The power of Community Media

In biological terms, a community is a group of interacting organisms sharing an environment. South Africa comprises of various communities of ranging LSM groups, mindsets, lifestyles and life stages. Community Media would be: community radio, community newspapers, billboards, posters, murals, commuter advertising etc. With the exception of traditional billboards, community media has been pretty much neglected or looked down upon as inferior platforms to utilize, ironically, stats indicate a growth in listenership in community radio, a larger reach in newspapers and with the 2010 Soccer World Cup coming, there has been a bit more infrastructure development in locations. Now, is this not an opportunity for a brand to get closer to its consumers?

Marketing and advertising have taken a new direction in the 21^st century, everything has become more technologically driven and brands have begun to implement 5D branding strategies. 5D Branding is also known as Sensory branding which is, when brands appeal to a consumer’s senses (touch, taste, smell, sight and sound) in advertising to capture them more affectively e.g. Rice Crispies - snap, crackle and pop, Coke - Brrrrrrr, Castle Lite - temperature sensitive logo on bottle, Robertsons Rajah. Each of these brands appeal to one or more of the human senses creating an intimate connection between the brand and the consumer as the brand distinguishes itself from its competitors. With the effective use of 5D Branding, a brand can open the door to creating a relationship with the consumer. Since community media platforms are the closest to communities, would it not make more sense to use 5D Branding on platforms that communities rely on?

Traditional community media platforms such as radio stations and newspapers are the mouth piece of communities across the entire country and communities rely on these platforms for information pertaining their community, which means that the market is very captive. Advertising on these platforms has been known to create a perception that a brand is part of a consumer’s life and therefore more in touch with them (provided the creative used is relevant of course). The paradigm shift from mass media to relationship marketing has occurred, ergo the strict use of traditional ATL (above the line) mediums may no longer be as effective anymore today, instead, the strategic use of ATL mediums together with community media has been known to provide explosive results due to the close nit nature of community media platforms and the large reach of ATL mediums. KFC is a brand that has mastered the use of some elements of community media using sublime creative that speaks in the language of their market e.g. They have a billboard in Alexandra with a Street-wise 2 and the copy reading “Nix mapha”. The phrase used here can only be understood by the market as it has been part of their lifestyles for decades which symbolizes that KFC is part of this community’s lifestyle.

The globe has been bitten by the mandibles of recession, even though the 1^st world countries have escaped, the rest of the globe is still trying to loosen the grip and we all know that the 1^st budget to be cut is the marketing and advertising budget. With less money to spend, marketers are faced with having to find innovative and most importantly, cost effective ways to market their products/brands and what better way than community media. One spot on an ALS (African Language Station) can give an advertiser 4 spots on a community radio station, a billboard in a prime location in an urban area will give an advertiser 2 mobile billboards that roam in strategic areas in a community, which route makes more sense? A traditional marketer wearing blinkers can argue that at least they can guarantee that the traditional method works even though its expensive but they conveniently forget how thin they end up spreading themselves where as they can fill up prime time with community media with the same budget.

So community media is closer to the community, it is cost effective, it has grown every year, it is uncluttered and largely untapped, it complements mass media, its been proven to work for brands such as KFC, COKE, Robertsons and is not as restrictive as ALSs, its strong where mainstream is weak i.e. the radio stations reach places that ALSs cant reach so why aren’t marketers using these brilliant platforms? Well, the same reason Eskom didn’t avoid load shedding….