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Abstract

Due to globalization and the need to seek out new markets (sometimes labelled as business to 4-billion [B2-4B]), rural marketing is gaining new importance in India as well as across the globe. This article examines three facets: the marketing, linguistic and advertising of these markets. Our study shows that global companies are engaged in devising new strategies to market their products. Indian media planners have pioneered new media forms (for example, Video Vans) combining conventional and non-conventional advertising to meet the challenge of reaching rural India. The result is that messages are customized effectively to meet their audiences’ regional sensibilities and tastes.

The main focus of this study is on the analysis of the messages in the ‘unconventional’ media and wall advertising. We base our study on an empirical investigation of over 2,000 ads in rural settings. The ads include commercial, social and service advertisements. The findings indicate that the advertisers favour the ‘cooperative’ view as opposed to the ‘competitive’ view. They mix languages and scripts to optimize the strength and appeal of their messages. The strengths and limits of the ‘standardization’ versus ‘adaptation’ strategies are accounted for with special reference to the structural properties of wall ads. The directions for future research are outlined.

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Reaching the Unreachable

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