To target all the sections of Telugu viewing population in Andhra Pradesh, Maa TV has gone out on the streets to promote their programs using the outdoor medium. The channels have been heavily promoted using flyover bridges, unipoles, centre medians and other offside promotions include train & bus branding too. The total outdoor units used are 200 Hoardings, 200+ Centre Medians across Andhra Pradesh.
The highlight of the campaign was the selection of specific locations to place the outdoor creatives that have additional cut out of characters in heavy traffic areas.
The channel was promoting their upcoming annual awards function, Cinema Awards 2012 heavily and also 2-month long programs that are running on Maa Gold.
Maa Television Network has promoted all their programs in major parts of the state -Hyderabad, Vishakhapatnam,Vijayawada, Tirupathi and other few towns. It will be top among the GECs in Andhra Pradesh promoting the programs in a huge scale.
Due to service tax ruling the industry came together to discuss standard operating procedures for OOH industry in line with other industries.
Marketers demanded more efficiency in OOH planning, creative innovations and 2011 witnessed many innovations in various categories in OOH. We saw various formats introduced in line with the international OOH markets. Street furniture inDelhiand Mumbai put emphasis on format beautifications in terms of aesthetic structures of billboards.
We also saw a lot of entrepreneurs entering as OOH specialists; many of them emerged after breaking away from large agency specialists’ space.
I would call 2011 a year of growth. It may not have been a great year in terms of huge OOH advertising spends, but OOH stakeholders pursued other categories and managed to convince local clients in the city levels, and few categories even invested more namely, gems – jewellery, real estate, retail, media entertainment, automotive and FMCG.
Hence, in adverse conditions the industry grew because of a significant contribution from other advertising categories.
Five trends to watch out for in 2012:
Industry codes of conduct will be effectively introduced in line with IBF and INS.
Clients will demand efficiency in the medium, hence OOH stakeholders need to get together to offer planning and research in OOH.
Small format mediums will be introduced in line to build government infrastructural projects by the authorities in line with other countries. The government will be more open to look at long-term tenders. Hence, international players may show interest in enteringIndia. The government will bring in greater control over the medium.
Technology and innovation will be demanded from agency specialists by marketers.
Industry will face a hard time due to the economic slowdown, hence new categories will emerge. If FDI gets through, retail will bail out the OOH industry in a large way.
Nabendu Bhattacharyya is Founder and Managing Director, Milestone Brandcom.
Mediascope Publicitas has created the largest billboard in India measuring 100ftx100ft, located at the airport approach road, welcoming travelers to Bengaluru. This puts Bengaluru in the league of global cities like New York, Dubai and Singapore with extraordinarily huge advertising media.
The billboard is two-sided and front lit, with adverts on both sides, hence visible while approaching and while exiting the airport area.
Hansa Outdoor, part of the R K Swamy Hansa Group, conceived and created a billboard with a large cutout of an aircraft that has neon tubing around it, to announce Air Arabia’s festive VFR (Visiting Friends and Relatives) programme.
Hansa Outdoor also created billboards that can be seen on the Western Express Highway, Mahim causeway, Worli, Peddar Road and near the Santa Cruz domestic airport.
Tyronne Devdros, Vice President, Hansa Outdoor, said, “Over the last three years of our association, we are constantly looking for new ways to highlight Air Arabia’s offering, and this is one of the innovations.”
Milestone Brandcom has rolled out Binani’s new Out-of-home campaign. Along with extended reach, the brand boasts a number of creative executions spread across circles.
The communication objective was to ensure that the campaign be distinguished on OOH and also associate with people’s lives and be part of festive cheer. The brand ambassador for Binani Cement is Amitabh Bachchan, to further aggrandize his personality, only high impact media touch points were taken up. The campaign was executed for four weeks in 400+ towns across a wide array of 1200+ large format touch points like billboards, gantries, wall wraps, mall facades and unipoles. Extended presence was built using bus shelters and kiosks across all major junctions and arterial routes. The campaign was also taken onto the airports of all major metros for greater reach.
There were a number of innovations executed for this campaign. Large 3D LED letters of ‘Binani Cement’ were installed over numerous billboards and bus shelters across the country. The campaign creative featured one of Binani’s manufacturing plants in India, the creative was enhanced with the help of LED lights aptly installed behind media to light up the windows in the creative. These ensured dominant visibility not only in the daytime, but even at night.
