The Hindu Business Line : A model that goes to town ... and country

To formulate an effective media strategy, Madison Media's Town & Country framework considers various factors such as awareness, accessibility and affordability for each market.

INDIA is in its villages" may well be the mantra for today's marketers.

A cursory glance at the demographic profile of India reveals that a large chunk of the `rural consumers' live in villages with population in excess of 5,000 to towns with population less than five lakh. With urban markets beginning to show signs of saturation, almost every brand worth its salt, has set foot in small towns and villages to tap its potential. However, a rural marketing analyst points out that while every brand wants immediate returns, no marketer is willing to invest time and resources in understanding the complexity of the rural market.

One such complex issue is selecting the suitable market for your product and then finding the appropriate media available to carry your message to the audience. Given the diversity (social, cultural, linguistic) of rural India, it makes the task of understanding the media habit of the rural audience even more daunting.

If you are marketer of a brand of detergent - on what basis do you select your market? Would you employ a one-popular-medium-fits-all strategy to select the media? Or how would you attach value to the distinct media habits every region. Here's one approach:

Madison Media, one of the first agencies of record in the country which is part of Madison Communications, has devised a set of tools and guidelines called Town & Country (T&C) framework that is designed to help advertisers prioritise markets and then choose the suitable media for the selected market.

T&C framework - how it works?

T&C framework uses socio-cultural regions (SCR) as the basic geographic unit for analysis. For example: Gujarat would be classified into Kutch, Saurashtra, Gujarat Plains and Bhilistan. These regions represent relatively high levels of socio-cultural homogeneity. K. Nagaraj, Head, Madison Media Research Centre explains that this data, which is available in the National Readership Surveys is seldom used in conventional media planning techniques.

Then, the T&C framework evaluates and prioritises each region based on social, cultural and economic factors and media reach. To decide on how `attractive' a market is to an advertiser, it then analyses the following three aspects:

Accessibility

To a marketer, the first factor that dictates his choice of a market - is physical accessibility and communication. The T&C framework takes into account population and media reach to decide how accessible a region is.

"Higher the population in a town, we assume that physical accessibility will be easier. If a village has very sparse population then distribution costs will be that much higher," says Nagaraj. He also explains that if a market seems attractive (in terms of physical accessibility) but has low mass media reach, then local media options are recommended

Awareness

Then, it analyses the literacy levels to arrive at `degree of awareness' in the region. For some product categories, product usage data is also used to determine awareness. "For instance, for a life insurance product, the number of people having savings bank account can be used to determine awareness levels," he explains.

Affordability

Apart from monthly household income, it also evaluates affordability in terms of ownership of durables and lifestyles.

These factors define `Market Attractiveness'. "To quantify market attractiveness, we use NRS data on readership statistics, literacy, product usage and so on," he says.

Then, the T&C framework uses a clustering tool to group markets with similar attributes of `Market Attractiveness' and similar media profiles.

"Clustering combines markets with similar media profile and also identifies attractive markets where regional or local options are imperative," he adds.

Finally, the T&C framework recommends the most effective media option for the prioritised markets. The final output of the tool clusters markets and offers a choice of "Highly Promising", "Most Promising" and "Average" categories.

The T&C framework scores over conventional planning techniques by acknowledging the disparities within a particular region.

It also uses a return on investment approach in selecting media with a focus on minimal `wastage'. Nagaraj says that till date, two of Madison Media's clients - Godrej and Coca Cola have employed this tool.

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail
Comment on this article to BLFeedback@thehindu.co.in

Stories in this Section
A model that goes to town ... and country

Brand Kapil

The sound of a brand

Cutting through festival clutter

Brand as cult

Cartoon