Literature Review
Section I: Current Scenario
The first article “Out-of-Home Out-of-Home Advertising in India and its Evolution” by I B Saravanan , emphasizes that Indian consumers are increasingly staying out of home for commercial purposes and recreation, rendering press and electronic media less penetrating. Outdoor advertising has thus captured the attention of advertisers and led to many innovations turning outdoor advertising into Out-of-Home advertising. Matrix video walls, trivisions, building wraps and vehicular graphics are acting as tools to the marketers for enticing consumers with short notice launch and positioning campaigns. Further, organising of this industry in India is required as OOH advertising is not without its share of issues.
The second article “Outdoor Advertising” by Vineet Tandon and Vikas Khandelwal , focuses on the changing face of Outdoor Advertising to Out-of-Home Media in India. With the media explosion reverberating all around and increasing competition amongst the brand marketers being eye-catching, media-planners are looking at the possibilities of Outdoor Advertising, now known as Out-of-Home or OOH. The various factors driving the growth of OOH media are increasing ad-spends, clutter of traditional media, increasing working population, aptness in rural marketing and local advertising. Though the timing for the growth of OOH media is perfect, it needs sustainable growth for OOH to be recognised as an industry, and regulation and some amount of research to validate the RoI on ad spend by marketers on OOH media.
In the third article “Out-of-Home Marketing”, the author Amit Kumar Singh opines that increasing audience burnout is leading to a decline in the efficacy of traditional advertising and marketing channels. As a result, marketers face declining returns on promotional investments. Therefore, they have gone in for alternate marketing promotion strategies that help them deliver a focussed message to targeted consumers in a cost-effective manner. The author talks about various forms of early out-of-home advertising and its current methods and tools such as guerilla marketing and in-film advertising.
Captiv(e)ating the Audience Out-of-Home”, focuses on the Tripe Dhote in the next article “Captiv(e)ating
impact of Outdoor Advertising in bringing the audience out-of-home. Escalating prices of the television and print media, along with market fragmentation, changing customer lifestyles
and growing clutter have all generated the need for advertising on a medium, which is untapped and can innovatively capture audiences even out of home. With innovations, better spend and awareness, this can be seen as the medium of the future for not only attracting attention or creating interest, but also for convincingly influencing the buying behaviour of the customer. Various assets of outdoor media and their growth factors with suitable examples (Amul Butter’s Utterly Butterly Campaign, “Incredible India”, ITC’s “Made for each other”, Hutch’s Hello Pink and Daily News Awareness Campaign) are explained. With a clear vision, proper regulations, a system for evaluation and measurement, a systematic body for research and planning, and constant innovations, we can look forward to outdoor advertising becoming more than a reminder medium and also an influence in captivating more and more audiences.
The fifth article “Hoardings – Giants Among Outdoors” sourced from www.giftaccessories.com , emphasizes the growing importance of hoardings which are
synonymous with outdoor advertising. Regardless of size or orientation, they claim the maximum amount of attention in OOH advertising. Sizes of hoardings range from 14'H x 48'W to the small four-sheet 3'4" x 5', along with the most common ones which appear on highways and main arterial roads. Hoardings are primarily used as reminders as, being stationary, they have the advantage of giving the product a repeated exposure to the target audience. It also mentions the major ad spenders on outdoor media like Reliance Infocomm and Hutch. Various aspects of maintenance of hoardings are also listed. Despite protests against hoardings by environmentalists and citizens’ groups, they remain an inevitable part of any city’s skyline. With alternate options like mobile hoardings, mounted on trucks, hoardings as a tool of outdoor advertising are here to stay.
The next article “The Growth of Digital Printing in Out-of-Home Advertising” by I B Saravanan, focuses on the growing importance of digital printing in outdoor advertising and
the various digital printing techniques. Digital printing has come a long way in just over a decade. The huge digital ink-jet printers costing crores of rupees have paved the way to costeffective printers using the same technology, but requiring less investment and skill to operate. The result of globalisation has impacted the outdoor advertising industry as well and
demands on the industry are increasing by the day. New innovations like flat bed printing, eco-solvent inks and high resolution printers are increasingly occupying a service provider’s factories.
