There’s no surprise in learning that over 70%, (roughly 670 million) of India’s teeming masses live in rural areas. Of these, some 260 million live in almost complete media darkness, without access to TV, radio, and beyond the reach of newspapers and magazines. Widespread illiteracy allied with the multitude of languages and dialects puts the most of these people beyond the reach of conventional media planning.

Yet the villagers are increasingly important as consumers. A survey by India’s National Centre for Applied Economics and Research revealed double-digit rural growth rates in a cross section of products ranging from scooters to confectionery between 1995 and 1999.

For companies such as Unilever, Nestle, Glaxo, Lucky Goldstar rural consumers are a huge market opportunity. About 45% of soaps, 40% of teas and 60% of watches sold in rural India. Now that penetration for many consumer products in urban areas is high, the rural markets are growing in importance for both marketers and their agencies.

Ogilvy Outreach, O&M’s rural arm, started with one employee supported by the head of the media division in 1994. Today it has a team of 1,000 supervisors plus another 5,000 people who work on a project basis

According to D. K. Bose, Ogilvy Outreach’s president, selling in rural India is no longer restricted to using mobile vans with television sets screening Hindi film songs interspersed with messages about a product. New avenues include games (with the product being given as a prize), door-to-door sales, folk dances, wall paintings, and even putting up shoe racks in temples, putting tiles in village wells, plus occasionally painting the horns of cows, and putting up scarecrows.

Tapping the rural market calls for new insights into what helps consumers remember and understand brand messages. Research carried out by Ogilvy Outreach discovered that the rural audience identifies more with colours, numbers, and visuals of animals all woven together in loud colorful messages. These findings appear supported by the high recall levels enjoyed by brands like Lifebuoy (popularly known as the lal sabun), 555, and Monkey brand tooth powder.

McCann Erickson are also developing rural initiatives in India. Their strategy for the rural market is built on two key planks. Consumer Insight which will helps understand rural consumers from their own perspective and Experiential marketing, which executives say will be the most relevant, emotive and impactful tool, given the language and cultural diversity of rural India.

Currently ResultMcCann, which is McCann India's integrated Communications Company, is working for TERI (Tata Energy Research Institute) on a World Bank funded project for Farmer education on Farm Forestry in the rural areas.

The knowledge gained from rural marketing in India is already being applied in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Africa, and part of China and may yet prove the pathway that extends the franchise of many brands to Asia’s rural billions beyond the reach of television and the internet.