Will non-metros propel the growth of Indian advertising?
In smaller towns, you have many more consumers and there is also a lot more development happening out there. This gives opportunities for bigger modern trade as rentals are lower. There are also many more brands coming out of smaller towns and a lot of newer advertisers as well. This is a story across categories. All of this is creating more and more opportunities for all sides.
We have initiatives from the media also. They invest in smaller town editions, bring out special editions, come out with content that speaks the dialect of those towns. All of these are creating more and more avenues for consumption in those markets. All of this adds up to an exciting demand-and-supply situation. This propels the advertising budgets for not just local brands but also for national brands getting aggressive in these areas.
In the case of retail chains and jewellery showrooms, they may originate in one small place in a tier-two town or tier-three town. But they open more branches. Some of them even enter the big cities. There is also a lot of competition in the local markets. For advertising, in the print medium, a lot of regional media, rather than mainstream English publications, will benefit from this. In television, there is content that is nationally accepted, like cricket. A lot of governmental spending on advertising is also likely in 2015. So, there is also a lot of national advertising feeding into the local media and also a local advertiser that goes on to become national advertiser.
Large advertising agency groups are traditionally focused on the big metros. As a group we have, for the last few years, been working on this development and trying to penetrate the smaller markets.
We even have an office in Kerala and have out-of-home advertising units that cater to markets such as Uttar Pradesh.
We are consistently progressing in that direction. Smaller brands require a lot more services and hand-holding. We are not yet a large player on that but there is good growth in that direction. We will obviously focus on that too.
In print media there are some segments that are in a state of decline. Will smaller towns give them a new lease of life?
It’s about how we treat these tier-two markets. The moment we create products that engage this audience, we will surely see newer avenues of growth. It also remains to be seen how efficiently we can create a business model from that context.
(As told to Prasad Sangameshwaran)
Prashanth Kumar is CEO Designate, Mindshare