Reaching Rural India

With the rapid growth of Rural areas and growing market potential advertising has become challenging due to limited medium of channels and resources. To face these challenges, marketers are using a combination of advertising and promotional techniques and also unique media communications for rural areas. Here are some innovative ad campaign for rural India.

Kan Khajura Tesan

Hindustan Unilever Limited(HUL) the fasted growing FMCG in India with over 80 years of existence in the country. It has the customer base of 700 million with 20 consumer category products. HUL is the market leader and was one of the first to target Rural customers in India. With only 20% household having television HUL came with a unique marketing strategy Kan Khajura Tesan for its detergent brand Wheel.

In 2012 customers in rural India were asked to give a missed call at a certain number in response they were replied with romantic husband and wife jokes which were for the targeted customers for wheel. This campaign was a huge success with receiving more than 3 lakh with 25 thousand unique numbers in just a span of month. HUL saw a potential in the campaign and soon came up with its one of the most successful Marketing Strategy- Kan Khajura Tesan, India's first public demand and free mobile radio station. The consumers were asked to give a missed call on a specific number and the company would revert in 15 mins.The caller was offered free entertainment, radio, jokes, news, latest Bollywood actions and drama,with a cost of less than $0.04 per call. This activity gave HUL a platform to promote and advertise its brands like Ponds, Closeup, Lifebouy etc. It became a dedicated medium for HUL to talk about its brands and create brand awareness in the not so developed parts of India.

This channel was an instant hit among the people of Bihar where it was first launch with reaching 8 million people in mere 6 months. By August this channel was introduced in other states like Orissa, UP, MP, Uttrakhand etc.., with more than 1.8 crore users in just a short span. It became India's one of the fastest growing marketing channel, it claimed of getting 40000 - 50000 new subscribers everyday. This channel helped HUL increase their data base about the potential customers, number of phone calls in a day, frequency, timings, the of ad impression of a particular brand etc. Therefore apart form creating brand equity and awareness this campaign helped HUL in data mining and information of a new segment of the the customer with a potential customer base and loyalty.

KKT became platform for Bollywood launches and social awareness campaigns like fighting against corruption with a ads about HUL. Mobile phones has become very popular medium of marketing and in rural India where channel is low HUL's KKT was a success and helped the company reach the interiors of India.

"Thanda Matlab Coca-Cola"

In 2002 Coca-cola launched a new ad campaign "Thanda Matlab Coca-Cola" to create and establish its brand in rural India. The campaign featured Bollywood actor Aamir Khan. CCI tried targeting rural and semi urban customers. CCI stared targeting these untapped segment of India as it had a huge customer potential and increase sales volume. These ads tried to make Coca-Cola a generic brand for cold drinks in India . The brand had to overcome three obstacle to create a hold in this sector of customers

1. The traditional drink in this area was Lassi, Lemon drinks etc to replace it with coke

2. The pricing was an issue and had to lowed

3. The eccentric power supply was a problem as the shop-owners were not ready to stock the product

CCI came up with 3 "A's" Availability, Acceptability and Affordability and set them as their mantra to cover rural segment. Coca-Cola came up with "Thanda Matlab Coca-Cola" ads featuring Aamir Khan and directed by famous director Ashutosh Gowarikar. these ads used a blend of product placement and story telling beautifully and rest was a history. New Coke Chota was introduced at a mrp as low as Rs. 5 and the ads were ran at a higher frequency on channel Doordarshan which had a higher viewers. The tagline Thanda Matlab Coca-Cola helped the acceptability part and the viewers started shifting their traditional drinks with coke.

This ad opens with a scene of two village ladies asking for Thanda and the shopkeeper gives them Coke and asks them to pay Rs.5. The scene is intervened by Aamir Khan and in a humorous way asks the shopkeeper the price to coke. The conversation between the two happens in the regional language in a village setup to let the viewers relate to the content, which became a very important aspect for the success of this campaign, breaking the language barriers and targeting the masses using regional languages like Bangali, Bihari, Nepali Punjabi etc.

The tagline here comes true as when the ladies ask for thanda the shopkeeper gives them coke which means thanda matlab Coca-Cola. Extra emphasis is given on the word "panch" the price of the new bottle to spread the knowledge of price and create a awareness of malpractices observed by the shopkeeper. The jingle sung by Aamir Khan "Thande ka tadka lagayi diya re" based on a famous song to give customers a everlasting memory of the ad.

This ad also starts with a rural village scene, in which some City girls are stuck in the village and are thirsty and wants some cold drink. They are shown underestimating the village of not getting anything except water to drink.They ask Aamir Khan a Punjabi farmer for some cold water who is shocked to see beautiful city girls in his farm. Similar to the previous ad Aamir Khan is seen singing a jingle "Thanda pene de bahane aayi" which is yet again a famous Punjabi song and gives a long lasting impact to viewers mind. And then Aamir Khan removes cold bottle of coke from a well giving a surprise to the girls that even a small village has Coca-Cola. This showed that coke is available even in the smallest part of India no one will have to compromise when they want thanda they will get Coke.

Keeping similarities in both the ads like singing a jingle in regional song and communicating

in regional language gives the campaign a continuity and creates flow and connection between the consumer and the brand.

AUDIOWALA BUS STAND

Virtti Imedia's Audiowala Bus Stand was an marketing initiative to introduce and integrate audio as a medium of advertising into transport announcement system. This idea proved to be very effective and innovative. Vritti Imedia has transit and partnered with state transport corporations to integrate audio advertising into the system. They even have monitors and LED screens to give visual sense.

Vritti Imedia has now established its connectivity with more than 450 Bus Stations Pan India. They have a reach of 1.2 crore plus consumers and around 30-35 crore in a month, of 7 states Maharashtra, Goa, Rajasthan, Karnataka, Punjab, Haryana and Himachal with its unique OOH medium of advertising.

The says this medium gains more attention as commuters are waiting for their travel announcements. They focus on Rural Towns and wants to give a 360 degree, Below the Line OOH advertising experience.The are associated with cooperate companies like GSK, Dabur, Emami Navratan Oil, TataSky, SBI, HDFC, Union Bank and lot more.

A success story of this model is Honda Motors, they partnered with Vritti Imedia and turned the bus station into a showroom and showcased their cars and announcements were run with higher frequency, Interested customers were allowed to take a test drive and this became a medium of advertising for competitors also.