‘If ROI is justified, I would shift budgets from other mediums to OOH’

For a brand in the building materials and tiles category, OOH is not just another medium on the plan. It is one of the most natural fits, a highly visual product, communicating at scale, in the markets where construction and aspiration are both picking up.  

Arvind Singh, AGM Marketing at Asian Granito India Ltd, has spent enough time on both sides of the agency-client table to know what OOH can and cannot do, and he speaks about it with the clarity that comes from that experience. A former account director at Ogilvy, where he handled Vodafone’s Gujarat circle, Arvind brings a media planning perspective to his marketing role, and OOH, he says, has always had a strong case in his book. 

OOH as a leadership statement 

For AGL, outdoor serves a specific and deliberate purpose. “Whenever we launch a new product, we go for loud communication in terms of outdoor, showcasing our range, highlighting what is new in the market,” Arvind says. But beyond product launches, OOH also carries a broader role for the brand: communicating leadership in a given market. 

“We go for arterial routes, major junctions, large format sites. And there are certain hubs of ceramics in particular cities, we take sites there so that our presence is felt. If someone is coming to buy, they see our brand. It helps in terms of top of mind recall and drives footfall to our dealers and distributors,” he explains. 

This dual function, brand building and trade support, is what makes OOH particularly valuable for a category like tiles, where the purchase decision often involves both the end consumer and the dealer or architect. “It communicates a leadership statement, connects with customers, improves top of mind recall, which gets converted into sales, and that is helpful for the dealers and distributors,” Arvind says. For a brand that operates through a wide dealer and distributor network, that connection between visibility and conversion at the trade level is not incidental. It is central to how OOH earns its place in the plan. 

Large format, transit, and going rural 

AGL’s OOH mix is built around a few clear priorities. Large format sites dominate, for the scale and the leadership statement they communicate. Transit media adds reach, particularly for audiences on the move. And for markets beyond the cities, the approach shifts. “For catering to rural markets, we do consider wall paintings and digital wall communications as well,” Arvind says. 

The geographic spread is wide. AGL focuses on India’s top 12 cities as the primary base, covering metros and cities like Pune, Hyderabad, and Ahmedabad. But the tier 2 and tier 3 markets are increasingly on the radar. “These are cities where construction is really picking up and people aspire for better products and designs. That is also our thrust in terms of how we reach those markets,” Arvind says. The brand has also been active on transit in a more literal sense, AGL recently undertook branding initiatives on trains including the Tejas Express, Vande Bharat, and Shatabdi Express, as part of its 25th anniversary communications. 

OOH as a medium, Arvind says, sits well alongside the rest of the mix precisely because of its economics and its unavoidability. “OOH is a more economical medium when you compare with other mediums of communication, and along with being economical, it is also an effective medium. You can also take sites at iconic locations in a particular city, and along with communicating leadership, you can also generate leads for your dealers and distributors. So it plays a major role,” he says. 

Regional communication, local connect 

When it comes to how campaigns are adapted across markets, language and local relevance take precedence over format changes. “The mode of communication is OOH, but the language changes, the strategy changes locally. If it is south India, you connect with them in their language first,” Arvind says. Getting the emotional connection right before anything else is a principle he applies consistently across markets. 

Beyond language, AGL also uses occasions and cultural moments to build local resonance. “If it is a Pongal kind of thing in a particular city, we do innovations around that. Ground activations can be part of it, along with OOH communications,” he adds. The approach is less about running a single national campaign adapted for different languages and more about building campaigns that feel like they belong to the city they are running in. 

Digital OOH is incoming 

Arvind sees digital OOH as a growing part of the mix, though its weight still depends on availability and quality of inventory in a given city. “We do take digital, especially at airports. And a lot of those large iconic sites have now been converted to digital, and we participate in those as well. The advantage is dynamic communication, multiple product highlights, multiple messages,” he says. 

The flexibility that DOOH offers, particularly for a brand with a wide product range spanning different surfaces, finishes, and applications, is clearly part of its appeal. Being able to run multiple creatives on a single site, or switch communication depending on the season or launch cycle, is something that static simply cannot offer. Whether DOOH becomes a bigger part of the budget will depend, in Arvind’s view, on how the medium continues to develop in terms of inventory and pricing across cities. 

The measurement question 

Like most marketers working with OOH, Arvind acknowledges that measurement remains the medium’s unresolved challenge. “OOH is still an unorganised sector in many ways. There are companies trying to do dipstick studies, trying to digitise footfall data, but as of now there is no parameter where you can say it is really working for you with full confidence,” he says. 

The signals he looks for are indirect but real, a spike in dealer footfall near a newly activated site, or a correlation between a campaign period and a bump in sales in a city. “It takes time in terms of conversion, but over a span of three months you can evaluate whether it is working or not,” Arvind says. It is a pragmatic approach, built on observation rather than dashboards, and it reflects the reality of how most brands in his category still work with OOH. 

What would change things significantly? “If somebody can justify the ROI, if there is a measurable parameter that actually shows what I am getting for my spend, I would shift budgets from other mediums to outdoor. Jo dikta hai, wo bikta hai. That is the hard fact. OOH is something you cannot skip,” he says. It is a sentiment that the industry has heard before, but coming from a marketer who already spends a meaningful chunk of his budget on OOH, it carries a specific weight. The medium does not need to convince him of its value. It just needs to give him the numbers to back up what he already knows.