a quick guide to negotiating a recession with a few strategies that some of indias best brands agencies and retailers are already trying 1 go rural at least for the next few months indias vast rural markets look like they can be an effective bulwark against the recession a meaningful rural marketing programme has never been either easy or inexpensive but brands across categories are hoping that an agrarian economy driven by a good monsoon will be liberal with disposable income also given that it forms the bulk of the indian market its simply too big to ignore according to godrejs sunil kataria rural markets are outpacing urban ones even at present we will focus more on rural activation to tap the upsurge bundling brands is an effective strategy justifying the cost of venturing into the hinterlands and familiarising the audience with new launches or products and categories that dont have too great a reach 2 go instore the consumer durables category is no longer as ubiquitous a presence as it was on television a decade ago save a few like samsung and nokia many brands in this space are not too active online either where they spend the bulk of their efforts and money is often in store almost every brand worth its name has its network of exclusive stores to say nothing of shop in shops in multi brand outlets staffed by specially trained attendants whose job it is to convince the fence sitters and the browsers to leave the store as customers for retailers its quite possibly the best opportunity to start private labels explains dr siddharth s singh associate professor of marketing isb hyderabad a company can invest in understanding the market analysing how consumers are responding to difficulties and then focus its budget meeting their needs better the likelihood of consumers trying and accepting private label brands is higher during tough times building these brands is more difficult and expensive during a boom period 3 go syndicated tracking consumer trends and what the competition is doing is a marketing imperative like all such its also extremely expensive nielsens mathur sees an increasing trend towards more sectors opting for syndicated research projects where the expense once split among different key players becomes a lot more manageable 4 go precise even among marketers that swear by television theres an attempt to make the doughty old box work a lot harder inspired by neuroscience based research brands are trying to create 10 second commercials that have all the impact of their 30 second siblings at a fraction of the media and possibly production cost 5 go forth if you have capital burning a hole in your pocket nows the best time to spend on certain aspects of the business that may otherwise have been out of reach says dentsus ohri dominos is going ahead with its expansion plans since the real estate costs are down brands with a longterm vision of india dont consider the current