Audiowala Busstand

In India, rural areas of various states speak various languages and it becomes difficult for the brands to communicate to the people of these areas. Advertisers use various ways in which they can communicate differently to different set of target audiences. Different states have different climatic conditions and different tastes and preferences. For every advertiser, to promote one product in all states of India is a brain storming process and requires a lot of innovative inputs along with perfect implementation. The mentality of people in rural areas also differs from people in cities. An advertiser needs to keep that in mind and should not use any strategy that can harm the sentiments of the rural population. Now a days rural population is easily adapting to change and is developing day by day in all fields. They have become open to new products and services and are readily accepting what is new in the market. With growing technological development, their mindsets have been developing and this has become helpful due to right promotion of right type of products in the right way to the right target audience. Rural population has been in the state of advancement due to awareness of products and services created by promoters like Vritti iMedia who aim at promoting a range of products through their exclusive branding and marketing strategies like the Audiowala Bus Stands campaign that is run in almost all bus stands of the states – Maharashtra, Punjab, Goa, Rajasthan and Karnataka. This campaign has been a successful one for the past few years and has brought extensive growth to the rural markets. Brands from all the sectors have associated with Vritti iMedia from fields ranging from banking to food & beverages and many more. Dupont from the agriculture field; Banks like SBI,Union bank and Central Bank; Parle, Vicco, Godrej, Lux of FMCG category; Honda, Bajaj, Maruti from the automobiles sector; LIC from insurance sector have collaborated for rural promotion through Audiowala bus stands by Vritti.Idea and Airtel from Telecom industry; Tata Steel; Pedilite have also been suing these advertising facilities. Various retailers, corporate and government bodies have associated with Vritti for announcing their services. The list is endless but what is more important is the result. These campaigns have been very impactful to these brands for promoting their products and services in the rural markets. All the hard work and efforts of experts from team Vritti have helped in the success of all these campaigns.

2014 has been a year full of achievements, not only for the nation but also for us at Vritti I Media. Vritti I media chalked out some amazing campaigns that helped the brands to flourish in the rural India. We would like to share our success story with you and therefore we bring to you 2014’s most successful campaigns set out by Vritti I Media. Honda two wheelers – Honda is the world’s largest manufacturer of Two Wheelers and were looking for the opportunity in the Rurban areas. The objective of the ‘Audiowala Bus Station’ campaign was to create awareness and drive sales for its launched bikes Honda Dream Neo & Honda Dream Yuga to the small towns and Rural Market of Karnataka. They wanted to target middle income employed people, farmers and Businessmen from various small towns and villages of Karnataka. During Diwali the 2 bikes Honda Dream Neo & Honda Dream Yug were displayed at Bus stations of Karnataka , wherein the Test  ride was also provided. Audio teaser/schemes were being played in between the announcements at 31 ST Bus stations through its Computerised PA system-Motivating people to come to stall inside Bus stations . Along with Teasers there was also Product/Brand communication talking about the features and benefits of products through the computerized PA system at 64 Locations for 2 months. This promotion was done at 64 important Bus stations across Karnataka and reach of the campaign was approximately 10000 people per day. The Activity was smooth & grand success. Overall reach of 50 Million through the audio campaign and estimated 2 lakh visitors coming from District and Taluka places and villages  and the campaign helped Honda get 83,996 Enquiries, and 487 on the spot booking. Parle Marie – Parle Products has been India’s largest manufacturer of biscuits and confectionery for almost 80 years. The objective of ‘Audiowala Bus station’ was to create awareness & popularize about Brand “Parle Marie” amongst masses in small towns and rural market where their main brand Parle Glucose is already popular. Facing the strong competition from Britannia and ITC it was never too easy to establish the name overnight. But Vritti iMedia took the challenge and selected the audiowala bus stands to kick start the promotions. Their main aim was to tap the travelers who stop by the canteen to have tea. By having the tie ups with the canteen and tea stalls they successfully started their Parle Marie pe chai free offer. The promotion of the offer through catchy jingles in the local languages created a lot of buzz among the people. Increase in sales from 60 packets per day to 600 packets itself speaks a lot. Parle Marie sold 40000 thousands packets in just 7 day in 30 district location through the ST bus stands of Maharashtra. Good Knight Fast Card – Godrej Consumer Products Limited is the largest home-grown home and personal care Company in India. Our marketing campaign that is ‘Audiowala Bus Station’ was for Good Knight smart card. The main objective was to thoroughly educate rural consumers of Maharashtra about Good Knight’s innovative cost-effective mosquito repellant – Fast Card. During the “Pandharpur Ashadi Ekadashi”, which is the biggest Yatra Vritti I Media carried out this campaign. From over 30 Bus stations across Mahrashtra State, Devotees travelling to Pandharpur were guided about the bus schedules and were wlecomed through Public Announcement Systems accompanied with the informative Fast Card jingles at Bus Stands across Maharashtra. This Audio campaign was released 20 days before the main Ashadi ekadashi to build some initial momentum and create some inquisitiveness about the Fast card. Temporary hoarding and boards with information like important locations and their directions, along with the Good Knight Fast Card branding and use, were erected at strategic points around the Town of pandharpur. 5 lakh Booklets containing Bhajan and information about the city like the locations, directions, and bus schedules as well as the information about Good Knight Fast Card were distributed to every second person in the city. Bhajan Mandaps were established near the temple and river area, which are the prime spots of rest for the pilgrims where the devotees got to sit and participate in Bhajan Kirtans. Volunteers announced about Good Knight Fast Card sponsorships and basic product information during the intervals. Also those who could not experience the actual view of the deity at a recommended time could watch it on the 8×6 LED TVs. Fast card product information’s was given through L-bands and scrollers, and were telecast in between intervals which made numerous devotees emotional and grateful towards Good Knight Fast Card. 1, 44,400 sample packs in and around Pandharpur were distributed and through Demo’s we touched   5lakh devotees in 7 days time. The campaign was very successful and helped the sales of Good Knight smart card. Well these are not the only success stories we have more which we shall bring to you in our next blog so stay tuned.

