"Airports offer us high footfalls and niche clientele both"

Combining sustainability and renewable energy, Standard Chartered's (SC) OOH campaigns are doing noticeable rounds of even tier-II and tier-II cities. Lakshmi Goyal, Head Brand & Marketing, Standard Chartered, talks to us about how crisp OOH creative can go long way to make up for a salient media.

How have you used OOH to become a salient media for you? How do you select vantage points?

20% of our total media mix is used for out-of-home. Though our lead media is digital, OOH is largely used as surrounding media and for brand activation specially in the area of renewable energy. As for vantage points, we are a niche bank and every street doesn't have our desired footfalls. We rely highly on airports simply for its wide network of coverage. Airport OOH has sizeable efficacy as each airport manages to grab almost half a million passengers every fortnight. For activations, we rely on sizable traffic frequenting the malls.

How do you combine sustainability in OOH?

For our "Here for Good” campaign released initially in metros and then even tier-II and tier III cities, the hoardings were lit up with renewable energy. The backlit hoardings used only solar lighting. SC has already funded a big project on renewable energy in South Africa and has tied up with the World Bank as one of their key sponsors in sustainable development drive. You can say that our media practices are extension of such thought processes.

As brands are grappling to track ROI through OOH, what kind of changes do you want to view in outdoor industry in coming years?

We all including brand marketers, media owners and agencies have to understand that OOH is fundamentally a glance medium. Viewed only in transit, lengthy creative or content won't be conducive to speed reading. However, I strongly feel that the fate of OOH is in the hands of media owners. Lately, we have seen only increase in inventory but no environment for a brand to stand out. Even the great expectations from digital OOH can materialize only interactive, technically-advanced and combines high amount of engagements.