Looking below the line

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Strategy - Marketing & Branding
Written by Chhavi Tyagi
Sunday, 01 June 2008 00:00
Page 1 of 2
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Unconventional marketing strategies can be a start-up’s best friend

In today’s 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.
What is
BTL?
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 that’s 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… Below-the-Line Media…
Are targeted at individual consumers, based on their
Are tailored to reach a mass audience
expressed needs and preferences
Establish brand identity or reinforce
Issue a “call-to-action,” inspiring specific customer
emotional concept surrounding a
activity or tailored messages about a product or a brand
product or brand
May or may not drive customer
Drive individual responses
response
Are highly measurable, allowing marketers insight into
Are difficult – if not impossible – to
their return-on-investment, as well as those tactics that
measure with any accuracy
are (and are not) working
Establish one-to-one relationships between consumers
Cater to the mass market
and marketers
Source: V12 Group

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.

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Turning Your Words into Wealth

written by marketing strategy, June 14, 2010
Marketing tip: Do you talk about your client's need and forget your own company's
accomplishments in your ad?
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Votes: +1

Turning Your Words into Wealth

written by marketing strategy, May 18, 2010
Marketing tip: Do you talk about your client's need and forget your own company's
accomplishments in your ad?
report abuse
vote down
vote up
Votes: +3

Add a mobile based, 'Below-The-Line' Brand communication channel to your Retail

outlets.
written by Quantama, January 31, 2010
Benefits Include:
-Ability to connect to previously unknown/unreachable customer base.
-Targeted touch points and reciprocation with each individual consumer.
-Ability to add a hip new mobility channel to the existing marketing portfolio increasing
brand recall.
-Drive up Same Store Sales through Increasing Conversion.
-Insight and Real Time Intelligence of current Footfall.
-Single Loyalty Program across Formats.
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btl
written by niraj shah, April 18, 2009
btl budgets in our country are also on the increaselook at telecom industry.they spend
more on btl than atl'
why telecom look at footwear,apparela or even retail the answer is in favour of btl.
to reach to the consumer its eveident to take path thru btl.
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...
written by Vijay Singh, November 06, 2008
Hi Anil,
A short recession is of great advantage to below the line marketing services for a few
basic reasons ;
1. Brands move away from typical brand building strategies and start to focus more on
marketing services which ensure a sales uplift and that is where BTL scores.
2. As spends go down, brands look at focussing spending on targetted TG and hence turn
to BTL strategies like direct and one on one experiential marketing.
3. Retention becomes more critical than new customers and hence focus on CRM.

US leads the world in terms of BTL spend percentages, where-in the promotional spends
are higher than the ATL spends. I have a collection of reports and research on my blog
www.thebtllife.blogspot.com and would suggest you take a look at thoes.

Cheers
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Director
written by Anil Malik, October 27, 2008
What will be the impact of recent recession on marketing activities especially BTL
activities? I would request if you can be more specific towards US market and for
established brands like Coke/ Pepsi/Levers etc.
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Asst, Manager
written by syed, September 16, 2008
As compared to AtL, what is the advantage and disadvantage of BtL?
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Why is BTL gaining more importance these days?
The BTL industry has been around for a very long time, it’s 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,
let’s say you don’t do any shop-front activities, you don’t 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 doesn’t 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. I’ll need to do promotions, I’ll need to do road shows,
and I’ll need to do one-on-one interaction. And if I don’t implement it well, the
possibility of a BTL campaign backfiring is very high. If I am a consumer and the person
interacting with me doesn’t 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 he’ll 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 six-
month 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 it’s 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 there’s 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.