Message Designing: Rural vs. Contemporary Approach

Communication is midas touch now a days. Livelihood to habits, role models to destination, even our thinking is being affected by the media. . Now a day’s media is not a mere source of information but is mind & mood manager too. No any house, mind, work or step can be identifying without the interference of the media. We can not find a single episode of life without media; birthday parties to religious ceremonies all are adopted from the media. Our bed room to bath-room all over captured by the media approach. These all have been possible only due to media involvement in promotional communication. Small chaps to senior citizen all are identifying the goods, food stuffs, house hold items and very personal thing of life as per the media instructions. This impact was in our metros for decade ago, but after globalization and WTO amendments our rural communities are also well exposed to media and the consumerism. Now one can purchase Glister to Faa in any village. The reach of the product is not enough to sell it in the particular communities. The major thing is ‘to aware’ them abut the product, to achieve the goals of trade.

So for the very concrete purpose of trade we have to take care about the policies of communication, communication concepts and communication strategies of / about any product. Now let’s discusses about the major issues of promotional communication.

Any promotional communication campaign will be led by stellar facts of five key pillars. Those are

�Education
�Business
�Science and Technology
�Environment
�Creative Art

But the very important pillar of all above episode that is geographical and demographical criticality of any target audience is being ignored in the promotional communication scene of India. By the way; the rural promotional communication scene is not a very small one. It’s well known and proved by the several marketing researches that our rural market is big one for advertisers and producers. Due to impact of LPG environment and a growth in purchasing power of rural communities now rural market is ready for the “brand war”. For any brand war promotional communication is a tool in modern media boom era.

For the country like India where society can stratified and classified on the basis of their race, culture, behavior etc. any promotional communication can not get successes without involvement of their traditional social norms and values. As I already mentioned the Pillars of promotional communication must be analyzed for rural promotional communications. If we analyze it, we will get two major pillar of five which have a power to deal with rural market; that is no. 1. Science and technologies & no. 2. Creative Art.

Science and technologies reflects the availability of media, accessibility of media, and their approach for any particular media, hence the creative art is the portion of message designing for any promotional communication.

The matter of media exposure is the not matter of discussion because now a days all societies are well exposed towards media, as NRS survey reflects that It is quite clear that the groups which are exclusively reached by press or television are practically non-existent. The reach of “only press” (i.e. no other medium) is only 1.8 % and the reach of “only television” is 6.3 %. In fact nearly everyone is reached by Press and television.

As shown in the media scene, if every community of rural involvement is well exposed towards media, the communication concept must be lies as per modern media requirements.

The message designing approach is being affected by one major factor that is also being ignored by all communicators when they are designing any promotional message. That is the demographical- socio graphical criticality of any rural community. Our rural audiences, who are having a big market in itself, must be analyzed. Several companies like MRF tractor tires, airtel mobile, pepsi and coke understands this concept of communication to design the message.

Let’s think about brand repositioning communication of different cola companies after the “PESTICIDES EPISODE”. The just divert themselves their messages as per the rural temperament and observed a positive result. Remember the advertisement containing the message of coca cola for rural touch from ganne vich tamater kithe to havarah bridge per ghumaunga or the message designing of the To karban kitana chapega it all reflects the actual impact of message designing as per the rural temperament. Or another example of the Sachin ayo re bhaiya in pepsi advertisement. All these advertisements are well exposed and can be categorized under the four pillars of message designing.

The case study of MRF tractor tyres may be a good one to reanalyze the scene. The whole communication strategy was designed for the rural publics, in their own language and a very common folk media was being used to communicate that message; that was the use of street plays for their promotional communication. The impact of the whole communication strategy reflects in their sales and recall of the brand. Although this methodology was being adopted when the communication channels (Different media vehicles) were not well exposed in the rural communities, and the communication having only one aspect for the rural communities and that would be of folk media base.

Now some thing about contemporary approach, as stated by Piyush Pandey chairman O & M India, there are three things Idea, Credibility & Uniqueness. Advertisers keep harping on the fact that it is uniqueness and freshness that stand an advertisement and a brand apart. He stated that if a celebrity is used repeatedly, than it clearly beat that purpose. Boredom becomes stronger with repetition. There is certainly a fatigue factor when a celebrity is over used. The important thing is that the people should find a connection between the celebrity and salability of a certain product, and the advertisement should be such that the celebrity must never dominate the brand, the brand should be on central point.

The second scene of contemporary advertising scene is retrograde advertisements portrays a women as a subservient helpers. Advertisements tend to imply that women have no existence except their X brand.

It does not mean that I advocates advertising is some sort of moral guide, but it still has certain responsibilities towards society as it affected millions of publics.

Such advertisements, which portrays women as a sex object having less impact on brand recall. The whole attention of the viewers lies on the X factor. Due to different temperament this strategy can fails in rural communities where values and norms are key factors to perceive the message. As communication encoding and decoding factor reality that the field of reference should be equal, the communication also faces a barrier when it is communicating against the values and norms of the society.

So it will be a matter of rethinking about rural communication, where norms and values lead their personal lives, how we can communicate about any product without a glance on their proximity.

So for very keen purpose of any communication rather it will be of promotional one, we have to be familiar with communication proximity and audiences field of interest.

Suggestions-

1.Message should be as per the norms, values, interest of the rural communities. So it will be the matter of consideration how to design.

2.The norms, values, interest of any rural community would be common, but it will vary community to community, so the professional must be aware about the different societies and he must design different message for different community. Other wise it will not be rectify as per the content.

3. Message designing must be in their mother tongs, because any message can not be rectify as per rectifiers requirement.

4.These messages can be designed in their folk medium, as in folk culture. It does not mean that I am advocating the folk media for rural promotional communication, but it can portray in messages to make proximity, and we can found a huge response on the matter.

5.We can use any channel of communication (mass media tool) but it should be as pr the maximum exposure and suitability of the audiences. For the purpose we have to design message as per folk base.

References-

Chaplen, R & Glain (2004), Agren, Agriculture research Network, vol. 127 Jan 2003.

Pandey, Piyush (2005), media trial, agencyfgs.

Permeshwaran, Even M.G.(2005), Advertising express.

Rinten, Sudhir K. (2004), AAO MEDIA MEDIA KHELE, GANDIV VARANASI.