'Contextual communication is the key in OOH'

Impact of economy on marketing and advertising budgets

In the Financial Services business, we at the Aditya Birla Financial Services Group (ABFSG) are inspired by the opportunity to empower every Indian live their dream. And this is a 1.2 billion opportunity. And the category we represent, "Money”, is a 365 day opportunity, across the life time of our target customer.And therefore, we look at economic or environment changes as a temporary anomaly, when seen in the context of a life time.  As a brand, we believe in investing in our relationship with our customer by engaging with him in not only the good times, but also during the not-so-good times.  Therefore, we do not believe in compromising on our customer engagement or in our brand budgets. Yes, we do believe in spending wisely and prudently, making our spends work harder for us, with an eye on the desired outcome. But that is a way of life for us across our nine lines of business.
 
Role of OOH in the overall marketing plans

We do not look at OOH as mere hoardings or billboards. We literally read it as'out of home'. And since our target customers are out of home for a significant part of their day, every day, OOH is an important part of our media mix. It has its own strengths - one is localization, that is, you can contextualize the communication with local flavors, and the other is the visibility it lets you have. OOH communication makes ones message delivery dramatic and larger-than-life. And that works well for us because content shown this way has higher tendency to get registered and retained in the mind.

The brand message is far more targeted and contextualized in OOH - sometimes hard hitting, and that's what we want our communication to be - because being in the financial space, we need to make mass media self realization about the advantages of money solutions in their life. Usually this is taken for granted until a contingency situation occurs. So OOH gives us the flexibility to devise extremely relevant and hence impactful campaigns.

There are many such innovations that we have done for many of our brands, but to share one example, let me talk about an OOH activity done for our Life Insurance brand - The Agent on Track Campaign

In India, crossing tracks at the railway stations leads to 15000 deaths of all railway related deaths. Birla Sun life Insurance had a unique opening to meet up this untouched audience with a mindset in need of insurance and reduce this statistic.

At strategic points on railway stations planted Insurance Agents approached people crossing tracks and gave them an  Birla Sun Life Insurance visiting card with the company's toll free number and said "Shayad aapko iski zaroorat pade” (YOU MAY NEED THIS)

The campaign tapped people's belief that Death is pre-written and hence the mentality "it won't happen to me”, "I Can't Die”.

The 10 day campaign at 10 Central Railway stations we reached more than 80000 commuters. The call centre reported 12% commuters called us back on the toll free number thus creating a promotion that would eventually save lives.

The success of this campaign was giving the relevant message to the audience at the right time. A time where he self realizes his vulnerability of life.
　　　　
Though TV remains our main lead medium, both Radio and OOH have done really well for us. As mentioned earlier, OOH campaigns can be tailored for very specific marketing parameters - whether it's TG, offering or the message or the outcome expected out of our communication. And more importantly it can get specific in targeting specific areas within a city, which is a great advantage. 

We have observed that OOH campaigns have a seamless extension into other media - like the digital space. If they catch the imagination of the people, they will definitely be talked about on digital platforms. Once online conversations are stirred, there is no stopping a campaign from spreading far and wide. Sometimes the press covers it too. So you have the print medium also fueling it up.

To talk more about this, last year we capitalized on the closure of telegraph services through a tactical and topical'last Telegram' campaign.

After 163-year-old of service, telegram service in India was closing down on 14 July 2013.  It took the demise of the telegram to wake people up to how one takes some things for granted. Like money, since we have it now, we assume we'll have it later, even when we retire. Again a right time and the right place to make mass India in self realization about the advantages of money solutions in their life. Birla Sun Life Insurance identified 5,000 people who had shown interest in Birla Sun Life's Retirement Plans, but who had later forgotten about it. On July 14, 2013, the last day of the telegram, BSLI sent 5,000 telegrams that read: "The Telegram retires today. With no plans for the future. Do you have a plan for your future? - Retirement Solutions from Birla Sun Life Insurance”

The idea immediately struck a chord landing up as Facebook statuses and as tweets. Birla Sun Life'The Last Telegram' - A reminder from the past, about your future. Activity got immense PR coverage in various publications & online forums like Times of India, ET Brand Equity, Indian Express, Rediff News etc. @goodbyetelegram became trending topic on twitter with over 2500 tweets with 60% retweets & around 1.6 million impressions in a week.

