He was speaking at a conference on "Consumer Markets in India : The Second Phase of Consumer Demand," organised by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) in the city yesterday. The survey revealed double-digit rural growth rates in a cross section of products ranging from scooters to confectionery between 1995 and 1999.
The increasing importance of the rural market was further corroborated by experts in the advertising industry at a panel discussion on "Brand Building Strategy for the Second Phase of Consumer Demand," also on the conference agenda.
The panelists included Sorab Mistry - chief executive officer (CEO) of McCann-Erickson India, D K Bose - president, Ogilvy Outreach Commns Network, Rajesh Singh, senior vice president, Kodak India and Mukul Deoras, category head (Oral care), HLL.
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Some maintained that FMCG advertisers would have to increasingly target the service sector which makes up a whopping 83 per cent of the rural audience, observed D K Bose of Ogilvy. "It would make for effective advertising to target this segment of the audience," he said.
The conference also discussed the challenge of addressing customers in a wired world. On the concept of brand building in the Net economy, Sunil Lulla, chief executive officer of horizontal portal Indya.com, advised advertisers to capitalise on communities created by the Internet. He drew attention to figures from Goldman Sachs fixing the commercial value of online advertising and e-commerce at Rs 7,816.5 crore by 2003, stating advertisers would miss out on a huge opportunity if they failed to tap the Net economy.