Challenges of formulating hyperlocal strategies in a vastly diverse India

Sometime back, one of the head honchos of a leading creative agency was looking to hire an account planner specifically for the Kerala market. The requisite was for the planner to understand Malayalam to decode findings and cull out the perfect insights from various researches that the brand conducted prior to working on their campaign. This clearly signalled that the brand wanted to dive very deep into research and cull out strong insights before they planned their campaign.

India is a diverse country with wide cultural differences, multiple languages different dialects spoken in different districts of each state. So, there is always a challenge as to whether brands are able to send the right brand communication across each region. In the early 90’s, most campaigns were conceived either in English or Hindi and then translated into the respective languages for each region. Sometimes the core message got diluted or lost in translation and brands were not sure if the piece of communication created was addressing each region and state. Looking at this huge gap in their brand communication, brands began to seriously look at regional communication in a different way to bring in that local flavour and nuances.

Reckitt India was one of the first to look at each region separately and decentralised each of their marketing divisions into South, West, North and East. FMCG is a highly competitive market, with several MNCs as well as regional brands jostling for a share of the market. Thus, the need of the hour is to rework brands’ regional marketing and communication to give that extra push with the help of strong local insights.

Already some of the brands in the earlier days used different brand ambassadors for different regions for their campaigns. Even product formulations in the different beveragecategory like tea and coffee is marketed in each regionis based on the taste preferences and the cultural nuances. Building nationally-recognised brands is a double-edged sword. Home grown brands like a Vi John or Havmor have built a loyal following at state or regional level but straying too far from their core brand essence can dilute the equity of the brand. Here one need to guard the mother brand and the core essence of the brand is not disturbed in the regions.

Brands always deliver value when they make meaning to the customers and they have a mantra - why should you exist? This is relevant for the brand in the regional market as the insight is glocal. (‘Thanda Matlab Coca-Cola’ in Hindi is wonderful, but getting the same essence in regional languages is a huge challenge) Therefore, the role of the planner should be to jump to the next curve in experience and hence understanding the cultural milieu is very important. Great innovation occurs on the next curve. The key is to establish a pitch which is high on uniqueness and value. It is not just saying I am 10% better. The key is to get a polarized impact is what will help the brand to differentiate in the market place.

Communication that is used at a national level will not deliver the same punch in the regional markets. Brands always looked at one master language and adapt their communication with translations for the rest of the regions. While respective language writers claim that the translations are original thoughts and may deliver the message but brands are thinking beyond translations and looking at deeper consumers insights and then creating more effective communication which is sharper and addresses the brand challenge for that particular region or market.

While brand planners do partipcate in the focus group etc., but if the planner also understands the language that will be an added advantage to decode the research findings and arrive at a sharper insight. This is huge asking from the agency to hire a planner who is either a linguist or understands 4 to 5 languages. With the cost of media and the production cost for creating the communication quite expensive, brands want to be sure that their communication in each territory is precise before pumping the money and promoting the brand.

We at Adgully reached out to some of the best minds in planning to understand their point of view. According to Suraja Kishore, CEO, BBDO India, “Hyperlocal connections is all about deep listening. And diversity drives deep listening. At BBDO, this is our secret sauce. We have broken down the silos of departments. We believe a creative agency is more about culture than compartments. Therefore, be it a regional campaign for WhatsApp or Ariel #ShareTheLoad, we thrive on the collective rather than just a planning department. Adding further he pointed out that we have mindfully curated a diverse team across planning, servicing, creative, studio, HR & Admin that brings their unique cultural treasure with them to campaigns and brand solutions we are working on.”

Sharing her perspective, Ekta Relan, National Planning Director, Mullen Lintas, said, “Every hundred miles, India changes. Its culture, language, begins to see a new flavor and texture. If you want to do a regional campaign, what helps the most is studying popular culture of the targeted region, watching stand-up comedies coming from that region, talking to teachers, professors, journalists. It helps you go deeper than and beyond the obvious cliches and stereotypes created for every region. This is a regular practice for our Bangalore team that created one of the biggest hyperlocal campaigns for Tata Tea Premium with the plank ‘The tea of India with the true taste of your region’. And then the work done for Tata Tea Kanan Devan & Chakra Gold tapped into truly unique idiosyncrasies of Kerala and Tamil Nadu respectively, which strike a tasteful chord with its audience.”

