Productive activation through BTL In todays cut-throat competition, below-the-line promotions have become indispensable tools for both

start-ups and large organizations, thanks to the low cost factor. At least 70% of the decisions on whether to buy something or not is made at the shop floor, says Vijay Singh, MD & CEO of 141 Sercon, a below-the-line (BTL) promotion agency. DARE explores the possibilities and limitations of this powerful tool. It is everywhere and almost everyone is doing it yet to define the scope of BTL is quite a difficult task. While some include everything that is not mass media advertising in BTL promotions, others include only activities that are done for a certain class of consumers or target audience. It helps marketers establish one-to-one relationship with consumers while mass promotions, by definition, make it difficult to gauge consumer-response, except at the time of sales. Examples include tele-marketing, road shows, promotions, in- shop and shop-front activities, display units and entertainment events. Purists like Singh insist all micro promotions, in which a narrow group is targeted, do not qualify as BTL marketing. All agencies that were small startups, event companies, promotion companies etc. have suddenly become big BTL houses. But thats not all what BTL is, he says, emphasizing the two-way nature of the process. BTL is about ensuring interaction. You need to define new consumers and do activities where there is an experience of interaction. BTL, by definition, has to be a long interaction and it has to be told. You need to tell the consumer something and the consumer needs to experience it and ask you question. BTL and the Start Up Given the proliferation of media and brands using them, the media market has become extremely cluttered, says Pankajj Chaturvedi, Executive Director (South Asia), Baskin Robbins. This has made addressing your core target audience a difficult and expensive task. As a result, BTL advertising is increasing its share in marketing budgets. Even the larger brands are spending a fair share on BTL, he points out. DARE/versus Above-the-Line Media Are tailored to reach a mass audience Below-the-Line Media Are targeted at individual consumers, based on their expressed needs and preferences

Establish brand identity or reinforce Issue a call-to-action, inspiring specific customer emotional concept surrounding a product activity or tailored messages about a product or a brand or brand May or may not drive customer response Drive individual responses Are difficult if not impossible to measure with any accuracy Are highly measurable, allowing marketers insight into their return-on-investment, as well as those tactics that are (and are not) working

Cater to the mass market Source: V12 Group

Establish one-to-one relationships between consumers and marketers

While most big consumer brands like LG, Samsung and Nokia have a range of BTL activities; this method of promotion is especially suited to newer companies and products. For a new product, consumer interaction and feedback during a BTL campaign helps in fine-tuning the offering and positioning of the brand.

Why is BTL gaining more importance these days? The BTL industry has been around for a very long time, its just that now there is a little more recognition that what was earlier very fragmented is actually a fairly structured BTL business. Traditionally brand managers have been spending money on three broad areas -one is ATL, second is marketing services or BTL and the third being PR. Earlier, rather than it being a structured as marketing services, people used to look at it as promotions being done separately, shop-front activities being done differently, product placements, etc. been done differently, etc. Now more and more brand managers are clubbing it into a single BTL format. They want an agency that can possibly give a solution for all that. Is the increasing presence of BTL felt only in the FMCG and the durables market? No. The B2B business already has the majority of the spend. What was not happening was that FMCG in terms of percentage was not spending as high a percentage as what they are doing now on BTL. Also BTL is not just about niche products. Look at soap, it is definitely not niche as everyone uses it. If you were to reduce the BTL spend on soaps, lets say you dont do any shop-front activities, you dont do any inside the shop activities, so and so forth, you will need to bring down your sales focus. What kind of ATL and BTL mix would work for a startup operation? It is dependent on the product category and the kind of consumer you have. A startup I am assuming doesnt have a lot of money so a startup typically would want to ensure that whatever the expense it gets some quick results that is where a BTL would come in. But if it is a startup with a lot of money, for instance, someone got lucky and got a lot of funding and is first looking at building the brand and then do sales then I would assume that he would first want to use some TV commercials, a lot of focus on print ads then from there start doing demand generation. How many companies are spending a substantial amount of money on BTL these days? In India our current estimate is on an average it is about 45% of the spend on BTL and I am including areas such as research marketing, a little bit of digital, etc.

The difference with ATL is that the vehicles of delivery are fairly very well established. For e.g., out of a great idea and great strategy, I create a great TVC and I give it to established television channels to run it on their vehicles, and nothing goes wrong. When it comes to BTL, I still need to have a great strategy and a great creative idea but I need to implement it on ground. Ill need to do promotions, Ill need to do road shows, and Ill need to do one-on-one interaction. And if I dont implement it well, the possibility of a BTL campaign backfiring is very high. If I am a consumer and the person interacting with me doesnt do a great job, that particular campaign will fall flat on its face. So the moments of truth on a BTL are too many. What is the ROI on these BTL initiatives? If you ask an ATL guy, he is normally going to talk in terms of increase in brand recall. If you talk to a BTL person hell give you hard numbers, in terms of revenue increase. Recently, for example, we ran the Grand Kerala Shopping Festival campaign with the Kerala government and they spent close to Rs 15 crore on the entire festival. It was a sixmonth initiative, and at the end we were able to increase the VAT collection of the state to the extent of approximately Rs 75 crore. This is hard money-to-money comparison but we also had to built the brand and do a lot of ATL with that campaign. The deal is if you cannot really measure the return on investment on a BTL campaign, then its not really a good campaign. As compared to ATL, what is one big advantage and disadvantage of BTL? The big disadvantage is that BTL is not the best information vehicle, a mass information vehicle. If the idea is just to convey the brand, then BTL is not the right solution. Turn it on its head, if the objective is to create a conversation about the brand and to get engagement with the consumer then BTL is the right solution. While theres nothing stopping you from launching a conventional mass-media based strategy, which would only help you in your brand creation, according to experts, it might be a good idea to initiate a BTL campaign and check which way the wind would blow as per your sales. We are an innovation driven company, so we are continuously launching new products. Our products have new and exciting features, which are required to be communicated to the consumer and therefore require investment in the form of above-the-line (ATL) AND BTL, says V Ramachandran, director, marketing, LG Electronics India. Besides fine-tuning the product and brand, another big reason for a startup to favorably consider this tool is the cost factor. BTL offers a wide spectrum of dirt cheap to more expensive activities, starting from distributing pamphlets, brochures, newspaper inserts, etc. to holding seminars and product launches. Unlike traditional advertising, the impact of BTL activities is far more measurable, since it is less about brand building and more about increasing sales, says Singh.

Besides new products and startups, another natural fit are companies with a niche, but geographically spread-out customer-base, such as that for precision engineering tools. In such cases, a seminar or trade show may bring you a much bigger bang for your buck than a TV ad. Sometimes, even if the product can have a national appeal, a company may choose to start off with just one town or city. BTL options such as pamphlets, mall events etc. fit the bill in this case. We have always (nationally as well as internationally) been more of a BTL-led brand, given that our customers are specific and not mass market, says Chaturvedi of Baskin Robbins. In India, the popular and regular activities are leaflets, cross-promotions with retail chains or outlets and school contact progrmmes, he says. Limitations The BLT industry is fragmented with many small players dotting the market and doing a bit of everything. The industry size was estimated at Rs 13,200 crore in 2006. However, despite all the hype, BTL initiatives cannot be the answer to all your marketing requirements. Its biggest strength, an extremely focused approach, is also what prevents it from being a complete marketing solution. Besides the absence of cost-effective scalability to address a mass market, BTL activities may also require a higher involvement of the organization than an ad-based approach.