Can you imagine an ad running on the TV without any audio??? Well that will not make any sense and in a similar way any advertising without the audio is ineffective. If you try to recollect the famous ads then you will realize that the one thing you remember about them is their audio or jingles or the slogan. Be it washing powder nirma or recently Har ek friend zaroori hota hai, you must have noticed that you can recall the audio easily. Music and advertising is a combination that helps the audience to connect with the ad in an emotional way. Studies shows that audio in an advertisement has more recall value than the video. Audio mediums have their own set of strengths. For many businesses, Audio mediums are much more affordable, convincing and effective advertising media. Unlike newspaper ads, audio ads are more than just ink on paper. Apart from audio advertising, a major theme is that each medium has its own biases. Apparently, each medium presents certain types of information easily and well. Compared with Print, Television and Computers, audio seems to be relatively stimulating to the cognitive process of imagination. SBI-KCC (State Bank of India – Kisan Credit Card) campaign conducted by Vritti iMedia is a fair and clear example of audio advertising. The purpose of SBI-KCC is to provide timely and adequate credit to farmers to meet their production credit needs besides meeting contingency expenses, and expenses related to ancillary activities through simplified procedure facilitating availment of the loans as and when needed. To identify the power of audio ads Vritti I Media carried out a research of SBI-KCC campaign in Karnataka through which we came to know about the following facts :- Out of every 500 hundred people 477 witnessed the automated bus announcements. 308 people heard the announcement of SBI-KCC. When asked about their opinions on the ad around 35% people felt that the ad was very good and informative. Around 237 out of every 500 people wait on the bus stops for more than 15 mins which confirms that they have heard the ads. The positive point’s people have mentioned about the SBI-KCC coming to Bus stand Audio media are: people are happy to know about the details of loans at bus stand. They feel that this process of passing information will reach most of the farmers. Also it was educating and audio was very clear and loud. This brings us to a conclusion that audio medium is far more a better medium when it comes to reach and the recall value.

Posted by Missing Billi ‘O Bharat maa teri santaan hai hum, Tune diya hume jo bhi… Useke liye tujhe Pranaam’ Prakash reached home in the evening, as soon as he entered home he yelled at the top of his voice to his wife and said, “Arey Sudha, soun rahi ho! Aaj toh mai unsab ko khatam hi kar dunga, koi nahi baachega!!” Sudha wondered who was he talking about and Prakash continued, “Dekho mai kya laaya hu? Good Knight Coil! Ye ghar ke sabhi machhro ko mardega aur muje aachi neendh lene dega.” Sudha giggled and said, “Ye sab kya laaya karte ho, inn maacharo is chutkara pane ke liye?” “Areey vo aaj bus station pe intaazar kar raha tha, tabhi maine ek jaheraat mai soun, ‘Good Knight coil aur laagao maachar bhagao!’ Aur uske advantages baataye. Aysi aur bhi kahi jaheraatain bus announcement ke beech-beech mai aati raheti hai,” explained Prakash. Prakash is one of those millions of people travelling between the bus stations that link rural – semi urban – urban areas, these millions are what Suddha Desi’s target audience is. The buzz of the increasing demand of premium products in these rural and the semi urban areas is to an extent the work of the so called ‘Audiowala Bus Stations.’ The announcement speakers at the bus stations are the medium through which the ads are played at intervals between the schedule announcements. Since the passengers have to compulsorily listen to the announcement to keep up on the schedule, they have to mandatorily listen to the infotaining sound clips that keep playing in intervals. The tool of Suddha Desi is an amazingly designed medium of mass communication that helps in rural marketing and also helps to inform & entertain the bored commoner at the bus station. This in turn creates awareness about the premium products, the demand for which has considerable increased in the rural and semi urban areas. According to researches 75% of the Indian population lives rural and semi- urban areas and today these areas are fast mirroring the urban areas. With proper research and analysis, Vritti iMedia have considered all the facts that add up to the advantage of creating awareness in the rural areas and if we look at it from the macro point of view it has also helped develop India.