Indiantelevision.com Team

(28 February 2009 10:15 pm)

MUMBAI: The ongoing financial turmoil has had a gravitational effect on consumption patterns. While the clients’ budgets have fallen ground low, buyers have become more selective on what they choose.

Therefore, at a time when the recession bullet has hit the advertisers and marketers hard, the industry believes that new innovative strategies coupled with targeted marketing will help drive consumers towards product purchases.

While addressing the audience at the All India Management Association’s (AIMA) Indian Marketing Summit 2009, Out-of-home (OOH) Media managing director and CEO Ishan Raina noted that economic downturn generates consumer confidence crisis which thereby exhibiting an ill-effect on market competition and scenario, consumer attitude and company budgets. “However, it is at this time that marketers can afford to think differently and create history by building brands through innovations”, Raina said.

Demonstrating the brand success stories that HP and Nike and Pizza Hut created during the 1930 recession and 1991 depression respectively, Raina said that the challenge this time would be to organise and structure businesses by managing costs and setting revenue targets. Once this task is met, companies will have to exhibit targeted reachability through relevant story telling process that would help marketers build product relationships generating brand loyalty amongst consumers.

Raina further noted that before introducing a new product, marketers will have to pay heed to product design, gelled with ‘possible and easy technology’. “The product will also have to fit into the consumer desirability system and match up with the market viability order in to attract correct customers,” Raina explained.

Another route that can help better the present consumption patterns and improve consumer spending is through the tapping of new end users with comfortable buying potential.

According to Maruti Udyog executive officer marketing and sales Mayank Pareek, the identification of niche markets in the rural sector would “definitely help combat the recession plague. “It is a myth that rural India is poor; rural India has no dearth of money and thus it is important to identify the correct markets,” Pareek quipped.

For TV Today CEO G Krishnan, controlling costs through virtual office route would help fight recession better. “The arrival of recession does not mean closing shops and running away, it means finding new tools to fight the heat,” Krishnan said.