“Milestone’s forte lies in their planning and innovations. The best part about Milestone is that they put the brand before the budget. They always provide us with an in-depth understanding of the market. Their OOH strategy is not skewed to the traditional planning route, but altered to suit what would work best for the brand,” said Bina Verma, Managing Director, Media Magix Braj Binani Group.
Imtiyaz Vilatra
Commenting on the campaign, Imtiyaz Vilatra, Founder Member & Managing Partner, Milestone Brandcom said, “The media mandate given to us for this campaign was to build salience for the brand and maximize impact through visibility and scale. In a highly cluttered media space, it was essential for the brand to stand out. We took an approach unconventional to the brand’s image and executed a number of innovations to ensure visibility and recall, and filled every city with a dominant presence of Binani Cement.”
Aamby Valley City has launched a nine-week-long sky diving event to give adventure enthusiasts the opportunity to sky dive with an internationally acclaimed sky diving crew from Spain.
Milestone Brandcom has taken the thrill onto the out-of-home medium with some disruptive executions. The campaign communication carried electrifying visuals of sky divers free-falling with the tagline “If the sky is the limit, here’s the chance to touch it.” Billboards and kiosks located on key stretches and junctions were converted into parachutes where one even saw skydivers landing and soaring on billboards with 3D like cutouts in motion. These were implemented across various media formats.
The skydiving event at Aamby Valley City began on December 15, 2012 and will run till February 16.
Speaking on the campaign, Vivek Kumar, CEO Aamby Valley City and Hotel Sahara Star, said, “The brand Aamby Valley City is synonymous with luxury and we aim to constantly provide our customers with unique and exclusive offerings. At Aamby Valley City we offer high quality recreational and leisure facilities to our customers and through this skydiving event we are proud to present yet another thrilling experience that adventure lovers can cherish. The communication objective for the out-of-home (OOH) campaign was to create hype and grab as many eyeballs as possible, thereby attracting the TG down to Aamby Valley to experience this exciting event. Milestone executed an assortment of innovations to distinguish the campaign amidst the clutter in the OOH space”
“It was a great opportunity to work on such an exhilarating brief from Aamby Valley. Team Milestone worked and executed multiple innovative ideas on Out-of-home to give the adventure seeking audiences a glimpse into this spectacular event, with the scale and magnitude of OOH to best suit the proposition of going beyond the limit & touching the sky,” said Nabendu Bhattacharyya, Founder & Managing Director, Milestone Brandcom.
Canon India Pvt Ltd has unveiled Out-of-Home initiative in India, with neon signs at international airports in New Delhi, Bengaluru and Mumbai. Designed by advertising giant Dentsu India, the concept lies in the growing popularity and impact of neon signs in the country.
Kazutada Kobayashi, President and CEO, Canon India, said, “Canon is a powerful brand, both in India and worldwide. Today, we have pioneered the ‘Out of Home Media’ initiative by launching the Canon Neon sign at specific locations in three major cities of India becoming the first Japanese Company to create such a major launch in India. This is part of our growth strategy for 2013 to create a powerful brand recall for our customers. This would be the first strategic step to create a positive image for the brand as well as the company. As part of our vision and mission, we want people to be proud of associating themselves with the Canon brand; this initiative would pave the way for creating that association together with our state-of-the-art technology and quality service network.”
He also said that for Canon, India remains an important market, and that smartphones cannot give competition to camera-market since “there will always be people who want high-quality pictures”.
For the record, in 2012, the company rolled out a new marketing campaign by roping in Bollywood actress Anushka Sharma, as the brand ambassador for Canon’s cameras. After ‘What Makes Us Click’ campaign, Canon is determined to extend its marketing initiatives to reach out to a niche target audience and retain the exuberance, energy and appearance of the brand. In the past decade, Canon has undertaken several pioneering advertising and marketing campaigns with renowned brand ambassadors from the field of sports and Bollywood.
Growing inspiration and increasing disposable income have given rise to outbound tourism of India. An estimated 50 million Indians are set to travel overseas by 2020. The widespread market of discerning Indian travellers has caught the attention of several international tourism boards, cruises, airlines and allied services. Therefore, to grab the interest of Indian travellers this summer, tourism companies are aggressively promoting their destination and services in India via outdoor advertising.
