RURAL COMMUNICATIONS

Presenter Name: NEHA RIJHSINGHANI

Introduction:
Need to communicate with rural consumer: Role of Advertisement: Challenges in developing common communication strategies:

Majority of advertisements designed are urban oriented:

Rural communication is not a peripheral activity:

Setting Communication Objectives

The communication objectives are guided by the corporate mission,strategy,product market strategy,& the product per se on the one hand and the target market conditions on the otherhand. In the rural marketing communication objectives can be of wide range. For eg. Creating awareness,informing about the product for sale, persuading the consumers to try,persuading them to buy & use it.

Components of Comm. Message decisionmaki ng & the factors to be considered

Language

Meaning: Different words Have different Meaning in diff parts of Rural markets Simplicity: Reduces the noise & And gives clear idea.

Graphical Presenting message Form of the message

Graphics: Easily associated with The cognition & increases recall Utilitarian: Relates the product To usage & can increase preference Narrative: Increases acceptance And retention by increasing Involvement. Trustworthy: Word of Mouth &feedback Likeable: improves Acceptance Expert: word of mouth & references can influence The preference

Message

Information source

Message association

Association: Related to cognition ,increases acceptance,interest& retention.

Role Of Media In Rural Markets.

Mass media:
A medium is called a mass medium when it reaches millions of people . Rural communication Conventional media (Print, Cinema,Radio,TV) Non-conventional (Theatre,Posters, Haats and Melas.) The conventional media have excellent reach, less expensive and create a better impact.

 Radio is the medium with the widest coverage . Surveys indicate that in rural areas more than a third of the married women of reproductive age have listened to a radio within the last week. Television, video & films expose viewers to a common window on styles of life & behavior. Rural exposure to television has been lower by far than radio. The mass media brings change where ever they go, Successful Media Campaigns have changed attitudes and behaviors in a variety of areas, from basic literacy to health care & family planning. .

Developing Effective Communication

1) 2) 5 Steps are as follows: Profiling the target audience: Determining the communication objectives:

3)

Designing the message & ensuring the effectiveness of the message:

Selecting the communication channels Designing the promotion strategy & integrating the communication process.

4) 5)

i).Profiling the target audience:

Know your customer is one of the cardinal principles of marketing: The steps involved in designing an effective message are probing & profiling the target audience. Many Companies are doing such probing like for example. DABUR JANAM GHUTTI, to market its baby gripe water,Dabur India profiled rural consumers at haats & mela. We probe & profile the rural consumer by examining social classes & intentions, consumer receptivity, Growing brand consciousness, lifestyles , buying roles, children ,purchase needs, community & the personal-value proposition, value-for-money proposition.

1).Social classes & intentions

The priority of product purchases varies across income levels.The destitutes buy essentials,the rich buys premium products. Rurals though heterogeneous focus on purchasing value-for-money products & productive assets that enhance their income levels.

Example REVITAL(a health capsule from Ranbaxy) is quite popular among daily wage earners,farm labourers & in poverty-ridden, underdeveloped states like Bihar & West Bengal. Because consumers feel that Revital increases their concentration & performance levels, which is reflected directly in their earnings.

2) Consumer receptivity:
Those who are less literate & less exposed to the external environment require a linear communication message that is simple & easy to comprehend. They associate well with primary colours & numerals rarely buy products asking for brands by name. Ex. 502 pataka bidi, A1 kadak chhap chai & Naulakha washing soap are some of products that have struck the right chord with the masses. They refer to Lifebuoy as lal sabun (red soap) & nirma as (peela powder). Selection of right channel & platform also impacts audience receptivity.

3) Growing brand consciousness

Marketers are recognizing the fact that villagers are becoming more brand savvy with increasing penetration of the mass media in the interiors. The penetration of premium products is beginning to take place in lower socio-economic groups The brand recall for products like clinic plus shampoo, colgate, lifebuoy, etc. is high among rural consumers.

4) Buying roles:

A process of collective decision making prevails in rural areas The Co. needs to customise its message & address each intermediary involved in the purchase process. In urban for the same product category, the user, the investor, the purchaser & the influencer may end up being the same individual. 5) Children: the value of education assumes greater importance even in rural areas. In a haat promotional campaign for colgate, it was observed that when older people accompanied by small children & the youth tried the product, the older men preferred to continue toothpowder whereas they were willing to purchase toothbrushes & toothpaste for their children.

6) Purchase needs:

While promoting Revital, it was found that farmers in Punjab seek power & vigor, whereas a rickshaw puller or truck driver demands more energy & longer hours of concentration so as to increase his earnings. Revital customized its one to one communication to address these differing expectations of consumers from the same product.

