‘Tech-led innovations at the forefront of OOH resurgence’

Even as business in the Year 2023 saw a return to normalcy, data-based OOH planning was cited as one of the key developments, cites Dipankar Sanyal, CEO, Platinum OOH as he looks into the business trends. “At Madison we invested in third party data and made our planning tools more robust and our clients have seen lots of value in what we brought to the table,” he says. 

“Tech led creative innovations has been at the forefront of the resurgence. Anamorphic, 3D and CGI has actually made outdoor more dramatic in true sense. India’s growth story has been encouraging for the outdoor industry as more airports and metro rails start operations in tier 1 and 2 cities. DOOH is proliferating. Overall, outdoor has bounced back. At the same time we are seeing a change in outdoor media consumption patterns as the regular home and workplace has changed from what we used to know of in the pre covid times,” points out Dipankar.

In terms of client spends, Dipankar sees the highest participation from categories, such as, real estate, jewellery, consumer banking, retail and educational institutes. The traditional powerhouses of FMCG, telecom, four wheelers and two wheelers “were much below in the spends”.

When asked about the major campaigns handled in 2023, Dipankar says, “We did quite a few high impact campaigns for Tata Motors for multiple brands both for their PV and EV. One of the most eye-catching innovations we did for Tata Altroz CNG at airports wherein we showcased huge luggage space in an unique manner. This caught everybody’s attention. Then there was Parle Agro’s Frooti campaign which took the country by storm. Havell’s campaign, specially the Ganpati campaign with an image of Ganpati created entirely by Havell’s fans, had the country talking about it. Then there was the Aditya Birla Capital’s mutual fund campaign.”

“There are multiple levels of gauging a campaign. First we measure the impact created by the media selected through our tool which gives the VOS scores therefore determining quality. Then we see the impressions delivered. Then we get feedback from multiple channels at the client’s end. Many other factors are also taken into consideration before we can arrive at a conclusion how close we were to the objective set for the campaign,” he explains.

Speaking about DOOH, Dipankar says: “Pre-Covid the DOOH mix in the total OOH media mix used to be 3-5%. Today amongst our clients we are seeing it going up to 15-20%. We are also seeing the pattern in which DOOH is being consumed. Lot of new learnings are coming up. As more touch points get added and it grows beyond the metros, the true power of DOOH will be unleashed.”