The urban-rural debate has been on forever. Do you see this changing as we work towards inclusive marketing as the basic ethos of all marketing?
"Even I thought it was another Fevicol Ad! But they're all marketing men out to capture the rural sector, it seems."
Post-Independence, India witnessed a creeping and crawling morphing of mindsets and consumption from the rural to mindsets that are more aggressively urban. The marketer has been largely responsible for this. The movement, that was a crawl, literally became a gallop in the early and mid-Eighties when television knitted the nation as one, pumping urban imagery of the modern marketing man to rural audiences. Television and all the advertising it carried fed rural markets the urban way of life. In more ways than one, India became an instant urban society.
This, I believe, is an undoing that needs to be corrected. In many ways, marketing is a hegemony in India. The urban-educated and privileged marketer markets to the rural person. Never mind that rural is three times bigger than urban. The imagery that consumers emote with in India today is the urban imagery.
Overturn this and emote with the real India. Emote with the imagery that is rural. Put a programme that is rural in your marketing mix. Go one step further and show the archetypical brand hero in your TV commercials to be the rural person. See what it does. I do believe India is ready to turn marketing imagery on its head. The bottom-of-the-pyramid market will admire this and will certainly reward this effort — with market share, and money, and more than that, consumer affection.
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