"Creative campaigns act as catalysts to break the bottleneck"

In an exclusive chat with Outdoor Asia, Vedanarayanan Vedantham of  Simplilearn shares that media owners and agencies should provide both qualitative and quantitative solutions for improving the reach and impact of OOH.

Simplilearn primarily works on an online platform, how important is OOH media for the company?

Though digital advertising (television, Google AdWords) contributes significantly to the company, OOH does play a crucial role as it acts as the key component to drive audience to the desired destination.

How much of your marketing budget is allotted towards OOH?

Our campaigns are concentrated in four major cities - Bangalore, Pune, Hyderabad, and Chennai. For the past six months Simplilearn has been exploring OOH media in Bangalore and I must say that we have got overwhelming response. Looking at the potential that OOH has, we spend around 50% of our ATL budget on OOH.

How much importance does Simplilearn give to creative OOH campaigns?

Any brand that aims at establishing a new concept in the market goes through a bottleneck. Creative campaigns act as catalysts to break the bottleneck and move ahead. Simplilearn does give a lot of value to creative campaign. We specifically design ad campaigns for OOH.

How different is your OOH experience in Bangalore, compared to other cities like Pune, Hyderabad and Chennai?

Our Bangalore campaigns are a huge success. As far as other cities are concerned, Hyderabad is proving to be a very good market. In terms of percentage jump, Hyderabad is as good as Bangalore. Though we have a huge TG in Chennai, both in IT and manufacturing sector, the recent natural calamity was a hindrance for any kind of OOH. Pune being a relatively small city is still catching up to the numbers that other cities are providing.

How important is DOOH for Simplilearn?

Our aim is to reach the target audience and create an impact within the allotted budget. As long as these two purposes are met, it really does not matter what format of OOH we choose.

What is your preferred OOH media format?

Billboards definitely contribute significantly. We also give importance to target marketing. Our core TGs are working professionals - IT, manufacturing and healthcare sector and therefore using OOH (specially billboards) in areas like Electronic City and Outer Ring Road in Bangalore, OMR in Chennai, Kacheguda Junction in Hyderabad has proved beneficial.

Your message to the agencies and media owners to help make OOH the preferred media for Simplilearn?

We want the agencies and media owners to fulfill two criteria - qualitative and quantitative. For qualitative aspect, we are looking at agencies to provide us with value addition inputs on the impact of advertising on a particular location. And for quantitative aspects we want them to provide us with numbers of success rate on selection of a particular billboard or bus shelter or any other OOH format.