Geometry has without a doubt nailed the rural marketing model in India. As pioneers paving the path into our not-so-kind burbs, the agency network in partnership with Unilever and other dominant players has truly cracked the code for experiential in rural India. Need we remind you of the Lifebuoy ‘roti’ campaign or the Vodafone’s ‘ear muff’ at KumbhMela! Two compelling campaigns that really left an impression with many a marketer; and executed by yours truly.
Following the collaboration of Geometry and Encompass to form the Geometry Global Encompass Network last week, we catch up with John Goodman, CEO- Asia Pacific, Geometry, for an exclusive.
Why did you feel the need to align Encompass with Geometry Global? What wasn’t working?
If you look at the two businesses they are amazingly complimentary. Geometry has this whole history of shopper marketing and rural marketing in India, on the other side Encompass has the fantastic ability in urban markets in India driving massive experiential events. So if you put them both together there is virtually no overlap. Although we’ve announced the merger of Encompass and Geometry only yesterday we’ve been working together as a team for almost two years allowing us to best deliver to our client’s needs. This collaboration brings forth perfectly rounded service and scale. Also Encompass was relatively stronger in Delhi, conversely Geometry had a very small setup in Delhi, but now that the forces have joined we’ll be able to service our client needs better. This collaboration makes perfect sense for us; the frustrating thing is we didn’t do this two years ago.
Geometry has executed some award winning campaigns in the rural markets but why has its focus been restricted to rural?
Well, I wouldn’t say its focus has just been on rural. Just that we’ve been exceptionally successful in Rural markets when nobody else was. There was a lot of clutter in urban markets but nobody was doing rural marketing properly. In 1997 Unilever came to us with the need to increase its penetration in rural India. It really is the company that began driving rural marketing in India. They put the money behind our ideas and we developed a strong rural network. Together we worked on the puzzle piece by piece. Now rural marketing is not child’s play. There are a lot of forces working against you- lack of infrastructure, communication, and distribution creates a difficult environment. We overcame them by developing software, management and standardization of processes and it became a flourishing business for us. The urban markets that Encompass works in is a more competitive arena, in rural India we established dominance with Geometry and continue to strengthen our capabilities.
Where do you think experiential marketing currently stands in India?
Experiential marketing holds a very strong position in India because the growth potential is much higher for it. I think the television market is growing but slowly, whereas there is a huge opportunity with experiential marketing. To give you statistics the business that we have in China is roughly five times bigger than what we have in India and that doesn’t make any sense if you look at it. The business in India should be half or two-third of what it is in China. This is because in China people have realized they cannot rely on television to communicate and that brands need to get down to low tier cities and smaller towns to grow. Especially the international companies spend a lot of money in major cities like Beijing and Shanghai, similar to the scene in India with Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore being the key focus areas. But that’s not where everybody lives and so in order to grow brands need to go to places where everybody lives. Demonstrations and experiences are the best modes of communication for such environments.
So how different is the rural environment in China to that in India?
Rural China is certainly different from rural India basically because of the nature of society and nature of economic change. In China the migration from villages to cities has happened a lot faster so now 50% of Chinese people live in big cities as opposed to 25% in India. Also, the nature of the political system in China ensures that the government is able to exert total control through representatives and widespread communication channels in all villages.
What is the future of experiential in India?
Here in India PM Modi has been able to mobilize a large part of rural India with the recent elections. 15 to 20 years ago there was no way to communicate with the people. We actually started with painting walls in villages for our clients like Lifebuoy. What’s changed now is that everyone is equipped with a mobile phone. The price of smart phones is dropping dramatically and that allows access to information, research and so on. Villagers are increasingly using Viber and Whatsapp which was unimaginable some years ago. Drawing a line between digital and physical is just ridiculous now because everyone is connected all the time. The landscape is changing dramatically today and our focus is on simultaneously diversifying and servicing the needs as they arise.
