Muthoot Finance sees great value in transit media branding

The Muthoot Group has been an active advertising brand in the OOH space, and more particularly in the transit media environment. How would you sum up your brand’s advertising experience in recent years in the OOH space?

The Muthoot Group has 20 diversified business divisions and is led by our flagship and the most prominent consumer facing brand, Muthoot Finance which has a very large national footprint of over 6,500 branches and a dedicated team of over 40,000 employees, serving a daily customer serving base of over 2.5 lakh customers.

70% of our branch network is in the semi-urban and rural geography of India and, therefore, it may be quite obvious to assume that in the media-mix deployed by us in our advertising, OOH plays an important role. What I must add is that we’ve had great learning from the medium, which we have ploughed back into our media-mix. An example is in recognising the importance of transit media.

We are happy to have been one of the first in taking to transit media so actively and it has brought us great learning and significant results for the brand in terms of unaided recall and addition to positive perception. Currently, we have three significant transit media properties across the country – one in the heart of capital, a metro station in Greater Kailash, another in the south of the country in Chennai – the metro station at Nandanam, while the third and most recently opened is at Jaipur, a hybrid station to access Indian Railway and the city metro.

Since the investments on this medium are substantial and the returns on this medium are staggered and come over time, it is not always easy to build a case for it and sustain it. Fortunately for us, we were able to identify the right locations and build a well-studied case, benefits of which have accrued to us.

Do you see OOH fitting into the plans for integrated brand communications?

One of the biggest challenges for brands is to correctly identify the target audience, and the medium that can take the brand’s message to them most effectively. In general terms, yes, OOH is highly likely to be part of an integrated brand communication.

In my experience, a brand must define what it would like to do with the OOH medium and how it would help extend its campaign or brand message through the effective use of this medium, or in short, what it would like to achieve by using the medium. It cannot, in an overwhelming number of cases, be an adaptation of the main communication in another medium, say, TV, Print or even Digital. I have always believed that ‘tailormade messaging for respective medium’ is the key. Just like how we crafted Sunheri Soch Season 1 & 2 – a real-life storytelling series of actual Muthoot Finance customers who made it big in life, exclusively leveraging Radio as the medium to inspire other listeners.

Similarly, it is crucial that the messaging for OOH while being completely aligned to the main campaign, should be suitably modified or tailormade to leverage the advantages and to suit the limitations of the medium.

Having said that, undoubtedly OOH is an impactful recall medium that greatly helps in complementing the messaging on other mediums, building brand awareness and reaching audiences that many other media can’t.

Is OOH geared to perform at every stage of the marketing funnel?

I would say, every medium has an effectiveness quotient, which is in part its ability to carry and deliver a message, and in the other part its relevance to the product, brand or the nature of message. In short, there is nothing like a one size fits all. Therefore, a different assessment for every brand/product and perhaps for every campaign is necessary to see if it is relevant to the stage of the marketing funnel.

What is your brand’s particular experience with DOOH advertising? Are you open to using programmatic DOOH?

I am a firm believer of welcoming the new for it brings new perspectives to light and gives learnings and insights. In that sense, as a brand we welcome DOOH and have also engaged it in certain campaigns. However, from a marketing decision-making standpoint, a greater understanding of its impact and how effective the tracking mechanism can be, is always important. There are quite some brands that have already taken to this new programmatic medium but we would like to accumulate some more learnings before we scale up on this one.

I would, though admit that it is definitely a medium that would provide more latitude for innovation and targeted communication, especially when it comes to topical messaging or limited period offerings. It certainly is exciting and I for one will be watching this very closely, not just in my current role but also as a student of marketing and communication strategies.