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Necessity drives innovation

By M4G Bureau - February 10, 2014

Avinav Chaubey, AGM-Marketing, Muthoot Group on how the OOH comes in handy to connect with a localized audience.


Impact of economy on marketing and advertising budgets

Yes, the marketing spends will definitely increase as basically during the last one year, there were many customers who we needed to gain back. Due to not getting their loan requirements fulfilled, they had gone back to money lenders and private financers. They would be happy to hear that Muthoot is giving the same kind of loan value. For these old customers, we have already started branch level initiatives. And yes this would need advertising support for bigger reach and to ensure that the public gets to know about this.
 
OOH Budgets

OOH advertising budget has increased to almost 16% as compared to last-to-last year. In fact, last year our share of market was maintained at a low level as the market was changing frequently. While investing in the market, we are also cautious enough not to waste the money as business requirements do fluctuate with the industry fluctuations. But this year the outdoor spends have definitely increased.
 
Role of OOH in the overall marketing plans

We are a brand which has vast footprints across nation. We have approximately 4,440 (four thousand, four hundred and forty branches) and one of the largest in BFSI category.  And 70% plus of these branches are in 2-6 tier places which means we have branches in semi-urban and rural areas also. There are places where you won't find any other bank, but you will find a Muthoot branch along an SBI or a Canara Bank branch. As marketers, we ensure that at the national level, there is brand awareness about our product and services. But at the same time we need to ensure there is on-ground presence of the brand too. Also, there are markets wherein the ATL medium doesn't have a great reach. Over the last 2-3 years, we have opened braches mainly in the suburban and rural areas. So while earlier we used to go only for the ATL medium, we have now realized that there is a need to reach a localised market and OOH comes in handy when it comes to on-ground presence. In our scenario, it works really well as for any brand OOH is an effective a reminder medium and it influences the buying decision of customers.

Preferred Formats

Bigger format really helps. Unlike in a magazine or TV where the receptive powers are more because of time, OOH is a medium wherein you have only a few seconds to see and register a brand. And that is why we feel the copy shouldn't have more than 6-7 words. The creative's images should be self-explanatory about the product and service and the message should only compliment it. Hence what I primarily feel is that big format has the benefit of being readable, so it is definitely important. The second factor is that it has to be clutter-free. Today in metro cities or even semi-metros or state capitals, there are only 3-4 main junctions and there is lot of clutter at each junction. So I feel the planning should focus on being clutter-free. The site should be at eye level and considering the communication we do, the messaging is very important and it should be readable.   
 
Digital Formats

I personally don't like to spend on digital formats. I feel the outdoor format should be static. You need bigger budgets to execute campaigns on digital formats, which I am not comfortable with. 

Approach to campaign creative

Grey Advertising and ABM communication are the creative agencies which work for us.  When it comes to outdoor creative, we believe that it should be graphic-led and the message should be minimal. There should only be a maximum of 7-8 words, which one can read. And the font size should be readable.  But in the case of images, they should, by themselves, explain about the product and service. We also give a lot of priority to highlighting the logo, because we need to distinguish ourselves from others with the same brand name. 
 
Defining innovation in the context of OOH advertising

I believe that innovations happen because of necessity. There were multiple OOH sites which were cropping up creating clutter, so innovations were felt acutely to stand out. Innovation should help in instant connect and break clutter. And for our own part, yes we do a lot of innovations.

Measurement (of impact)

This is an unorganised industry and we find it difficult to co-relate the exact ROI but at Muthoot, we are able to track it. For instance, we can tell that this hoarding has given us these many calls and footfalls leading to convergence and business.  It is a process which we have set up internally. There is no software for this. We have a system wherein we track the responses from each hoarding. We can do it due to the kind of branch network we have and these sites are mainly in the key cities. In any key city, expect those in the North-East states; we have more than 10 branches and each city has a key junction. The monitoring mechanism works like this, one branch is attached with each hoarding. The branch monitors the site about wear-tear and everyday it is supposed to revert back. There is a regional officer who collects the information from all zonal offices and passes it on to the corporate office. And there is a call to action number on the hoarding so anybody who needs to know about the service and product will automatically call or text on that number. And since all call to action numbers are different we get to know which site is giving what kind of response. So we have an effective monitoring mechanism.

Role of and expectations from specialist agencies


We are working with multiple OOH agencies such as Milestone Bradcomm, Postersope, and Pioneer Next. We don't believe in giving monopoly to one agency. If there is a competition between two agencies then I believe it improves the delivery. It also leads to better deals with better sites and a better plan with better cost. The same brief goes to all these agencies during a multi-city campaign, and whoever gives the better quotes and best sites in any particular city gets the plan for that specific city.  Expectations are always high with everyone. These days due to increase in the cost of OOH, it becomes difficult to get very high value. 

Challenges in different markets

We don't face too any issues mainly because of the brand presence. If there is any issue we get to know of them early on. As already mentioned, our branches  follow up during the execution. On a daily basis, the branch members monitor them regarding about wear and tear and flex cutting. We are happy with all the cities. OOH delivers us good ROI, but in places like Delhi and a few other metro cities, we prefer the newspaper and radio mediums as they deliver better returns there.

Factors that will drive OOH spends

Cost is definitely the main issue. But otherwise, as far as Muthoot is concerned, I don't see any other issues in OOH.
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