| ADVERTISING: Do separate ads for separate regions pay dividends?
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| Not too long ago, Aamir Khan donned various avatars — from a Bihari babu to a Bengali bhadralok to a Punjabi villager — in a television commercial for Coke. And now Amitabh Bachchan will be doing something similar for Himani Navratna Tel.
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| There’s already one TVC up on various channels which shows the Big B as a UP bhaiyya, and two more are to follow, apparently, depicting him as a Tamilian and a Bengali. Clearly, “go local” seems to be the mantra here.
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| But does regionalisation in advertising work? “Oh, yes,” says Harish Bijoor, CEO, Harish Bijoor Consults, “India is a hetrogenous country and having a regional flavour in your ads goes down extremely well with audiences.”
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| But, of course, it has to be done with a lot of care. “If you are targetting people in Karnataka, then you to have see what appeals to the various sub-sects in that state.” And it has to be authentic as well, he adds. The setting, the clothes, the dialect — everything has to be in sync with the region or else the ad might fall flat on the face.
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| Bijoor, who used the tactic for a Bru campaign 15 years ago, says that separate regional ads work better for products which have wider appeal.
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| Sagar Mahabaleswar, group creative head, Ogilvy, has a different take on the issue: “It depends on the kind of audience you want to connect with. A commercial for Tata Safari wouldn’t work too well if regionalised.” But yes, overall, it is a great idea to go regional, he feels.
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| But in this case, Mahabaleshwar feels, “It is because celebrity endorsers have been used that it is getting highlighted, else regionalisation has been done in the past as well.”
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| Josy Paul, national creative director, JWT, feels that more often than not, regionalising an ad is an attempt to address the north-south divide.
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| “When you talk about regionalisation, the only area where you can have a major impact is down south. All the rest are Hindi dominated states, where it’s actually not regionalisation but just tinkering with the jingle or the language.”
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| Paul makes another valid point. “When you use Mumbaiya lingo, is it regional? No, it’s not.” But Paul too agrees that regionalisation can do wonders for a brand, if handled properly.
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| Well, the strategy did work wonders for Coke. But it remains to be seen how things unfold for Himani and the rest which might follow suit. |
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