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Home » OOH News » Lockdown is a time is to ‘Unlearn & Relearn’

Lockdown is a time is to ‘Unlearn & Relearn’

By Bhawana Anand - May 05, 2020

EyeTalk Media Ventures conducts virtual workshops on DOOH for media agencies

During the lockdown where businesses are sluggish and firms are looking to utilise this scenario to enhance the skills on individual as well as organisational levels, EyeTalk Media Ventures has taken the initiative to expand the training exercise to the industry level. The DOOH broadcast firm has been conducting virtual workshops called "Unlearn and Relearn, The 3 New Ps of DOOH" - Power, Panorama and Possibilities, where the workforce of media agencies is given the advanced knowledge about Digital OOH advertising to have them better their selling skills once the trade activities revive.

Gautam Bhirani, Managing Director, Eyetalk Media VenturesThe idea kicked off as just tocapitalise the time in hand effectively and went on to be one of the most appreciated sessions in the industry wherein five workshops have been conducted with 350+ attendees so far. Talking to Media4Growth, Gautam Bhirani, Managing Director, EyeTalk Media Ventures, shares details of the training programme.

What kinds of training programs are being conducted? What are the objectives of the same?

In recent years new technologies have changed the dynamics of DOOH. Fuelled by advancements in technology complementing changing consumer behavior, today's modern digital signage is built on mobile DNA which enables almost same integrations-interactions as mobile, which has attracted digital specialists, and with this transformation DOOH is becoming part of a larger multiscreen ecosystem which is helping organisations like us grow.

As DOOH transforms itself from a basic plug and play back in the day into a powerhouse, it is also changing the way campaigns are bought and delivered. So, we thought of making the most of the quarantine and connect with our agency partners and present our network strength, technology capabilities and data-driven case studies.

With the new normal market scenarios, do you think there will be a requirement of new skill sets in different aspects of business?

Pre-lockdown, in the last few months in context to DOOH, both perception and conversations changed. We saw a few global media agencies take that much awaited big leap of bringing both OOH and digital specialists together and creating maximum value for advertisers. Over 60% of our revenue came from digital between October and February and most campaigns were bought and delivered on the basis of impressions like in digital. New technologies have given that much needed validation to DOOH that have attracted new age marketers who are today looking at both mobile and DOOH together as part of a larger omnichannel media mix.

In unprecedented times like these and the economic crisis, a lot of parameters and rationales will change. In such budget crunch situations marketers will look at value-based media that can deliver performance driven campaigns and help measure ROI. DOOH has evolved not only to be a contextual, location-based display format, but also fundamentally an audience based solution delivering impressions.

Without real-time, actionable audience data there is no way we will be able quantify value in the medium in a post Covid-19 world or an intra Covid-19 world living with reduced traffic and mobility. Therefore, it's important as an industry that we regroup, unlearn-relearn, invest in knowledge, develop new skill-sets that complement current market trends and prepare for a digital future.

How will you quantify the outcomes of your training programmes?

Our basic objective was to bridge the gap and share knowledge and insights from the work we have been doing with digital specialists. At present there is a major difference in the way DOOH is perceived and used by both sets of specialists where one uses it as a filler-frequency based medium and the other uses it as a response driven medium paired with mobile.

We have been able to conduct virtual workshops with almost all major OOH specialists with over 350+ attendees and both questions and responses seemed very promising. We can only quantify the success of our training programme once we start executing the kind of campaigns DOOH as a medium should be doing for OOH specialists.

Since its WFM, how are you keeping your staff engaged and their enthusiasm levels high for such programmes?

Team Eyetalk Media Ventures is young with high levels of enthusiasm. However, there were disappointments and setbacks with repercussions of the ongoing pandemic. We not only lost a lot of revenue but momentum as well for which every team member worked day and night. It is normal for everyone to feel that way and therefore we decided to take some time off when the lockdown was enforced and we regrouped again with the same levels of enthusiasm as before. This workshop was in fact conceptualised and presented by Rahul Biswas, our Group CMO.

While the sales and marketing team is currently investing time in acquiring knowledge on programmatic and conducting workshops, the tech and product teams have been working on enhancing audience and advertiser experience. We are incorporating new features with real time actionable audience insights which will help create value for marketers in a crisis like this and will help them connect better with their target audience. We have also been able to build a new product which we are planning to introduce by mid-June.

How are you planning to re-start your work in the wake of partial easing of the lockdown?

Last week we started activating our digital assets in the corporate hubs and working in tandem with our real estate partners who are currently conducting massive sanitation drives. Our corporate DOOH network Biztalk, a joint venture with Drsti Communications, will play a major role in spreading awareness, delivering real-time news, updates and driving safety initiatives within the campuses as employees return to work in some of the cities.

We are testing our new audience measurement data tool with Biztalk and will release a report in a few weeks from now for our clients and agency partners. Similarly, we have started getting advertiser inquiries as it is going to be the first advertising touchpoint that will open post lockdown, so we are all keeping busy and now looking forward to doing what we are best at in a couple of weeks from now.

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