Mindshare, OgilvyAction link to target rural, low-tier consumers

Leading media agency Mindshare has joined forces with OgilvyAction to create the first suite of communications solutions for rural and low-income consumers to cash in on the economic integration of Asean in 2015. 

The suite, comprising modules for marketing research, marketing-campaign monitoring, tracking and measurement, has gone live in Thailand, India, Vietnam and Indonesia.

Ashutosh Srivastava, chairman for Asia-Pacific and chief executive for emerging markets at Mindshare, said yesterday that this was an extension of the partnership with Ogilvy into one of the most promising growth engines. It was relevant to all stakeholders who want to leverage insights into low-income consumers and deliver breakthrough media innovation and activation.

John Goodman, president of OgilvyAction Asia-Pacific, said low-tier consumers were an increasingly important segment for clients.

Activation and planning solutions are being provided for select clients already. This includes fully realised rural-specific research expected to be available in six months across all Asean markets

Mindshare is responsible for strategy and OgilvyAction, the global activation service company for Ogilvy Group, will work on activation.

This large-scale communications plan takes six steps, of which the first four cover groundwork and rural research using Mindshare’s proprietary tools, including task maps, ethnographic studies, brand health parameters and 3D Rural; 3D is a comprehensive quantitative study spanning brand relationships, consumer demographics and media consumption.

The last two steps focus on activation and campaign tracking. Mindshare developed tools including rural GRPs (gross rating points), a system that captures rural TV viewership as opposed to the popularly used people meter in urban areas; mAllocator, which allocates budgets based on campaign key performance indicators; and Mindware, which measures brand awareness and will be used to monitor the campaign closely.

In India, Mindshare and OgilvyAction are partnering with Dialogue Factory, the experiential marketing division of GroupM, to provide a full suite of communication solutions targeted at rural and low-income consumers. This includes strategy, ideas and activation through customised communications programmes.