The Hindu Business Line : `Advertisement perception varies among urban, rural audiences'

IF beauty lies in the eye of the beholder, so do advertising messages. A study on the response to television commercials within both urban and rural audiences reveals that the message the ad gives out varies in perception along with the geographical and cultural differences of the viewers.

The study, carried out jointly by MART-Anugrah Madison, surveyed regular TV viewers among men and women in the age group of 18 to 50 in both urban and rural area and considered issues such as the viewers' overall comprehension of the message beamed by the commercial, how far they believed the claim made by the company, whether they associated with the characters in the advertisement, the attraction and acceptability of the commercial and whether it involved viewers emotionally.

For the study four television adverts were chosen, two from the FMCG sector and two from durables, of brands that had both rural and urban appeal and were currently appearing at prime time in the local languages as well. The ads chosen were Babool toothpaste, Navrathna Hair Oil, Samsung Plano Digital Flat TV and Asian Paints Exterior Emulsion. The total 60 respondents were from both the North and South of the country. The 40 rural respondents were from villages under Tamil Nadu's Kancheepuram and Tiruvallur districts in the South, Haryana's Faridabad district and Uttar Pradesh's Dadri Gautambuddha district in the North. The 20 urban respondents were from Chennai and New Delhi.

The study revealed the differences in urban and rural comprehension — often adverts are too sleek, fast moving and perceived very differently by the rural viewer. For instance in the case of the Babool advert several rural viewers expressed confusion in comprehension and did not associate with the young couple, child and dog in the storyboard. One of the oft-asked questions was why a dog was being shown for a toothpaste ad.

The Navrathna oil ad too generated disbelief, "If you have a headache or body ache and are to use

Navrathna thailam to remove it, you would not be dancing," was a view expressed both by urban as well as rural audiences. In fact, the presence of Govinda as the main dancer was lost on the rural viewers.

The Samsung bio rays ad too suffered from the believability factor among both rural and urban viewers. While urban viewers liked the feel of the rose petals emerging from the Samsung TV screen, they felt that the advertiser should state clearly what they were trying to say. Rural viewers felt totally left out. "The ad is for people in Chennai"; "It's only meant for the rich and educated were some of the south Indian rural responses. The north Indian rural viewer showed even less interest, "Pata nahin kis cheez ka (advt) hai", said some.

The Asian Paints ad depicting a house that does not look run down with time, while the owner's car does and the family enlarges had a comprehension crisis in terms of product identity, but the appealed to both audiences. The ad was easily recalled, but there was no recall on the sub brand. In the rural context the storyline remained with viewers, but they could not make out the product. Some thought the house was being advertised

"The study gave us several learnings," says Mr Pradeep Kashyap, Director MART. He explains how rural viewers are unable to relate to icons and celebrity models from other regions and how slow paced ads that lack ambiguity, have minimum dialogue and powerful characterisation would go down better with hinterland consumers. The need of the hour, says the study, is greater sensitivity to the urban-rural divide at the research, strategy and execution stages of ad campaigns.

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