Prestige Sings its Song Through Outdoor

Innovation is the need of the hour for any brand to reach, capture and retain customers today. With the intention to create a unique campaign, realty major Prestige Group recently unveiled'Song of the South', an innovative outdoor campaign executed by Coral Media across Bangalore. In a chat with Outdoor Asia, Uzma Irfan, Corporate Communication Director, Prestige Group shares more insight on'Song of the South' campaign and the role of OOH media in the real estate major's marketing strategy. Edited excerpts.

What role does OOH media play in your overall marketing & media strategy?

OOH is an important part of our media mix, as it is one of the most powerful faces of advertising. OOH provides readily available brand messages and images for a wider audience. This trend of advertising has a great impact because it is usually the first form of advertising that potential clients see, and therefore it can influence their opinion or impression of the brand. It helps to focus on our TG with more impact in a particular geographical area.

How important is OOH advertising for a brand? How do you measure the impact of various media that you have used for marketing?

OOH provides eye catching and effective brand messages which should significantly attract the attention of the customers. When we are planning a campaign, we find that the biggest advantage of OOH is that it creates our presence in market. It helps us to feel that we are close enough to our TG. In terms of measuring the impact we do a dipstick post campaign study to see how different media has helped us and in what ways. Any customer walking in or logging on to the website will be given a questionnaire about how they got information about the project. This helps us to judge from where the responses are coming from. From this, we can find out which is the powerful medium that helps our marketing. Usually OOH media will be the source from where people finds us.
 
What kind of media formats are you generally using in your OOH campaigns?

Large format hoardings. Because it helps in creating innovation for each campaign and large hoardings offer larger space for a better communication with our TG about the project.

What is your company's take on Digital OOH?

We are in the process of doing something big on digital OOH. There are some plans which we are not able to disclose now. Soon, we would unleash our digital OOH plan with a different way in Bangalore. Digital OOH will be successful when strategised effectively.

OOH creatives are still cut and paste. What is your opinion about exclusive and creative OOH?

While some brands are indulging in this cut and paste job, at Prestige we use different kind of creatives for the same campaign. We have done plenty of innovations but each of them are different from others. None of our creatives are similar. This is what we have done in our'Song of the South' project. In this campaign, we have used musical tone and the saxophone creative. And here, the print ad and OOH was a little different. Because in OOH the colour scheme make a huge difference, we ensured that the creative is well visible even in the night or when the lights are on.

Can you briefly explain the concept of'Song of the South' campaign?

Song of the South campaign was created with the aim to focus on customers who are present in the South of Karnataka. We have launched this innovation to create an atmosphere of serenity and peace in the mind of people. When Prestige does something, it's always to touch people. For us, it's all about building a healthy relationship with customers. We wanted to do something different from the usual billboards. They have to be a connector and a differentiator at the same time. So, we have introduced musical instruments in our billboards as it would help the customer to differentiate us from the other competitors in the market and it would stay as a unique one.

Tell us about the effectiveness of this campaign.

People are talking about this campaign not only in the South but all over India. This is the biggest achievement of this campaign. There are so many billboards inside the city by the various real estate groups. To be different from all of them, we have to do something new. The theme'Song of the South' itself shows something unique.

This is the first time that Prestige has created innovations on outdoor media. How has this impacted the campaign?

Yes, this is the first time we have done large scale innovations in all outdoor media. We have used LED lights and cut outs of vocal musical instruments, that would lit up the billboard extensively. Moreover it was 360 degree approach and it created maximum brand visibility.

What was your brief to your agency for executing this campaign?
 
We found a perfect partner, as Coral Media offered full support to do something different on outdoor. It was very easy to communicate with them about our concept and ideas. We told them to make it different. They captured the nook and corner of our brief and made the campaign a successful one. They helped us to present it in the right places with the right message. I believe in working with people who have the same wavelength.

What is the target audience you have in mind?

Prestige Group builds mid segment, luxury and premium luxury apartments and villas. Song of the South comes under the mid-segment category. In this campaign, target audience can be anybody who is a Bangalorean or people who recently moved to Bangalore.

What is the duration of this campaign and how much growth in sales are you expecting from this?

Song of the South is a two month campaign. This is the longest campaign that we have done till date. Prestige has its own brand value and quality. Definitely we are expecting growth, but it is not only in sales but also in maintaining relationships and trust.

Is Prestige Group planning any innovative campaigns for its forthcoming projects?

Definitely. Innovation is the key as there are multiple media formats. But we wouldn't be doing innovations just for the promotions. It depends on what we want to achieve. It may be tactical, brand building, reach or impact. Sometimes innovations help in various stages of development. So considering various factors, we will be planning innovations for our future projects.

Your message to Outdoor Specialist Agency

We are fortunate to have an agency like Coral Media who does our OOH strategising, planning, executing and monitoring. We do have a dipstick study on campaigns even after the completion of campaigns. This is what has helped us in understanding how we succeed in our campaigns. The strong support and willingness to work hard for the successful completion of a campaign will be the most important thing which an outdoor partner has to do for their brands.