The seventh article “Billboard Advertising” from Wikipedia , describes the features of billboards and their significance. A billboard is a large outdoor advertising structure, found in places with high traffic such as cities, roads, motorways and highways and show large advertisements aimed at passing pedestrians and drivers. The various forms of billboards include Bulletins and Posters and the various types of billboards comprise Traditional Billboards, Mechanical Billboards, Digital Billboards and Mobile Billboards. Billboard advertisements are designed to catch a person’s attention and create a memorable impression very quickly, leaving the seers thinking about the advertisement after they have driven past it and hence, there are usually only a few words, in large print, and a humorous or arresting image in brilliant colour. The placement of billboards and their visual and environmental concerns and road safety concerns are also discussed. The article also lists the various uses of billboards, both commercial and non-commercial. The next article “Out in the Open – Attention Grabbers” describes the various outdoor advertising tools such as vehicles mascots, inflatables, canopies and tents, magnets, signage systems, aerial advertising, phone kiosks, in-store displays, and displays in airports, sports arenas, transit shelters, mobile advertising and street furniture. Although billboards are the first ones that come to mind, there is a lot more to this medium of communication than these large format visual arresters. The article also brings about the importance of digital printing ink which makes advertisements more colourful and vibrant. The value addition is an interview with Vasant Jante , Publisher Outdoor Today , discusses the latest trends and innovations in outdoor advertising.
The last article in the section “Working the Great Outdoors ” by Purvita Chatterjee , elaborates that ad agencies have redefined their out-of-home outfits with new technology driven packages, changing the face of the medium for their clients. Ad agencies with OOH operations such as Mudra (Primesite), Lintas (Aaren Initiative), O&M (Ogilvy Activation) and Madison Outdoor (MOMS) are incorporating software-led technology packages which are likely to further change the face of outdoor advertising in the country, apart from boosting
the business potential of this segment. Ogilvy Activation has a set of proprietary planning tools across the activation platforms and, specific to outdoor, outdoor research with ‘Oscar’ and followed it up with a digital mapping software called OTS (Ogilvy Tracking Study). The future of out-of-home solutions gets a facelift with technology and accountability giving a new dimension to the medium. The value addition, “The Backroom Boys” by Tanmoy Neog discusses the global ad agencies outsourcing their creative and production work to India.
Section II: Issues and Trends
The first article in the second section “Outdoor Activity” by Rohit Viswanath , debates whether the current round of action in outdoor media will lead to growth of advertising at the national level. A lot of the money spent on outdoor media is on posters, wall paintings and other things that are not estimated on the national advertising scenario. While media-buying in India is consolidated across nine major media-buying agencies, media ownership is splintered across thousands of companies. Since the industry has been more or less unorganized, it also lacks any sort of research and there are actually no criteria for buying outdoor media. The process of consolidation will also create scale in outdoor media in India, which can be used to raise capital and finance growth which, in turn, can be used to deal with some of the endemic problems, such as the lack of lobbying power for outdoor media owners. The value addition, “Television Looks Outdoors” by D Thiyagarajan features the impact of satellite channels on outdoor advertising.
The next article “Electronic LED Billboards: The New Voice of Business ” by Louis M Brill , talks about the changing trends in outdoor hoardings and billboards. Electronic LED
billboards are economical, demand lesser inventory and offer ease of use, when compared to the conventional vinyl sign face-changed billboard. The article envisages the growing importance of LED boards and their gradual replacement of the conventional billboards, all over the world. The vinyl faced conventional billboard is used more for branding and product awareness, while the electronic billboards are more sales-oriented, indicating the point of purchase or frequently changing messages regarding price variations.
Raina Kumra in the succeeding article “Hijacking the Urban Screen: Trends in Outdoor Advertising and Predictions for the Use of Video Art and Urban Screens ” attempts to
assess the trends in static outdoor media and apply the findings towards the future use of
video content in the urban sphere. Apart from the initial use of the “video billboard” in advertising, the out-of-home advertising is fast responding to vinyl skin with more creative and interactive execution. The various methods, such as guerrilla marketing, corporate sponsorship of art projects and events, and other PR (public relations) generating activities are gaining momentum towards urban outdoor video screen advertising. As more and more screens arrive in airports, museums, schools, day care centres, restaurants, retail stores, shopping malls, conference centres, company lobbies, grocery stores, medical facilities, hotels and motels, theatres and casinos, the screens should present a diverse opportunity to house good design and showcase innovative artwork. The case studies (Reuters, Bloomberg) document some of the first experiments utilising video at the urban screen level and show how the press and public relations value of these projects is more beneficial to the advertiser and the community than spending on traditional advertising.
The next article “Surrogate Advertising in India” by Pratibha Abrol focuses on the various forms of surrogate advertising in India. Surrogate advertising has been around ever since someone decided that certain things were probably not good in the interest of the community at large. The government has outrightly banned the advertising and publicity of alcohol and tobacco in any form; tobacco and alcohol companies have found a way to circumvent the ban on advertising by resorting to surrogate advertising in order to keep their brand alive in the minds of consumers. This article attempts to analyse the various dimensions of surrogate advertising. The value addition, “Have Surrogate Advertisements Stopped? ” by Subhadip Roy features the laws to curb surrogate advertisements and their implications.
