Creating a buzz with the bus

Approach to OOH communication and its impact in Bangalore

In Bangalore and Chennai we opt for outdoor in order to reach a large population. In Bangalore when we first looked at outdoor, we decided to begin by selecting the hoarding sites first; our team did a complete recce with our out-of-home agency Vantage, before the installation of the brand campaign. We have used a double-sided flex printing for outdoor for the first time. In fact, we focus a lot of the quality of printing and it is handled by Autographics.

So the outdoor visibility got us good mileage and for five months we continued with the promotion. Subsequently we started bus-branding and took around 200 of them as well as 90 bus-shelters. And I must say that we are leveraging the bus shelters and buses so well for branding that it has kind of raised the bar for these formats and has kindled fresh interest in them. Earlier, these formats were perceived as being low-end or not in keeping with a certain brand image, but I think we have managed to change that perception.

In outdoor one gets only a fraction of a second to absorb the advertisement, so we do not use too much information in our communication and rather keep it precise and direct to hit our TG with the message and branding and highlight the freshness of our dairy products.  Interestingly, from the bus branding we are getting such a good mileage that people are calling us and enquiring about it. In fact, for bus-branding we spent around Rs  14 lakhs on the flex printing alone as we never want to compromise on the quality of our communication material.

We have 50-60% of business coming from Bangalore thanks to these visibility strategies. In Bangalore alone, the business grew 3 times post-campaigning. So we plan to aggressively carry on with outdoor advertising.

Both Tamilnadu and Karnataka are good markets for us and in Tamilnadu our OOH is handled by Outspace Brandcomm. But in Chennai since there is a restriction of hoardings, so we have covered approximately 50 premium bus-shelters in outdoor.

Our campaigns typically run for about six months. We do our creative in-house and ensure that it looks always very attractive and suitable for both day and night vision. And as already mentioned, we communicate very precise information which helps our TG register the brand presence. 

OOH budget for Karnataka

This year we spent around Rs 5.3 crore on advertising and out of that Rs 4 crore was spent on outdoor, this is because Bangalore is a very big market for us. Thus outdoor, supported by a good distribution system is very much needed to increase our market share here. And that is what we are focusing on.

Other key markets in the state

We are looking at tapping all major cities in Karnataka including Mangalore, Mysore, Hubli and Davangere, but our first focus is definitely on Bangalore where there is still a lot left to be explored and the exercise is still on. As a next step we are moving towards Mangalore and Mysore aggressively. After this phase, we will cover the North and South of Karnataka including cities like Belgaum and others. Our aim is to become an established brand in the nearby cities first and then expand into other zones.

Working around OOH clutter and other issues in Bangalore

The clutter is mainly in terms of hoardings, but we have gone beyond that used formats like bus-shelters and bus branding and the execution has been pretty smooth.

Exploring new formats/ innovations in the city

As our products are for the masses and are used 365 days, we are not looking at cab or auto branding at the moment though in the future we may look at it as additional options in the OOH space. At present, as already mentioned, we are primarily focusing on bus branding and bus shelter branding. Here we also make sure to only take the Red buses of BMTC as they are maintained properly.  In other cities in the state, we go with whatever format is suitable for our type of branding. But in Bangalore bus shelter has been one of the most strategic formats for us.

Factors that will drive higher OOH spends in the state/message to media owners

Given the amount of money spent by a brand on outdoor the quality of printing and the flex used should be very good and these have to be maintained. Also, in terms of covering a city like Bangalore, the distribution of sites has to be significant as far as number is concerned.  We are planning to take at least 150 bus-shelters because only then we feel we will be able to create some impact.