Adgully Exclusive | Sustenance of a BTL activity has to improve: RW Promotions' S Venkatesh

So Adgully caught up with S Venkatesh, Director, RW Promotions Pvt Ltd, to know more about the company's growth plans and the BTL industry's challenges and transformation over the years.

Venkatesh says that as the industry has been growing the product categories investing on the BTL activation is also seeing a transformation. He points out that besides FMCG brands, mobile phones, mobile phone service providers, satellite channels and now off late pharmaceutical companies have been joining the bandwagon for on-ground activation.

He adds, "Service providers today are very aggressive in terms of selling each of their offerings. Now as also the mobile handset prices are reducing even the mobile brands are becoming increasingly aggressive. Moreover there are certain categories which are more aggressive around a particular time of the year, for eg, paint brands get very charged up during festive seasons like Diwali."

However, Venkatesh quickly points out that the sustenance for their business comes through small town satellite channels because these channels are marketing themselves in a big way. He adds that specifically in the rural sector lubricant brands, mobile service providers, pharmaceutical companies are the key drivers.

Recently the company did a lot of work for Max Bupa, a well-known insurance brand in the country. The team conducted medical camps all across corporate, housing societies etc for the financial solution brand.

So is the client's brief always essentially to interact with the consumers?

Venkatesh says, "A brief will always differ from client to client but end of the day it is always sales oriented. We have carried out various activities for our clients where the activity has a social angle and thus in turn it strengthens the brand experience and brand loyalty of a consumer."

He adds that though the industry has grown in leaps and bound, yet 80% of its business is urban based while only 20% rural market based.

"A lot of clients speak of how they have an increasing focus on rural markets but unfortunately there is no sense of continuity to the activities in the rural market," he explains.

When asked if BTL activation can ever work in isolation, Venkatesh says, "Till today BTL has essentially been utilised to support a strong communication plan, but I am not ruling out the possibility that it can work in isolation. BTL activities give great visibility and great returns to a brand, unfortunately when communication partners are planning they treat BTL activity also as a plan. So nobody is really thinking and ideating over a BTL activation, the same creative that is used for various media, is passed on as a brief for BTL activation."

But hasn't the industry also been facing flak for being unregulated?

Venkatesh acknowledges it and adds, "We have a lot fly by night operators; I mean they might do a work for a day and then depart. So if one has to have a recognised regulatory body to look over the functioning of the BTL sector, it is very difficult. India is a very large country and the market dynamics are very different from region to region within a state in the country itself. Hence to get all stakeholders together and to decide upon a fixed pay scale and investment size is a very complicated thing to do."

Venkatesh points out that the BTL industry is growing at 10-15% every year and RW promotions has been growing at an average of 8-10% every year.

However while speaking about a few challenges, he empathetically adds, "Logistics is a major issue. The other thing is that we operate pan India so when we do an activation, our challenge lies in being consistent across all the markets in the country. It is a challenge because every state has a different set of consumers, different infrastructure etc."

Venkatesh has the vision to makes RW Promotions Pvt. Ltd. one of the biggest in terms of BTL activation and also in terms of rural activation. "We also want to be a one stop shop for our client's media needs and thus we recently acquired an INS owned ad agency called Commugrads. We have also launched a production unit called Next Wave," he adds.

While signing off as a word of advice Venkatesh says, "The industry has to improve in terms of sustenance of an activity so that the consumer is constantly interacting and engaging with the brand. Moreover clients have to allow a little freedom to us in terms of costing so that we can come up with clutter breaking work." | By Prabha Hegde [prabha(at)adgully.com]