Adding further, she pointed out that it is always a good idea to have planners from different states and backgrounds as it fuels rich, diverse perspective into all your work. “But we cannot possibly have a planner representing every region that our product targets in one office. However, we do have other people (not necessarily planners) across offices from different states. We tap into them all the time for relevant insights. Talking about their growing up years, home town rituals, local passions for or against things, always comes up with interesting regional truths,” she added.

 

The answer, as usual, lies not in additional resources (it is not an additional set of deliverables), but in a change of perspective, embedding insight and therefore, behavior, opined Anirban Mozumdar, Chief Strategy Officer, 82.5 Communications.

According to Mozumdar, “First, we need planners to bring their whole selves to work – all of us immigrants trying to assimilate ourselves to one corporate whole must change. We must also be the Bengali, the Tamilian, the Odiya, the Punjabi we really, truly are. Diversity in hiring in the Indian context should also include trying to include talent who hail from different parts of the country.”

Continuing further, he said, “Second, we need an “insider” perspective rather than an observer perspective (an -emic, meaning from within the social/ linguistic group rather than an -etic which is how others perceive the group). This would help us connect rather than to perpetuate stereotypes. This is possible by: local research and local moderators if this is at the insight level, local language and Delphi interviews with teachers, language and literature specialists and culture experts and then handing over execution to a local creative team.”

“Market immersions along with local office and client sales teams, learning or speaking a language day sort of events, encouraging culture sharing sessions among agency people could also help. Lastly, work with a local creative team, production house or even a language creator!” he added.

 

Satish Krishnamurthy, Chief Strategy Officer, TBWA India, remarked, “A brand has to work on various levels. At the national level, a tone of voice establishes the brand personality. This is critical, as it sets the context for all brand-building efforts. At the regional level, by demonstrating that it relates to the audience, the brand builds relevance. Both these levels have to work together.”

He further said that setting up a separate planning cell for each region is not the answer to the problem. Agencies that handle regional brands focus on local insights to build the brand. “Our planning team uses intelligence tools, online research, and personal interactions to identify local subtleties that can be leveraged to build the brand idea across different regions. When we extended the footprint of a paint brand in Bengal, we went deep to unravel the real ethos of Bengali culture. We enlisted Saurav Ganguly to design communication that reflected the intellectual curiosity of Bengalis, their questioning nature, and their fierce love for tradition. These nuances, combined with colloquial language and glimpses of Bengali culture struck a chord and drove a successful launch. When the agency deeply understands the regional culture and accurately reflects it in communications, magic can happen for the brand.”

“To get a Malayali to make Undhiyo that hits the spot of Gujaratis or to get a Bengali to make curd rice that has Tamilians in raptures is not impossible, but is certainly improbable. It is the case with advertising too,” said Vishal Nicholas, EVP & Head- Planning & Strategy, dentsuMB India and Dentsu Impact.

“The creators of vernacular campaigns need to be steeped in two things – the language and the culture of the state. ‘I have been in Bangalore for 10 years’ is not enough to make you an expert in creating communications for Kannadigas. What is more important is either you are a Kannadiga or you are someone who knows the language and popular culture of the state, you get thrills out of receiving and sending memes/ Whatsapp jokes in Kannada and so on. The other thing for the planning team is to figure out the limit of their competencies. Insights can come from anyone within the agency who is an expert on the state. In fact, it is a guarantee it won’t come from the planner on the brand unless he/ she is from that state or has grown up there or he/ she is given 2 months to research the state, which is a luxury nobody has.”

Nicholas further aid, “At dentsuMB, we have already created a hyperlocal team of experts on each state – across servicing, planning and creative. Moreover, for Tata Tea, one of our clients who is well known for its hyperlocal marketing approach, we have structured our teams according to expertise on states. In this case, where the chef is from is more important than which department he is from.”

Marketing
@adgully

News in the domain of Advertising, Marketing, Media and Business of Entertainment