“OOH is a key marketing lever for us”

What roles does OOH advertising play in your marketing plan?
For English Oven, Delhi is a P1 market which contributes to 80% of business in the B2C space. There are a few levers for us to explore either it is newspaper or OOH or digital. Now we have made our presence in the print media and then OOH became a key medium for us because it gives that grandness imagery to the brand. Moreover, in OOH also, we have selected bus shelter because they are economical. It stands in top position in our marketing plan hierarchy. OOH is one place where the audience is at leisure, especially with driving rules getting stricter, the outdoor medium is becoming more effective where people are passively looking and registering the advertisements, hence it works. Also, unlike TV, OOH is not averse to watch.

What all OOH format works for your brand?
Along with Bus shelters, in Delhi, the metro train as a format works beautifully especially trains wraps and inside train branding followed by billboards. I think these days, OOH has good formats to be explored.

Do you think with variety of formats, OOH has capability for effective story-telling?
Yes, it definitely offers a good feature of storytelling, majorly when a good number of formats are taken in a series. For instance, we have taken 50 shelters and they have surely helped us in building up a brand story and narrating it effectively to the audience.

Could share how did ensure clutter free and creative messaging for your OOH campaign?
For our recent Good Morning India campaign, the brand team and our outdoor partners JCDecaux worked very closely to design the creative for the campaign keeping in mind the height of the display and other factors in bringing out the creativity. In fact, JCDecaux also shared some interesting examples with us showcasing the way previous campaigns have been executed and in order to get more striking what are the deliverables we could have in terms of height, lettering and etc. Hence, I think it was a pretty close knit working with them. We always try to design creative depending upon the grasp ability of a driver which is why we keep them nice and uncluttered.

How satisfied are you with outdoor formats available in Tier I & Tier II markets?
There are markets other than metro offering some great advertising options like Leafberry in Ludhiana is awesome but you don’t get these kinds of options across. Also, in smaller markets, the challenge is that not all sites are organized for instance a site is present today, may or may not there tomorrow. Second, I am not sure that if any science is applied while installing a site tapping the traffic movement and other factors at all the places outside metros, where it is quite fragmented. And these are a few essential things that any marketer would look at while investing their money.

How do you ensure monitor and measure your OOH campaigns and their efficacy?
The brand custodians are quite aggressively at it. The marketing team is tracking all promotional segments including radio and outdoor which shows that the team has an absolute grip on the campaign. There is a constant and tight monitoring conducted from our side which is percolated down from marketing to sales team who keep us posted with site conditions such as lights working or not and etc. Then there is also 3rd party monitoring from outdoor partners’ side.

How did the collaboration of OOH and radio work for your brand?
There is a synergy which has been brought because radio is also more of an outdoor medium than indoor, as in today’s scenario it is mostly played in cars. When there is a synergy between two formats, the performance goes to another level because when you are hearing about a brand on radio and all of a sudden you are also seeing it so it just gets strengthened with a better recall and stays with consumers for a longer period of time.

Innovation is a key part of your recent campaign but again it’s been executed tactically. Could you explain the plan?
We decided to cover the city depending upon our need where we choose south & west part of Delhi as the biggest contributor on OOH part. At the same time, we didn’t want let go the other parts of the capital such as north, east and central Delhi therefore, we picked up individual sites in each area. We picked up some iconic locations like ITO, ISBT, Noida Entry road and etc. and executed innovations on them which are scheduled for 5 months. And Since south and west is important zones hence, we did a major burst there without innovation for the first few months and then we took the ring-road, the heavy traffic road and likewise other locations where traffic jams happen in the morning and evening. Also, there is a lot of commutation happening between Delhi- Noida-Gurgaon so we also touched upon sites which targets the masses traveling from in & out these locations.

What changes do you anticipate in OOH industry?
We would like to definitely see some numbers or some methodology which can demonstrate the traffic patterns to plan the campaigns effectively. Also, some science to be applied which can spot the eye movement of passengers and if it can be picked up with the help of technology then we can use it to add more analytics in putting up creative on the outdoors.