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Question2. Discuss the Innovative use of media in rural areas.

Answer:- Innovative use of media in rural areas

In spite of fundamental differences in urban and rural psychology and buying patterns,

marketers use most of the true and tried mass media for rural marketing also. The immense

diversity of rural cultures and low literacy just make it more challenging. A successful

campaign mixes the traditional and modern media cleverly to get the best results.

Television: Due to the government supplying free televisions in rural areas for broadcasting

educational and farming programmes, actual community television sets are common. But

there may not be power supply, the sets may not be well maintained, and are usually kept in

the house of a powerful or affluent village leader where people gather in the evening. In such

places women rarely join and are thus out of reach for commercials. Yet, due to its

combination of music, speech, colour and movement, it remains a powerful tool to reach less

educated people.

Radio: Although radio, especially transistor radio had been wildly popular in rural areas, it

has lost it hold in the past decade. But its power as a medium remains it is portable,

excellent medium for the illiterate and jingles make a brand unforgettable. Perhaps more

attention should be paid to building back the power of radio as an advertising tool.

Cinema: Not many rural areas have movie halls and shows have to be paid for, which pretty

much takes it out of the means of rural families. Separate sitting for men and women is still

prevalent, which may be as unattractive to a rural family as an urban one. However, thelarger than life impact of cinema advertising remains timeless.

Print: Men of Indian villages have the age-old tradition of gathering at village centres or tea

shops to discuss everything from politics to plane crashes they read about in newspapers.

Vernacular newspapers or newspapers that are published in local languages are read by

some 24% of village folks. These men are the opinion creators, influence their families and

take all the buying decisions.

Literacy is much higher in south India and newspapers and magazines can be as useful as

for urban advertising.

Question3. Briefly discuss about Advertising Objectives.

Answer:- Advertising Objectives

A company does not release entertaining television commercials or colourful press ads

spending millions of rupees for some entertaining or artistic reasons. It approaches an

advertising agency because it has an urgent need in hand, often a serious problem. An

advertiser usually has one or several of the following objectives:

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Increase brand awareness: Sometimes even a brand selling well may have poor brand

awareness, especially in FMCG products. The users may be habitual buyers with no great

awareness of the distinctive features of the brand. The campaign may aim to sharpen brand

awareness by creating a focused brand personality and keep reinforcing it over a period of

time.

Enhance brand image: Even a successful brand may come under severe pressure from

either new brand competition or another old brand introducing new features. The campaign

objective may be to strengthen the clients brand image as the brand stands now, by

reminding the target all its relevant benefits.

Introduce new features or improved version: In a competitive market, each producer is

constantly working to incrementally improve his product just to stay ahead of competition

and only then to serve his customers better. When a successful new feature or a new

version altogether of the brand is introduced, a major campaign is necessary.

Increase sale:As mentioned earlier, advertising is only one component of the marketing mix

and in itself cannot increase sale. But it does play a huge role. Therefore, the agency has to

define clearly its role in this process. Sale may even decrease for the moment due to poor

supply chain, bad after-sale support, indifferent salesmanship, or as it is happening in 2008-

09, global economic downturn. In such a situation, the job of advertising is to keep the brand

in front of the target and not necessarily expect immediate increase in sale. Besides,

advertising is a long term tool and often is not even designed to increase sale immediately.

Increase profit: Increasing profit is different from increasing sale. Especially in FMCGproducts, the top line may keep growing due to many promotional activities and price wars,

yet the bottom line can tank, due to thinning margins. The campaign may try to create better

prestige or reliability for the brand, so that it will need less promotional expense and thus

increase profit.

Question4. Describe the Tools and Techniques of Sales Promotion in brief.

Answer:- Tools and Techniques of Sales Promotion

Consumer sales promotions are aimed at the end users of the product typically individualshoppers in the local market. But the same techniques can be used to promote products

sold by one business to another, as is done in trade fairs, which target resellers and

wholesalers. These are designed to sell more of machinery, capital goods, intermediary

industrial products, etc. over the competitors.

These are some of the standard tools used for sales promotions.

Price-offs: the most common price deals are:

Discounts

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Bonus packs which have several units packed together with a price lower than that of units

bought individually, usually FMCG products

Refunds

Exchange for bringing in the used product, usually for household consumer durable

equipment Rebates

Coupons issued in specific local media, which give a few rupees off when brought to the

local shop, usually household FMCG products.