The article which follows next is “Government Policies in Outdoor Advertising” by E Naveen Kumar . This article focuses on the government policies laid out in terms of outdoor
advertising. It also talks about the various restrictions laid by the government on hoarding sizes and number of hoardings in major highways and near airports. The article talks about the ban on hoardings in major Indian cities such as Delhi and, recently in Chennai, and the illumination effect and power consumption due to neon lights used in hoardings and billboards. It also speaks about the environmental issue of using non-biodegradable PVC which is used for printing and the waste treatment disposal processes. It elaborates on taxation issues and concludes that the industry needs a close-knit regulatory body functioning at the apex level to carefully tackle the social issues of visual pollution.
Section III: Corporate Experiences
The first article in the third section “Entertainment News India Limited – Times OOH Media” by D Thiyagarajan and E Naveen Kumar , focuses on Entertainment Network India
Limited’s out-of-home media company called Times Out-of-Home, which is ideally placed to tap the maximum potential of the Indian Out-of-Home Advertising industry. Having bagged multi-year contracts for operating Out-of-Home advertising sites in the key markets of Mumbai and Delhi, Times Out-of-Home Media is already one of the largest marketing agents, operating the advertising on around (fifteen hundred) bus shelters in the Western and Southern parts of Mumbai till December 2008. In an industry which predominantly comprises static advertising produced with conventional methods, Times Out Of Home increases the revenue realisation from its sites by selectively introducing innovative technologies and processes such as video walls and remote access hoardings managed through communication networks. The article also features the various competitors in the OOH industry like Selvel Vantage, Pioneer, Clear Channel India and Lakshya.
The second article “Mudra Communications in OOH Advertising”, discusses the Mudra Group’s Out-of-Home communications arm, which has the most extensive nationwide network covering over 600 markets and has planned and implemented huge outdoor, retail signage and visual merchandising programmes across various categories. The interviewee compares the current outdoor advertising scenario with the situation which existed a few years back. Mudra Communications is the only company which tracks outdoor usage by more than 400 brands across 16 cities month after month. The interviewee speaks about the limitations that deter the development of outdoor advertising scenario in India, apart from other existing government regulations. The value addition, “Mudra Revamp will Start in Delhi” from Businessworld elucidates Mudra’s plans to revamp its agency in Delhi as a total
branding solutions agency.
E Naveen Kumar in the next article “Ogilvy & Mather – Ad Agency Defined by Devotion Towards Brands”, throws light on the experiences of Ogilvy & Mather in Outdoor
Advertising. Ogilvy and Mather (O&M) India, a subsidiary of WPP group is one of the world’s leading advertising agencies in India and the fifth largest operation in terms of profits, having a presence since 1928 with global revenues of US$4.9 billion with profits amounting to 18 per cent of the revenues in 2003. The focus areas of O&M include
Advertising, Direct Marketing, Public Relations and Market Research. Ogilvy Activation includes services in the non-traditional area of advertising – Ogilvy Landscapes (Outdoor Advertising), Ogilvy Outreach, Ogilvy Live and Ogilvy Signscapes, which together with the focused services, consolidate offerings to clients. It also describes the various awards and recognitions of Ogilvy & Mather and the factors responsible for their success in outdoor advertising. It further highlights their successful campaigns in Outdoor Advertising such as Hutch, Cadbury, Brooke Bond Taj Mahal, Centre Fresh (Perfetti), Fevicol, Amaron, Asian Paints and Tata Safari.
The last article of the section “Amul’s Topical Advertising: Unleashing the Power of Hoardings” by Rajavardhan Palakodeti and Jitesh Nair , throws light on the clever use of
topical advertising by Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF) using humour, to generate higher brand recall. Amul, the mother brand of India’s largest food products organisation, the Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation Ltd. (GCMMF), has redefined the way food products are advertised to the people. The cooperative has been making extensive use of hoardings for promoting its flagship brand ‘Amul Butter’ since 1966, and is all set to enter the Guinness Book of World Records for the longest run promotion campaign. The case brings out the utility of hoardings as an effective marketing communications tool for marketers. Finally, this case discusses the rationale behind GCMMF’s strategy to introduce the ‘Amul Cheese Boy’ as a brand mascot for its Amul cheese brand, despite the popularity of the ‘Amul Butter Girl’. The value addition is, “Hutch Campaigns in Outdoor Advertising” by E Naveen Kumar describes the success of Hutch’s
Outdoor Campaigns, specifically The Boy and the Dog Campaign.
