their heads. Hence a new regional film with SPB and his son as models was produced & telecast with excellent results

Another pioneering effort we did was for a leading brand of coconut oil in a pouch pack, which had to battle the established preference for cheaper loose Coconut oils (LCNO) in the villages of Tamilnadu. Taking the route of adulteration of loose oil as the focus, the campaign attempted to educate the rural women the importance of spending that “extra-rupee” to buy a quality product. But the real task was how to reach rural women with the message, which was in the form of a 7 minute telefilm (and other specially designed merchandising materials).

The agency decided to use the van route but with a difference. For the first time 2 lady volunteers specially trained to conduct the whole show, were hired. Instead of the village squares and bus stops, residential areas were chosen and 2 shows – one in the morning and another in the afternoon were conducted. The timings were such that the women were completely free to attend the shows. Most important the lady volunteers went door to door, distributing a specially designed invitation card with Lucky Dip Nos. Special invitations were necessary because rural women hesitate to participate in shows uninvited. This provided an opportunity for the ladies to win prizes in carefully planned games and activities, apart from ensuring that they all got a free sample of the product. Women were made to sit on special “Chaddar” to make them feel important. The whole show was designed in such a way that apart from building the brand image the main message of ‘Adulteration versus Quality’ went home very effectively. This happened, show after show, during the 3 months that the campaign ran with more than expected impact on the sales of the brand. The client has repeated this experiment recently in semi urban markets in Tamilnadu with greater impact and results.

It is very apparent that while advertising agencies are reorienting themselves to the changing ways of doing business thanks to the explosion in IT, they have to also gear themselves with a different ‘mind-set’ & ‘approach’, if they have to succeed in the huge ‘Rural Market Scene’ where there is no ‘Unity in diversity’ but where you have to ‘Act Local while thinking National’.