70% of India's residents live outside major cities. And typically in these rural areas there is a common moral discourse on consumption, one that is shaped through the operation of historically rooted ideals of community, family solidarity and asceticism. When entering into a market that operates like this, a word-of-mouth PR approach to marketing makes sense. Unilever knows this lesson well. As one of the most successful multinational brands in India, Unilever targets mom and pop shops in the market by using 20,000 distributors and wholesalers.

You now get a better picture of what massive steps a new brand would have to take to get a grip in the Indian market through media relations. If a majority of the population lives in rural areas, a brand manager, working through a strategic PR approach, cannot assume gaining coverage in an urban cosmopolitan publication out of New Delhi is going to necessarily have any effect on gaining mindshare for their brand. Instead, the credibility built in local trusted publications and events would make more strategic sense. India, like other markets, is an economy where the media battle must be won before the marketing battle can be won.

It can further not be stressed enough that to be successful at PR in the new India, practitioners, local and international, will have to stress credibility over creativity because new brands need to earn the trust of the Indian consumer. India's developing middle-class is a perfect opportunity for consumer and tech brands to build new categories of products and thus new categories in the Indian mind.

For more - Reaching the next billion customers, by Robb Hecht, Published in India's ICFAI University Press, Trends in Online Advertising