OOH Budgets

A significant part of budgets is dedicated for localized marketing activities that help us in delivering on our objective of creating self realization among mass India about the advantages of money solutions in their life. With the growing need on segment based marketing approach, we have reallocated our media spends across various medium as per the need of our businesses. Here, we are driven by our target customers. With people spending more and more time in transit or outdoors (at least in the urban context) OOH has become a key focus area. It's no more one size that fits all… We need to customize messaging to create impact in minds of consumers

Preferred formats

We try to optimize all media to effectively reach and communicate with our TG.

We have not drastically explored any new formats in recent times.  We are in an industry that has to adhere to statutory government requirements around marketing and advertising.  Even while being innovative, we need to respect these norms. With every new campaign we are also evolving - we're learning how to play the best possible game without deviating from the rules, in our confined playground. We try integrating various mediums to amplify the activity to increase conversations around it.

Approach to OOH campaign creatives

The OOH campaign creative ought to be relevant to the TG - the visual language and tonality of the communication has to be in keeping with the geographical/ cultural nuances of the TG, based on their local socio-economic trends, values and idioms - otherwise it may not strike a chord with the audience we want to talk to.

OOH markets with strong potential

Some regions always respond better to OOH campaigns than others. In our experience Maharashtra has been one of the best markets, followed by Delhi NCR, Gujarat, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and so on.

There is not fixed budgets for regions.  Depending upon the need of the business we decide which state/ regions needs more focus in that particular period.

Defining innovation in the context of OOH advertising

I think innovation in OOH will be defined by how proactively and wit-fully we use this medium. We're living in a dynamic world where our social, economic and cultural context is changing faster than ever.

OOH has potential to be the media that can keep pace with such change and capture the pulse of the TG. Think of it as being in the right place at the right time and saying the right thing.

How effectively we transform OOH from being a static medium to'here-and-now' medium will define innovation in this space. In other words, Contextual Communication would be the thing to go after. The logic is simple - Contextual would ride on current affairs and people talk about current affairs. So basically, if you manage to seed your brand in common dialogues/ conversations, imagine how it would self-propel and how much traction it could gain.  Here is an example of our own. We had anticipated tremendous, palpable national sentiment at Sachin Tendulkar's cricketing retirement. Even though Sachin is not an endorser of our brand, we leveraged the occasion and widespread nostalgia. We came up with our tribute to the national hero with our brand message seamlessly woven in it.

Challenges rolling out an innovative campaign

The main challenge is striking synergies between the creative solutions and their execution on-ground. We see a lot of mismatch in the ways creative ideas are conceptualized and the way they turn out in reality. Invariably there is dilution. Having said that, we are the one of most awarded financial company for innovation in this space. We keep trying to push the operational boundaries so that we stay true to our communication objectives.

Measurement (of impact)

Our campaigns have created a lot of buzz and we have been able to gauge their impact, thanks to measures like Klout Score. But these only show approximate values. So surely, there is an earnest need for accurate measurement.  Increasingly, we are focusing on the creativity and recency of our communication idea. If the idea is remarkable and diligently executed, we can rest assured that it will gain traction on its own and deliver the desired impact.


Role of and expectations from specialist agencies

They have become strategic partners. Our OOH Media partners DDB MudraMax are actually very proactive. They come to us with novel, witty ideas even before we ask for it. They anticipate our needs and leverage every possible occasion to deliver our message.

As our relationship with our OOH agency strengthens, we would like them to be our one-stop-shop for all our OOH needs. They are already bringing in a lot of freshness and talent and blending them with our marketing needs. At the next level, I would want them to assume complete ownership of our out-of-home undertakings, so that our internal marketing teams can focus on product and product strategy.

Role of and expectations from media owners 
 
I think they have done a tremendous job of consolidating and streamlining processes. That has taken way redundancies and saves precious time - you know how critical the time factor can be in OOH advertising. Also, it has made Media procurement more professional. I appreciate such endeavor.

Message to Media Owners

My earnest request and recommendation to them would be to use their collective strength to stand up for ethical practices and good governance. Being custodians of OOH media, they are best placed to evolve a common currency for measuring a campaign's success. I would call upon them to invest in creating such ROI tools.

Factors that would drive higher OOH spends

Efficacy. It's a simple approach - the channel that gives us better results will see larger investments.