One voice a must for industry, say Karnataka OOH leaders

Addressing a session on ‘What will it take for Bengaluru OOH to speak in one voice?’ at the recently held Karnataka Talks OOH conference in Bengaluru, S M Jawad, Director, Ad Links, Vishwanath R Naik, Director, Pinnacle and Pradeep Kumar Kokkanti, CMD, Vijaya OOH Media said in unison that the industry’s key constituents need to come together and articulate the common issues on one voice. The session was chaired by Indrajit Sen of IOAA.

Indrajit in his opening remarks pointed to the magnitude of challenges that confront the industry in Bengaluru and Rest of Karnataka and urged the leaders to join the IOAA in the collective effort to streamline the regulatory issues.

Jawad, who is also President of Outdoor Advertising Association of Bangalore cited how the civic body has sidestepped the issue of unauthorised media in the city. He pointed out that some of the law makers themselves have invested in outdoor business to take advantage of a relatively unregulated market. Hence, while there are less than 2,000 legal media in the city, at any given time some 10,000 media units are up.

Stating that there were three instances of bans being imposed on hoardings in the city, Vishwanath said that industry did work as one to have the bans reversed. But there is greater scope for the industry to work together to bring about seamless regulation.