global branding meets village marketing

by Frank Cutitta

The now-trendy report "Dreaming With BRICs: The Path to 2050" released by Goldman Sachs in 2003 resulted in the acronym for Brazil, Russia, India, and China being inscribed on international business cards as EMEA and APAC have for years.

According to the report, "India's economy ...could be larger than Japan's by 2032 and China's larger than the U.S. by 2041 (and larger than everyone else as early as 2016). The BRICs economies taken together could be larger than the G6 by 2039."

Global marketers visiting Shanghai and Bangalore recently may feel that the BRICÕs theory is not quite that prophetic. Upon arrival one quickly realizes the economic and advertising revolution may be immature, but surely not embryonic. In fact, many executives lament they may have actually missed the boat (or time machine) and arrived a decade too late for proverbial first-in advantage.

Despite the impulse to focus on bustling urban centers, population statistics show that over 900 million Chinese citizens live in rural areas. India's rural population is estimated at approximately 700 million, or over two-thirds of the entire population.

The convergence of information technology, newly created distribution channels, and a nascent consumer appetite are spiriting even the most remote villages into the global economy and the brand messages that stimulate it. A study of the trend in India provides a snapshot of the groundswell in rural advertising.

distribution through social entrepreneurship

Major multinationals including Procter & Gamble, Hewlett-Packard, and Unilever have developed social entrepreneurship and economic self-reliance
programs tailored largely to impoverished women in remote villages who have rudimentary products and entrepreneurial skills.

Such microfinance thought leaders as Mohammed Yunnis, founder of Grameen Bank, have provided thousands of loans of as little as US$50 a
year to enable emerging entrepreneurs to incubate small cottage businesses. These startups then sell products in hattas, or small rural markets, where multiple villages converge on a periodic basis in hopes of expanding their channels.

A showcase of social entrepreneurship is the Shakti Project founded by Hindustan Lever, which provides microfinancing and training to women for the production and marketing of crafts, clothing, and agricultural products.
In Hindustan Lever sister projects, Streamline and Bharat, microcredit is provided for distributorships, or rural stockists, which also serve as liaison for their village-to-village product sampling caravans. To reinforce institutional commitment to rural villages, new Unilever employees are required to live for six to eight weeks in a rural village immersed in the life (and death) of citizens of some of the world's most impoverished areas.

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