Global Advertisers recently provided hoardings across Mumbai for the OOH campaigns of Australia.com, Star Cruises and Maldives Airlines. With the aim of creating awareness about their destinations, activities and itinerary, the team at Global Advertisers have pinned down large size billboards at specific locations in Mumbai. Heavy traffic junctions, corporate areas, western express highway (Mumbai), populated residential areas are some of the hot spots for these campaigns.
Sanjeev Gupta, MD, Global Advertisers, said, “We are delighted to see the response from these campaigns for our clients. Promoting international destination in Indian requires deep understanding of Indian travellers and their mindset. Therefore, we painstakingly researched on the locations, size of the hoardings, angles and their positioning for our clients.”
Take an RJ, his on-air prankster alter-ego Bauaa, a wish to connect the RJ directly with his audience, DDB Mudra Max – and you have Bauaa Hawa Mein, a series of live radio shows by 93.5 Red FM from studios fabricated on billboards.
The objective was to popularize Red FM Delhi’s evening show host RJ Raunac’s character Bauaa through an OOH medium that allowed for live performance and face-to-face interaction with the audience and fans. The idea was to have Bauaa seen, and not just heard. With the DDB MudraMax innovation, the execution was literally from up in the air.
To connect to the listener, live studios were set up at three different locations of the NCR. RJ Raunac along with the Bhagra Pop Singer Daler Mehendi did the entire show live from a radio booth mounted on a billboard at Rajouri Garden on January 29. Similar shows were conducted from unipoles in Noida on February 1 and Gurgaon on February 6.
Nisha Narayanan
Mandeep Malhotra
Commenting on the campaign, Nisha Narayanan, Senior VP – Projects and Programming, 93.5 Red FM, said, “We always strive to think different and innovate to connect with our listeners. Thus, it is our constant endeavour to set higher standards of radio programming. Initiatives like Bauaa Hawa Mein help in bringing the brand and our jocks closer to the listeners.”
Commenting on the campaign, Mandeep Malhotra President, DDB MudraMax, said, “It’s always a wonderful feeling to take up challenging assignments and deliver clutter-breaking work for any media brand.”
Worried about how to invest your money in the right place at the right time? Who isn’t? It is this thought that the recent brand campaign by DSP BlackRock aims at, by encouraging more investors to plan their finances as soon as possible.
Milestone Brandcom executed the campaign for DSP BlackRock, a joint venture between the DSP Group and BlackRock, by playing on the ’emotional factor’. The creatives focus on events in daily life which should be done ‘sooner rather than later’. The campaign communication is ‘Start Investing Early – Because some things should be done sooner, rather than later.’
The campaign was executed across 35 cities. Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Chennai, Pune, Ahmedabad were among the major metros. An assortment of large format & unconventional formats were employed for the campaign. With over 1400 media touch points & 900000 sqft. of exhaustive vinyl ensured that the entire country was plastered with DSP BlackRock!
“The core communication objective was to build salience for the brand and maximize impact through high visibility and scale. To ensure the right audiences were reached, we executed a high intensity, all pervasive OOH plan across the key target markets. We ensured brand presence along every key arterial route & important transit junction across the 35 cities,” said Imtiyaz Vilatra, Founder Member & Managing Partner, Milestone Brandcom.
Commenting on the campaign Aditi Kothari, EVP and Co-Head of Marketing, DSP BlackRock Investment Managers Pvt Ltd said, “The campaign, executed by team Milestone, left no arterial route or media without our brand presence. The work done on OOH is a critical success factor in the number of leads and enquiries for DSP BlackRock and to an extent even the investments generated during the campaign period. Milestone Brandcom has delivered an excellent campaign right from planning to execution.”
While the rest of the world works 50 to 60 hours a week, corporate India clocks in 80 hours a week, leading lives that revolve around their desks, with time away from work defined by time spent surfing the internet.
DDB Mudra Mumbai and Adventure 18 saw this as an opportunity to urge corporate India to get away from their workstations and step out for an adventure. Apart from this, the other challenge faced by the team was execute the campaign in a cost-effective way.
