How marketers are trying to make mela marketing work in rural India.

Trade the unctuous store attendants for glib salesmen, replace security with armed policemen and swap mall rats for a motley bunch of sadhus and saints, and we wager it would be hard to tell malls and melas apart. The two are more similar than different: sharply focused on apparel, essentials, entertainment, footwear and food, and given to an influx of large numbers of people looking for a discount or an exciting experience among other things. The similarity extends to stores where the entire assortment is available at a fixed price point. Or a massive size and spread of assortment; some melas have as many as 3,000 different stalls.

The 2013 Maha Kumbh was a watershed moment in mela marketing with ColgateBSE 0.06 %, Vodafone, DaburBSE -1.20 % and HULBSE -0.13 % all participating. But the history of mela marketing is ancient: perhaps older than marketing as we know it today.

Predictably enough, marketers want in on melas to the extent possible and permissible. Both psLive (the rural specialist division of Dentsu Aegis) and WPP’s Geometry Global claim to create mela calendars for marketers to tell them which among the 25,000 odd events every year are worth their while. According to Deepak Oberoi, chairman and CEO, RCM, “There’s a difference between religious melas like the Kumbh that draw 5 crores to 8 crores of people over 30 to 40 days and smaller, festive melas that last for a shorter time frame and typically bring in 10,000 to 20,00 people a day, with a mix of urban and rural audience.” The latter are a better bet since they tend to be more marketing friendly, he says.

Why is this such a big deal, you ask? Quite simply it’s the greatest aggregator of an otherwise very diverse and hard to reach audience. Mass media is not a safe bet and rural marketing operations that go from village to village are prohibitively expensive. Says Ashish Bhasin, chairman and CEO, Dentsu Aegis South Asia, “It’s an opportunity to get a sizable number of rural consumers at one go and in a way they come to you with money in their pockets.” “The choice is getting to be between the

50,000 villages or the 200 melas,” adds Rahul Saigal, president, Geometry Global. A choice that isn’t really a choice for marketers in these cash strapped times.

Article Source : Economic Times

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Joe David

Joe David grew up in a business family and done his MBA in Marketing and Finance. After working with educational institute for more than 5 years he chooses to write on various educational stuffs on Easy Management Notes. Also, he provides mentorship to MBA Students.