7) Community & the personal- value proposition: The concept of the joint family & community decision making prevails in rural areas to a large extent. People live in interdependent &networked society. Communications like onidas tag line Neighbor's envy, owners pride will be out of place in such a setting, as community tv viewing is a common phenomenon.

8) Value fo money proposition:

Coca-cola & pepsi used the planks of affordability & value for money successfully to drive penetration & increase volumes by introducing smaller 200 mlbottles priced at Rs. 5. ii) Determining communication objectives: After profiling the target audience the marketer & the communicator must decide on the desired audience response. The response-hierarchy AICDA model,best summarizes this communication strategy.

Awareness

interest

Conviction

Desire

Action

iii) Designing the message:

iv)

formulating the message will require solving 5 problems Message Content ( what to say), message structure (how to say it logically), message format (how to say it symbolically), message association ( in what context to say it), message source (who should say it). Selecting the communication channels: Personal communication channels: two or more persons communicating directly to eachother. Non- personal communication carry message without personal contact or interaction.They include mass media, atmospheres & events.

v) Deciding the Promotion mix:

Companies face the task of distributing the total promotional budget over the five promotional tools-advertising, sales promotion, direct marketing, public relations & sales force. vi) Factors in setting the promotion mix:

Type of product market:

Push versus pull strategy:

Rural media: the importance of the two-step flow of communication

Having developed a good communication package aimed at the rural masses, it is equally important to deliver the same through a combination of mass media & unconventional media. Even today interpersonal communication accounts for over 80% of the rural comm. Process Opinion leaders at the top of the hierarchy & the rural masses at the bottom( in a pyramid formation) reinforce the continued existence of the twostep flow of communication.

OPINION LEADERS

RURAL MASSES

The Media Model:

The ideal media model to reach rural audiences is to influence the opinion leaders first & win them over before targeting the rural masses, as the former guide the latter in their purchase decisions. Mass media Rural cinema Plus Radio Direct marketing Rural T.V efforts Masses unconvOpinion entional Leaders media

source:Anurag Madison All efforts must generate sufficient word-of-mouth publicity for the product, so that when the rural customer is ready to buy, the brand has top-of-the-mind recall.

RURAL MEDIA

The various media vehicles are as follows:

Conventional mass media Television Radio

Non-conventional Personalized media media Haats,Melas,Fairs Direct mailer Folk media (puppet show, magic show) Video vans Point of sale (demonstration,lea flets) Word of mouth

Press Cinema

Outdoor: wall Interpersonal painting,hoarding communication Mandi Dealers,sales persons,researche rs.

Formal media:

1)

Newspapers & magazines:

In rural areas the print medium faces problems of both reach &access coupled with low literacy levels English newspapers and magazines have negligible circulation in rural areas. local language newspapers and magazines are becoming popular among educated facilities in rural areas. eg. Newspapers: loksatta in maharashtra The print media is mainly restricted to the educated classes. Community reading is popular; community/public places like panchayat bhawans, STD bhooths, tea stalls & barber shops generally subscribe to newspapers.

2) T.V.

Features:
It has made a great impact & large audience has been exposed to this medium. For eg. Lifebuoy, lux etc are advertised via T.V. Regional T.V.channels have become more popular eg.:Sun tv in Tamil Nadu. Asianet in Kerela.

I.

II.

Limitations:Though more than 90% of villages are electrified, only 44% of rural homes have electricity connections. Women who have TV in their homes donot watch much TV during the day time as they are busy with household chores, at night they cannot watch in presence of male family members. The reach & frequency of regional-language & vernacular programming is still limited.

3) RADIO:
It continues to be the cheapest mass medium with widest reach. Examples: Colgate,jyoti labs, zandu balms are some companies using radio communication. There are specific programmes for farmers like Farm & Home/krishi Darshan in regional languages. The radio commercial can be prepared at short notice to meet the changing needs of the rural folk.eg. Release of a pesticide ad at the time of outbreak of a pest or disease in crops. Limitation: Involvement with advertisements on the radio is lower than television advertisements, as they lack any visual content.

CINEMA:
Cinema is one of the most important communication media in many parts of the country, its universal appeal cutting across the barriers of geography & language. About 65% of the earnings from cinema are from rural markets. Ex: Films on products like Vicks, Lifebuoy & SPIC fertilizers are shown in rural cinema halls. Limitations: Cinema is not free,as one has to pay to buy tickets Advertising through cinema is done on a very limited scale, at start of the movie & during the interval.

NON-CONVENTIONAL MEDIA
Outdoor Media: Wall painting It is an effective and economical medium for communication in rural areas,since, it stays there for a long time they constantly remind the rural people about the brand name & logos in addition to highlighting the key brand promise. They are economical, as the manpower & infrastructure requirements are low. Can be easily customised in accordance with regional language variations without this impacting their artistic content. Limitations: The lack of wall space: The quality of the wall space available is not always satisfactory: No exclusive wall rights are given to the company:

Tree boards:
Painted boards of about two square feet in dimension having the picture or name or slogan of the product painted on it. Boards are fixed to the trees on both sides of the village roads at a height of about 10 feet from ground level.

