What’s the ‘Line’ in Below-The-Line (BTL)?
Chaupaati is experimenting with a variety of BTL advertising for seeding consumers for its phone classifieds. For one, it is the best medium for highly-local targeting and second, it has something to offer for every budget. Examples are: newspaper inserts, human banners, street events, branded merchandise, door-to-door promotion, wall paintings, auto rickshaw backs. The question that begs asking is what is this magic ‘line’ in BTL?
Organized vs Unorganized?: In trying to explain BTL to a friend from the digital marketing world, he summed up his understanding as “BTL is something O&M would NOT do”. It appears that BTL is something you can do informally and does not strictly require media relationships or professional help. You can distribute pamphlets outside a mall, knock at someone’s door, paste a banner on a pole, paint the wall when no one’s watching, or give the rickshaw-wallah 50 Rupees to paste a sticker on his vehicle. However, there are a variety of formal agencies (registered businesses) that specialize in each of these media and the chances of successful execution are significantly higher if you engage one of them. In fact, the market size of organized BTL media is non-trivial. So what is the line then?
Legal vs Illegal?: Almost every BTL advertising medium seems to violate some legal boundary during its execution. Without prior approvals from media owners: inserting flyers in newspapers and scrolling ads on cable content are copyright violations, painting walls and auto-rickshaws are municipal violations, and promoters at crowded public places are violations of safety and trespassing codes. However, the police, municipality, transportation and several other Government departments officially assign permission for all such activity in a way that is both above or below the line [of the table]. In fact, permissions and fines are non-trivial revenue sources for Government departments. So what is the line then?
Measurable vs Immeasurable?: It is near impossible to guarantee the reach of any BTL advertising. The reach claimed by agencies is not accounted for. Ad-hoc monitoring and supervision is, by far, the only way to ensure that the advertisement made it into the desired media and reached the desired audiences. For example, the accountability of a 30 second ad spot scheduled to run on a local cable TV channel is much lower than on a metro broadcast TV channel. However, heavy spenders on BTL have realized that their time is best spent on monitoring the response of the activity, and not the execution of its reach. In fact, the measurement of response for BTL is much more reliable than that of ATL advertising. While responses from specific locations and demographics can reliably be attributed to respective BTL activities, responses from ATL activities cannot pinpoint the set of impressions that generated response. In non-digital media, the wider the reach, the lesser targeted it is. So what then, is the line?
The question remains. Any takers….
Reader Comments (1)
Leave a Reply
The companion blog to Chaupaati, India's phone bazaar to buy branded products directly from the source. We go directly to brands and exclusive distributors to bring products at great prices, quality and service at your doorstep. Ab karo phone pe deal!
- Anecdotes (23)
- Announcements (27)
- Diary (3)
- FAQs (4)
- How To (4)
- Learnings (26)
- On The Street (10)
- Promises (14)
- Statistics (5)
- Testimonials (7)
Interesting read. I think “BTL is something O&M would NOT do” seems a good way to define it.
I have worked for an agency which sells Orange (now Vodafone) connections.
Each branch of the agency used to generate around 2000 subscriptions every month. Of these, a significant amount would be cases where the customer would like to buy - but hasn’t been pro-active on the front. Many a times, all the customer wants to hear is that the offer is exclusive to him (a white lie).
However, as the power to sell is in the executive’s hands, the limit of the “white lie” is totally with him. He might occasionally go “over the limit” - or “below the line” in this context. As the customer signs the contract, its normally too late before he realizes the lie & can’t back out by then. Orange doesn’t face legal issues as the sales wasn’t theirs. All they have to do is ensure that the agency manages to keep the number of dissatisfied customers in check.
Orange, on its own, will not attempt to do such things & yet, it can’t afford to let go the customers. Hence, the role of the agency.
I guess the “line” that you are looking for is similar to the “line” that separates a “white lie” from a “misleading lie”.
The question still remains then..