Targeting Bihar

SEVANTI NINAN


IF you live in the back of beyond in rural Bihar you can be safely assumed to be well out of reach of the media marketeers as we know them, right? Wrong. No matter where you live in this seemingly backward state two newspapers and several FMCG (fast moving consumer goods) firms are invading the lives of very ordinary people. And other more solvent but more invisible people. Targeting them as newspaper subscribers, as clients for advertising, and as consumers.

Shed any notions you might have about Bihar as a caste and violence ridden mess. It may be that too but the overall picture is far more aspirational. Those who want to make profits are coming here because however hopeless it may be on several development indices Bihar is not short of one thing: money. The newspapers and those who advertise in them have done their homework, and will reel off figures at the drop of a hat.

Did you know for instance that the percentage of households with a monthly income of more than Rs. 6000 is higher than the all India average in Bihar, and for that matter in Jharkhand as well? Did you know that sales of 21-inch colour TV sets were higher in Bihar and Jharkhand than the national average? Or that the size of the cellular phone market here is ahead of Haryana and Rajasthan? In terms of percentage of Internet users to total population, Patna is ahead of Delhi. And talking of straight money, bank deposits in this money order economy have been growing at 15 per cent over the last two years.

On a lighter note Biharis are champion guzzlers of Chyawanprash: they account for 28 per cent of the national consumption. Lots of advertising from that sector then.

Many of these and other figures have been compiled by the marketing team of the leading newspaper here, Hindustan from the same stable as the Hindustan Times. Having made a hefty profit in the State last year, they are fully preoccupied fighting off the Dainik Jagran which came into Bihar in the year 2000 for the same reason: to make money. The advertising pie is substantial because all colour TV, PC, car, refrigerator and microwave oven makers are busy notching up ambitious targets for these two States. Open the pages of newspapers here, and you will find them full of large and small ads.

But the paradoxes are also there in full strength. Given all the electric gadget makers targeting the State, you would think it has abundant power supply. On the contrary, electricity is almost as precious as gold in Bihar. The cities can expect a few hours of supply in the course of the day, the villages absolutely none, in many parts. But that is not stopping any potential owner of a frost-free refrigerator or a microwave oven. Everybody urban and rural has gensets. It is a way of life.

More paradoxes. Given all the FMCG advertising, you'd expect retailers to be advertising their showrooms as well. But they don't. Showrooms and jewellery shops shrink from advertising here, even during the festival season. They go to the other extreme: they tell the marketing men from the newspapers take my money if you insist but please don't run the ad. Why? "Bad response," says a newspaper marketing manager in Bhagalpur solemnly. What he means is put more succinctly by the Dainik Jagran people. "Run an ad, and you could get a phone call." You could indeed. The number of criminal gangs operating in the State has risen to an estimated 70. Usually they mean business. That is also Bihar for you.

As in Uttaranchal, Uttar Pradesh and elsewhere, newspapers run attractive schemes to boost circulation. But unexpected things happen. A farmer from Madhubani who won an Alto in a contest run by Hindustan got kidnapped. So between the FMCG majors and the gangsters, between the ads put in and those kept out, you have a piquant situation. The State is an attractive if dangerous market. It has relatively low literacy but a media boom. Retail advertising is low but in a State where everybody from the Chief Minister downwards sends their children to other States to study if they can afford it, educational advertising is booming. The Delhi Public School Society takes a full back page in the Patna Hindustan Times to advertise its schools, something you would not see it do in Delhi. Scores of lesser institutions advertise everyday in the classified display sections.

Newspapers are multiplying their rural editions and increasing their coverage almost down to the panchayat level in the hope of selling more copies. Increased circulation is profitable because both papers are priced fairly high at Rs. 3.50. And they are hoping to circumvent the gangster worry by creating a new category of rural advertising, which simply did not exist. The Hindustan summons its ranks of stringers and tells them to go get ads in addition to news from the block level. And don't just get them, negotiate them. Find a customer and ask him what he can afford to pay.

The paper has set itself a target of Rs. one crore for this category in the current financial year. At the Dainik Jagran however they pooh-pooh such notions and declare that local advertising is a non-starter in Bihar. But the Hindustan is undeterred. The rate for rural classified display advertising in the paper have been reduced to Rs. 80 per column centimetre and you get a double column spread as a bonus.

The advertisement the chief executive of the company is proudest of is a small one at the bottom of the page, below a news brief in the Ara edition of the paper. It is from a widow who is putting her cow up for sale. It is a desi cow she tells you, along with calf, and it gives six kilos of milk a day. No price stated. Please contact Panbatta Devi at so and so village and thana.

She paid Rs. 50 for that ad and if the advertising department is to be believed got Rs. 1400 for the cow, 600 more than the offer of Rs. 800 she had before the local stringer persuaded her to advertise. Marketing then, is alive and well in village Bihar.

(This column is based on ongoing research for the National Foundation for India.)