Discussions on attention economy, OOH messaging and Delhi Metro kick off OAC Day 2

Day 2 of the Outdoor Advertising Convention 2023 began with a series of intriguing talks on the need for brands to re-evaluate their messaging and especially for OOH while understanding the shortening attention span of the audience. 

Rajib Basu, Partner, PwC India kicked off the day with his talk ‘What’s attention economy got to do with media: Direction finders for OOH’. Referencing various market studies and even presenting a case study from Harvard Business School, he talked about how there is an information overload today as on average people view more than 3,000 ad messages per day which has led to attention fatigue. As such, brands need to evaluate and change their advertising strategy based on the attention contingency. 

During the Q&A session, an audience member pointed out that while short viewing time was once a weakness of the OOH sector, with decreased attention spans it has now become an asset for the medium and its effectiveness. 

Next, the audience was greeted by Anita Nayyar, COO – Media & Communication, Patanjali Ayurved and her talk on ‘Leveraging OOH for big impact brand communications’. Anita emphasized that more than anything, the right messaging is key to grab audience attention, brands need to understand the simpler the message, likelier it is that they will remember it. Anita presented various examples of simple yet effective brand messaging using OOH from brands such as McDonald’s, IKEA, Maybelline, Domino’s and more. 

She also emphasized the need to customize and localize communication for different markets, especially in India as she defined the country as a ‘conglomerate of many countries’. 

Dr. Amit Kumar Jain, Director – Ops, Delhi Metro (DMRC) gave his talk on ‘How a growing DMRC network is creating greater advertising opportunities’ before all delegates departed for a tea break. 

With 15% of the revenue from coming non-fare related activities, Dr. Jain provided a detailed breakdown of the advertising opportunities for advertisers on Delhi Metro’s extensive network. He delighted the crowd when he paraphrased Shashi Kapoor’s famous ‘Mere paas maa hai’ dialogue from Deewar to ‘Mere paas maas hai!’ referring to Delhi Metro’s daily footfall of over 6 million passengers as an incentive for potential advertisers.