Rural Marketing in Rural India

Rural India is the main thing for brands to enter, not from now but it has been from quite sometime now. As modern India has been saturated & the market is becoming stagnant. Brand’s future is in Rural India. All brands in almost all categories want to have their cake from rural India.

But Rural marketing is not easy its vast because India has different countries residing in her & each state in India has diverse culture, behavior, they follow different religion, they speak different language or dialect, they follow different lifestyle. Marketers can not follow one formula to reach these people, every state has to have a different & unique formula.

So now the question is what will work in remote villages that don’t even have electricity ?

What kind of messages and activities will appeal the huge audiences that are not used to the advertising rhetoric ?

It looks complex & marketers makes it even more complex but recently got a video where Mr. Raj Kumar Jha National Creative Director Oglivy Action speaks on marketing in rural India & am sure it will keep you thinking that it is not that complex if you know the real problem.

Its a short video but has immense insights in it.

Have a look at it.

TUMS Delivery Sampling Activity

Quite surprising! A pharma company doing such an activity.

Have a look at the video, a brand called TUMS the anti acid tablets, came out with a sexy on-ground activation in Mexican market to enhance the perception of their proposition Acts Fast from acidity which is caused by junk food.

The point which have to be notice here is they have done a sampling activity but in an unusual way. Demonstrating a product is necessary but just going to the touch point where your target consumers are & making them try the product will for sure not work in this competitive market.

People might try the product or not try the product,

if the product suits them they will buy it but if the product doesn’t suit them they will for sure not buy it,

people who are not part of demonstration they will not even remember which brand is doing the activity &

finally for sure there will not be any word of mouth.

I think any on-ground activity which doesn’t have talkability it should not be executed. In some or the other way on-ground activation should have talkability,  people who see it or people who experience it should go back & talk about the activity with their closed ones then the activity is worth doing it.

I think this activity does exactly that, it does demonstrate it’s products but not in a fuddy duddy way but in the best way which has huge talkability.