This document discusses communication strategies for rural markets in India. It begins with an overview of the rural population size and characteristics. It then outlines both formal/conventional media strategies such as television, print, and radio as well as informal rural-specific strategies like haats and melas, opinion leaders, farm demonstrations, and folk media. Three examples of successful rural marketing campaigns are provided: ITC's e-Choupal initiative, Hindustan Lever's health education soap marketing, and Coca-Cola's focus on availability, affordability, and acceptability in rural India.
2. Road map to rural India...!!!
Φ Virtual tour
Φ FORMAL/ CONVENTIONAL MEDIA
Φ INFORMAL/ RURAL SPECIFIC MEDIA
Φ Some Famous Examples:
Φ ITC e- choupal
Φ Hindustan Lever Limited and the
Soap Market
Φ Coca cola
3. Come...Lets go to village virtual tour
Large but scattered population
69.9% of Indians in rural areas as of 2010 (world bank report
2012)
700 million people spread around 6,27,000 villages.
87.5% of the rural population belongs to bottom of the pyramid
Average income of less Rs.2000/- per month
54 % to GDP
About 50% of income comes from agriculture.
Estimated annual size of the rural market
FMCG Rs. 65,000 Crore
Durables Rs. 5,000 Crore
Agri-Inputs Rs. 45,000 Crore
2 / 4 Wheelers Rs. 8,000 Crore
4. FORMAL/ CONVENTIONAL MEDIA
Do not provide the touch and feel of the product
Mass media (reaches around 60% rural
population)
2 out of 5 Indians are unreachable by mass media
TV
– Tv is the most preferred (40% access to TV):
power cuts are common and this restricts
viewing time.
– Doordarshan most popular channel
Print media (Print media reaches 23%)
Cinema (reach 30%)
Outdoor (wall paintings, hoardings, tree boards)
5. Radio (Reaches 35% of rural population)
Radio can reach a large number of poor people because it
is affordable and uses little electricity.
There are specific programmes for agriculturists like ‘Farm
and Home Programme or ‘Krishi Darshan’ in all regional
languages,
The main advantage is that it is cost effective medium.
Colgate, Jyoti Laboratories, Zandu Balm, Juari Industries
are some companies using radio for communication.
6.
7. INFORMAL/ RURAL SPECIFIC MEDIA
Haats & Melas
Over 47,000 haats and 25,000 melas are held annually.
The average daily sale at a Haat isabout Rs.2.25 Lacs
Annual sales at melas amount to Rs.3,500 crore.
Over half the shoppers at haats have shopping lists.
More than 10,000 melas draw visitors from all over
India.
Nearly half the outlets at melas are for manufactured
goods.
Mobile supermarkets (75% are held once a week, 20%
twice a week and the rest are organised daily)
Good platform for demonstrations
8. Good for introducing new brands and building brands
About 5000 are commercial in nature, used for brand
promotions
Women's are present in large number
Kumbh mela (Haridwar, Allahabad, Ujjain, Nasik)
Sonepur mela (Bihar)
HLL, P&G set up kiosks.
Mahindra & Mahindra set up information counter for its
tractor at Pushkar mela (Rajasthan)
Nestle arranges coffee and Maggie shop
9.
10. Opinion leaders
Mandis
– These are agricultural markets set up by govt. to
procure agri. Produce from farmers
– Serve as a platform for product demo and on the
spot sales
– Used for promoting durables and agricultural
products
11. Farm to farm/ house to house
– Hindustan lever (fair and lovely) in villages with
population of 2000+ to expand user base
– Reached 10% of villages and 17% of households in
MP,UP and Bihar
– 46% brand conversions (35% was from non users)
Group meetings
– MRF tractor owners meet (TOMEE)
– TAFE (direct contact exercises in 9 states – 44
centres): sales growth of 12% after one month of
campaign
12. Audio Visual publicity vans
– Create word of mouth publicity
– HLL (fair and lovely) home to home campaign was
supported by Audio visual show and product
demonstrations
– Costly to hire and maintain
– Cost per contact is more than conventional media
Demonstrations
– Dalda launch, fed pakodas on street corner to convey
that they can use it for frying (method demonstration)
– Hero, TVS and Kinetic gave live demonstrations in
Kolhapur for Maharashtra sugar co operative (they got
400 orders)
13. Folk Media
Folk theatre
Magic show
Puppet shows
Popular in Rajasthan
LIC uses it to educate masses in UP, Bihar and MP
The number of inquiries at LIC offices after the show
was higher.
Interactive games
14.
15. Street theatre
Deeply rooted in the Indian tradition
To propagate social and political messages and to
create an awareness regarding critical issues.
Street theatre breaks the formal barriers and
approaches the people directly.
Games
Rajdoot organizes wrestling competition for the villagers
in which one of the wrestler brought by them. The other
one is a villager.
The winner get to test ride their bikes. The wrestling is a
symbol of their products USP. That is: ruggedness
16.
17. ITC e- choupal
Initiative by ITC (2000)
Directly links the rural farmers with the company
Procured by such companies from mandis .
The PCs and Internet access at certain centres enable the
farmers to obtain information on mandi prices , good
farming practices, and to place orders for agricultural
inputs, such as seeds and fertilizers.
This access to information helps farmers in improving the
quality of produce and obtaining better prices.
A literate farmer elected from the village acts as the
interface between the illiterate farmers and the computer.
18. Selling Health: Hindustan Lever Limited and
the Soap Market
Results of research done among focus
group in rural areas.
– 5 of 13 washed their hands before eating
– 10 of 18 washed their hands before preparing
food
– If they did wash hands, often used water or a
proxy product for soap such as mud or ash.
– after handling cow dung 5 of 7 rinsed their
hands with water
– one washed with mud, and one used soap.
19. o School and village presentation
o Children aged 5-13
o Through stories
o Learn about germs how they cause diseases
o Importance of using soap and when to use
o Demonstration to show that Visual clean is not safe clean
o Lifebuoy village health day
o Health camp and check up
o Village doctor as opinion leader
o Healthy child award
o Health skits and poems by kids to gain involvement
o Demonstrations and awards for best presenters
20. o Diarrhea management workshop
o For young mothers and pregnant women
o Dangers of diarrhea
o Health checks
o Launch of the Lifebuoy health club
o Formation of health club which includes activities centered
on hygiene and keeping the village clean
o Facilitators return 4-6 times more
o HLL created health based brand differentiation
o Increased the sale of its low cost mass market soap
o Built new habits, involving its brand
o Built brand loyalty
o Fulfilling its corporate purpose ‘to raise the quality of life’
21. Coca cola: India’s Thirst for Rural Market
Coca cola India’s Rural Marketing Strategy
Based on three A’s
– Availability : availability of the product to customer
– Affordability: Product Pricing
– Acceptability : convincing the customer to buy the
product
22. Extensive marketing in the mass
media and outdoor advertising
Aggressive rural communication
campaign
Hoardings
Participation in weekly mandis
TV commercials
Print Advertisement in several regional
newspapers
Painted the name Coca cola on the
compounds of the residences in the
villages
23. Increased Ad- spend on Doordarshan
2002: Commercial featuring Amir Khan to communicate the
message of price cut and launch of Chota Coke (200ml Rs.5
bottle)
To strengthen the brand image- aimed at making Coke a
generic name for “thanda”- a popular dialect of North.
Launched 3 commercials with tagline “Thanda matlab Coca-
cola”- Aimed to make rural and semi urban consumers
connect with Coca- Cola
The 3 commercials showed progression in associating ‘Coke’
with ‘Thanda’.