Attract the attention of slow moving vehicles like bullock carts, cycles, tractors & people walking on the road.
low priced promotion items that can be used by consumer goods & Fertilizer/ pesticide companies.

Point of purchase
Display of hangings,festons & product packs in the shops will catch the attention of prospective buyers. Direct mail advertising: This is a way of passing on information relating to goods or services for sale directly to the potential customers through the medium of post. It involves sending out single pieces of mail- letters, flyers & foulders to a specific & targeted audience.

Advantages: 1)audience selectivity,2)No advertising competition within the same medium, 3)personalization.
Limitations: Relatively high cost, junk mail image.

FOLK MEDIA:

Folk media consist of folk songs, folk dances & other theatrical forms, including puppetry, street theatre & magic shows, which are an intrinsic part of culture & heritage of the land. They are face-to-face & personal form of communication Folk media are interactive, repetitive & narrative. Informal/Rural specific media: Farm to farm/ house to house vist: it facilitate 2 way communication, sales person can know needs of rural customers by directly discussing & answers his queries e.g.machinery,agri inputs.

 Group meeting: co. is able to pass on the message regading benefits of products to a large number of customers E.g MRF tyres (tractor owner meet to discuss repairs & maintenance) Opinion leaders: a person considered to be knowledgeable & is consulted by others & his advise ia normally followed e.g big landlords, panchayat president. The melas: different types ( commodity, cattle & religious) may be held only for a day or week) e.g britannia( tiger buscuits) The Haats: sellers & buyers meet in the village to buy & sell goods & services. Audio Visual Publicity Vans: The van is a mobile promotion station having facilities for screening films slides & mike publicity (HLL,COLGATE)

It is used to understand some of the issues that need attention in media

and message decisions..

Sender

Encoding

Message -----------Media

Decoding

Receiver

Noise

Feedback

Response

The communication process model by Sanal Kumar Velayudhan

The view of the communication process

The environment exercises considerable influence on the receiver and therefore he/she may not receive the intended message for any one of the following reasons: Selective attention: where the consumer may not notice the stimulus provided Selective distortion: where the message is deliberately twisted so that the consumer hears what he/she wants to hear and Selective recall: Where the consumer retains only a small fraction of the message that reaches him/her The comprehension of a message is therefore, a critical problem in indian rural markets.

1. 2. 3.

Rural & Urban Responses to Television Advertising (the distortion in the study indicates the gravity of the problem)
A study was undertaken jointly by MART & Anugrah Madison in south and north India,covering both urban and rural areas, to assess the comprehension, association, credibility & acceptibilityof television commercials for Babool (featuring a young man undertaking a series of activities,yet looking fresh all day) Navaratna hair oil (featuring the film actors Govinda & Rambha in a group dance) & Asian paints exterior emulsion paint (sunil babu) in the consumer durables.

Babool: Rural people had a problem in comprehending the

message as it is too quick. In north, respondents thought the ad was for a toothbrush/shaving cream. Navaratna: Rural people asked,why should he be dancing when he has a headache? in south recognition of Govinda was low.similarly, in the north the recognition of Rambha was very low. Asian Paints: It scored very well on the believability factor among the urban audience. But somerural commented , The paint will last for only two or three days. Some thought it was an ad for housing company. The study shows that what works in the south, may not work in the north. Quickies, gimmicks, or slick advertisements cannot seduce rural people. They expect the message to be rational.

MAIN PROBLEMS IN RURAL COMMUNICATION:

In the evolution of a proper mix of marketing there are two major problems:
Appropriate Media: Nature of rural people: Remedial measures : To identify the most suitable medium to ensure maximum spatial reach It is important to understand the behavioural & psychographic characteristics of the rural audience for effective communication strategy One must keep in mind the fact that the mass media reach barely 30% of rural audiences so they should be used as supplementary tools. the marketers have no option but to use traditional media & events like haats,jatras & melas, folk media & mandis, Important to include the touch & feel aspect in any promotional activity.

Conclusion
To sum up it is clear that in any form of rural communication, while we may have a national strategy, we have to think & act locally. The indian advertising industry has to immerse itself in local colours, customs & modes of communication in order to be relevant to the needs & desires of rural society. Multinational giants like coca-cola & pepsi recognised need for regionalising their ad, by featuring locally popular heroes in their tv commercials, is a step in the right direction.

There is a need to invest much more than we are doing at present, in understanding rural consumer & owning rural india