Price discounts: intended to encourage trial use of a new or an improved and relaunched

product to recruit new buyers for a mature brand or to convince existing buyers to use more

of it. It also introduces a brand extension, when a new product is introduced in the same

brand name in the same line of a very successful and established brand. For instance, a Lux

shampoo. Here the shampoo will ride on the back of the phenomenal popularity of the Lux

bath soap. Price-off works best when price is the customers foremost concern, as in daily

use household goods where brand loyalty is extremely low. A housewife will buy another

brand of cooking oil or detergent in the same class for just one or two rupees less.

Refunds: It is an offer by a marketer to return a certain amount of money when a product is

purchased. It aims to increase the quantity or frequency of use, to encourage customers to

load up on the product. For instance, for X brand of cooking oil, Rs. 4 refunded in exchange

of every empty packet. Offer valid for two weeks. An ordinary family may not use that much

oil in two weeks, but the housewife will buy anyway and stockpile it. This strategy dampens

competition by temporarily taking all consumers of that product category out of the market,

especially in FMCG products.

Question5. What is a full service agency? What are specialist agencies? Why are they

needed?

Answer:- Advertiser and Advertising Agency

The advertiser is the company, individual, institution or government which places an

advertisement in the mass media and pays for it. It may be a manufacturer who produces a

product for mass or niche consumption. It can be a scientific or research institution which

needs something, employees in a recruitment ad, for instance. Or wants to inform the public

about its achievements. Or an educational institution announcing its specializations in an

admission ad. It may be a government informing the citizens about facilities it offers or its

achievements, especially at election times. Even an individual, which ranges from simple

buy & sell to offering a service, such as Shakuntala Devis astrology and numerology ads.

They and many other kinds are all advertisers in paid mass media who often employ

advertising agencies for specific professional services.

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Full service advertising agency

An advertising agency is only one component of todays bewilderingly complex marketing

mix, which, like in any other concerted activity, must act together to achieve a rising sales

curve. Until the late 20th century, most good agencies were what were called full service

agencies, meaning they offered almost all of the above services.

Specialist agencies

Now communication is so complex, specialized and fragmented that advertising services

also have become so. Now there are agencies which do only the creative work or filming of

commercials, or the still photography, or outdoor advertising. Media space and time buying

and selling is a multi-million rupee business in itself, which in turn sells it back to smaller

agencies who do not have the media clout to get good bargains and positions. Even full

service advertising agencies themselves are specialized some do only FMCG products, or

IT, technical, engineering, recruitment or tender advertising and carry a whole team of highly

skilled and specialized professionals who are the tops in their business. It is a highly

competitive world and considering the proliferation of products, services and explosion of

media today, the specializations are necessary.

Question6. Describe the Demographic influences on Advertising in brief.

Answer:- Demographic Influences on Advertising

Like in every other area of life, advertising also has not only grown in leaps and bounds andhasbecome far more effective, in some ways it has changed its character altogether. The

most important factor that directly or even indirectly influencing advertising is the

demographic factors or the characteristics of the population. Even if combined with other

factors such as social, political or environmental, they could be associated with demographic

indicators like age, gender, family structure, migration of people, education levels, so on.

Demographic changes

Demographic segments and the obvious changes in them are easier to define and analyse.

Let us now see how these influence advertising.

Lifestyle

India always had different lifestyles in different parts of the country, marked by language,

food, religion, etc. But there was uniformity within that segment at least. Not anymore. Whole

new lifestyles are in the market now, which cut across ethnic and local traditions. Urban

Indias lifestyle is changing very fast. Young handsome rock star gurus like Vikas Malkani

who runs a hep MTV style Soul Centre in New Delhi presenting Indian philosophy in easy to

follow contemporary language to tarot card reader, the interests are very different.

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Technology

India has an amazing capacity to adopt the latest technology available anywhere in the

world. A country which did not have even television until late 1980s, today literally consumes

the latest gadgets and gizmos with limitless appetite. In a 2007 survey carried out by

Economic Times Dentsu on 3,000 correspondents across India, dependence on

technology is clearly defined. Some 51% of urban Indians feel life will be difficult without a

mobile, 93% feel life will be really tough without text messaging, 90% cannot do without

television, and Internet dependency is universal. 32% in 18-25 years age group said life

would be hard without the music and camera features on a mobile. But then, this was an

online survey, so a biased one.

Aggressive middle class

Indian middle class has become the object of keen observation for everybody from MNC

consumer products to political campaign planners. Whole books and furious research

projects are being written on this phenomenon. It is a grossly over rated class, in numbers,

consumption volume and desires. Rough estimate is that there are about 50 million families

in India in middle class who really do buy branded products significantly.