Rural India presents a huge potential market. In order to tap this market and create awareness and desire for their products among the rural consumers, marketers have been adopting various tools of communication. This article presents product demonstration as an effective tool of communication for rural consumers. It also illustrates how some companies have used this strategy to establish themselves in the rural markets.

The issue of reaching the unreachable is gaining new dimensions and magnitude in today's growing economy. So far, advertisers have been focusing on the cost and the media vehicle used while developing advertisements. Whether the ad would meet their needs and create awareness and desire for the product among the target segment was not thought of. However, things have been changing. Today, advertisers are more focused and creating specific advertisements and sales promotion strategies according to the target markets.

To be successful in the rural markets, advertisers need to understand the belief and value system of rural India, changing social factors like literacy rates, income level, occupational preferences, mobility, sex-ratio, status of women, attitudes toward communication, the message and media.

It has been time and again emphasized that pushing the urban communication mix to rural markets will fail miserably in terms of creating an impact on the rural consumers. The rural consumer is motivated to buy a product/service only when the ad message appeals to him. This implies that a mere translation of the urban ad into the regional language for the rural consumer is not enough to create an impact on the rural consumer. The marketer has to understand the language, dialect, customs, rituals, festivals, celebration and traditions of the region or the location before positioning a product in the rural markets.

Advertising Express Magazine, Product Demonstration, Rural Markets, Urban Communication Mix, Sales Promotion Strategies, Mass Media, Rural Consumers, Hygiene Promotion Projects, Panchayat Members, Glow Germs Demo Kit, Hindustan Unilever Limited.