From reminder to revenue driver: How L&T Finance is rethinking OOH

OOH advertising is no longer competing to be seen; it is competing to be relevant. As digital channels become more cluttered, more filtered, and harder to trust, brands are rediscovering the value of presence, physical, contextual, and unskippable. For L&T Finance, OOH has quietly evolved into one of the most dependable pillars of the marketing mix, playing a decisive role in how awareness turns into action. 

Kavita Jagtiani, Chief Marketing Officer, L&T Finance Ltd., views outdoor not as a standalone visibility tool, but as a medium that anchors the consumer journey in the real world, before digital takes over. 

Building recall where attention is most honest 

At its core, OOH functions as a reminder medium for L&T Finance, but not in the traditional sense. The brand’s outdoor strategy is built on precision: identifying the right moment, the right environment, and the right mindset. 

“OOH works when it meets consumers at moments of natural receptivity,” Kavita explains. That philosophy drives how the brand selects locations, formats, and timing, whether its premium airport inventory or hyper-local placements aligned with business hubs. 

The emphasis is not on blanket visibility, but on planned fitment. Each site is evaluated for how it fits into the consumer’s daily movement and decision-making rhythm, often planned in close coordination with ground sales teams to ensure relevance translates into response. 

When billboards stop being passive 

What sets L&T Finance apart is its intent to push outdoor beyond observation and into interaction. The brand’s ‘Aapke Business Ka Game Changer’ Business Loan campaign marked a shift in how OOH was treated, not as a static surface, but as an interface. 

By allowing users to generate posters through an AI-powered microsite and integrating those creatives onto live digital hoardings, the brand turned the billboard into a participatory moment. Consumers weren’t just seeing the campaign, they were inside it. 

This approach reframed outdoor as a space for involvement rather than broadcast, reinforcing recall through personal relevance rather than repetition. 

Designing messages around movement 

Another defining feature of L&T Finance’s OOH playbook is its attention to context, not just location, but behaviour. The ‘Just Zoom Two-Wheeler Loans’ campaign demonstrated how messaging can evolve based on where consumers are and how they’re moving. 

Rather than running uniform creatives, the brand adapted copy across buses, cabs, and metro routes, aligning messaging with commuter routines and time-of-day realities. The result was communication that felt native to the moment, quick, relatable, and intuitive. 

This route-led storytelling shows how OOH can mirror everyday life, embedding brand messages into routines instead of interrupting them. 

Why OOH still sets the foundation 

For L&T Finance, outdoor plays a critical role at the very beginning of the consumer journey. It establishes credibility in a way few channels can. 

“Outdoor builds trust before anything else,” Kavita says. That trust often becomes the trigger, prompting search behaviour, website visits, and deeper engagement across digital platforms. 

When integrated with digital, OOH doesn’t compete, it amplifies. Its physical scale and permanence create memory structures that digital alone struggles to achieve, especially in categories where trust and authority matter. 

Confidence driven by modernisation, not nostalgia 

The brand’s continued investment in OOH is rooted in how rapidly the medium is evolving. Advances in digital formats, data integration, and AI-led planning have transformed outdoor into a more accountable and intelligent channel. 

In a landscape dominated by fragmented attention, OOH offers something increasingly rare: guaranteed presence. “It’s unskippable by design,” Kavita notes, making it a reliable counterbalance to digital volatility. 

Where the ecosystem still needs to evolve 

Despite its strengths, challenges remain. Static formats limit message depth, and the lack of creative rotation restricts flexibility. Route domination also depends heavily on site availability, missing even one critical location can weaken the impact of an entire journey-based strategy. 

From the ecosystem, Kavita expects three things: rigorous safety compliance, sharper hyper-local planning, and faster adoption of technology. For her, the future of OOH is unmistakably tech-led. 

AI-enabled planning, smarter buying tools, and improved measurement frameworks are no longer optional, they are foundational to making outdoor a truly agile medium. 

The bigger shift 

L&T Finance’s approach reflects a broader change in how serious marketers view outdoor today. OOH is no longer just about being visible; it’s about being meaningful, where people live, move, and decide. 

As the medium continues to modernise, the brands that will win are those that treat outdoor not as an afterthought, but as a strategic driver of trust, engagement, and performance.