The team used a surprisingly overlooked, yet effective medium of communication – window washers – to do the job.
Window Washers, dressed up in adventure gear, were sent down office buildings located across the city of Mumbai. In a sight worth a watch, mountaineers, rock climbers and para gliders descended on buildings across the city.
The result was overwhelming. There were a few who were scared, some were amused, but everyone took note of the men in adventure gear. And when the window washers had the attention of the office they revealed their message: “Don’t you wish you were outdoors?” The message went on to give the website address of Adventure 18.
Speaking about the activity, Louella Rebello, Executive Creative Director, DDB Mudra Mumbai, said, “Sometimes you are at work, you look out of the window and wish you could be in the great outdoors instead. We decided to actually put a guy out there telling you to do just that. Adventure 18 was a great partner in making this happen.’”
Mohit Oberoi, Owner, Adventure 18, added, “It’s a great concept. More importantly, it’s brought attention to what we do and stand for as a company. That is to give people an unforgettable experience of the outdoors”
Mahindra Reva recently integrated outdoor medium with social media around the e2o launch and ‘Ask’ movement in a marketing strategy that clubbed the digital platform and out-of-home media.
A select list of questions was displayed at regular intervals at Mumbai’s Mahim causeway, which is a busy arterial road. With every question being asked, the mnemonic of a hand goes up in the air, signifying the ‘Ask’ movement. The same mnemonic was being used to represent questions on the digital platform, press, TV and outdoor media. This integration of Social and Outdoor Media exemplifies the way both these communication channels can be innovatively used for marketing.
The creative agency for this innovation is Strawberry Frog and the media agency is Percept OOH.
Devendra Shinde
Devendra Shinde, Head of Marketing & International Business, Mahindra Reva Electric Vehicles, stated the cause behind integrating the two mediums, “When one integrates digital media with other media, the effect gets amplified. Hence we have chosen to use more than one medium for this campaign.” Since the launch, the ‘Ask’ movement has gained momentum and Mahindra Reva has received more than 12,000 questions related to changes that people seek in their day-to-day life.
“Digital is integral to our everyday lives. It is current and absolutely relevant to everything we do. The ‘Ask’ campaign is linked to engagement and integration with the consumers. Digital is the only platform that allows for this. Therefore integrating the digital and outdoor medium, allowed us to capture consumer sentiment and display it for further participating and feedback. The cross pollination between platforms, gave the campaign twice the reach than would have been normally possible,” said Raj Kamble, MD, Strawberry Frog.
The brief to the agency was to amplify the campaign. The campaign was a ‘movement’ – created when people ask questions.
According to the brand and agency, the response to the campaign has hit several milestones on Facebook and YouTube. “There are several advantages of using this medium for the task at hand. Our TG is indeed the curious kind, we expect them to be early adopters of technology. Hence we feel that the digital space and medium are a good way to reach them. Also the engagement quotient of this medium is far higher than most regular media vehicles,” reasoned Mr Shinde.
According to Mr Kamble, the Ask campaign is linked to engagement and integration with the consumers. And integrating the digital and outdoor medium allowed them to capture consumer sentiment and display it for further participating and feedback. The cross-pollination between platforms, gave the campaign twice the reach than would have been normally possible. Since Mahindra is focussed on launching the e2o, electric car, a substantial chunk of brand investments has been done on this campaign. However, Mr Shinde did not divulge the figures.
Focusing on the challenges that this innovation posed, Mr Kamble said, “We were asking questions to India, because until you ask question you can’t bring positive change. This was the first time in India where real-time Twitter updates have been combined with the OOH format. The originality of the idea about integrating real-time data posed enormous technical and logistical difficulties. It involved coordination with the brand team, the digital team, the OOH team and the Strawberry Frog team to bring this idea to life.”
While there is a whole lot of work that has happened in the digital space for the Ask movement, Mr Shinde concluded, “You will soon see our TVC on air.” Till then, keep asking!
By A Correspondent
Milestone Brandcom has rolled out Binani’s new Out-of-home campaign. Along with extended reach, the brand boasts a number of creative executions spread across circles.
Aamby Valley City has launched a nine-week-long sky diving event to give adventure enthusiasts the opportunity to sky dive with an internationally acclaimed sky diving crew from Spain.
