CII Marketing Summit: Regional mobile advertising key to propel growth in rural and mass markets

New Delhi: With rural marketing picking up momentum in the country, marketing and advertising experts say that in their drive to reach the masses, companies need to pay attention to mobile advertising and localisation of contents in order to promote products in the future.

Speaking at the ninth CII Marketing Summit, AP Advertising vice president Alyque Padamsee, said, ''Every farmer has a mobile in the rural area and its usage as a medium of advertising is gradually picking up.''

Padamsee said mobile advertising is one of the new ways of building brands in the rural areas and ''will pick up more than TV commercial in the near-future''. He said companies such as fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) company Hindustan Unilever have already introduced mobile advertisement in a big way, reaching out to the rural masses through SMS.

''Now other companies are following suit. The high level of mobile penetration provides immense opportunities for advertisers,'' Padamsee said.

Ogilvy and Mather (O&M) executive chairman Piyush Pandey said companies need to make advertisements in local dialects to communicate the brand message to consumers in rural areas effectively.

''We need to utilise the native intelligence and involve people from the local areas for such campaigns to get the best possible advantage of local knowledge,'' said Pandey.

Draft FCB-Ulka executive director Arvind Wable said campaigns for concepts like the introduction of the one rupee sachet for detergents were 'revolutionary' in the Indian advertising scene. He said markets in the interiors of India held huge potential, with consumers in rural hinterlands being still untapped.

Wable said rural consumers hold very good prospects for growth in volume for companies, provided there were appropriate tools of advertising to reach out to them.