'OOH media has not got its due'

Vikram Sakuja, who joined Madison Media and Madison OOH as the CEO and Board Member in  2015 has over 28 years of experience working with leading organisations, such as, P&G, Coca-Cola, Star TV and GroupM across media, brand marketing and marketing research verticals. An alumnus of IIT Delhi and IIM Calcutta, Vikram joined P&G in 1988 where over eight years he held positions in marketing research and media. He then joined Coca-Cola where he went on to manage the brand marketing portfolio. After that he joined Star TV Network (Newscorp) as EVP Marketing to set up their marketing department. In 2002 he joined the WPP group - first, as the Managing Director of MindShare South Asia; then was the CEO of GroupM South Asia for six years. From there, he took on the global role of WW CEO Maxus for two years.

Outdoor Asia caught up with Vikram to know more about his goals and ambitions for Madison World -- in particular the OOH business. Excerpts from the interview:
 
As the Group CEO of Madison World you are spearheading a fairly broad-based portfolio of media businesses. In the media business today, is OOH media getting its due?  

I reckon the OOH media has not got its due, although the importance of this media can hardly be overstated. Somehow, the OOH media has been shackled by its own complex nature of business, and as a result, its share of the advertising pie, as seen in the adex figures, has come down. However, in absolute terms, OOH advertising spends have grown.

Looking ahead, the challenge for the OOH media stems not just from existing competition but also from technology-driven new and innovative media that are gaining ground. The rapidly evolving digital media is a case in point. Hence, there is the outside chance of the OOH media moving further down the pecking order. As of now, the OOH media is holding on to its business and so it is neither completely forgotten, no it is given the big push that it so deserves.

What stops stakeholders from giving OOH the necessary impetus to grow and assume a larger share of the ad spends?

There are certain limiting factors. For instance, the OOH media is seen as relatively expensive. There is no common currency to determine the RoI on OOH spends. Moreover, OOH in India is not digitalised like the way we see in overseas markets. The Indian OOH media is way too dependent on traditional, static formats.

When it comes to media planning, every media asset is expected to be a unique inventory. I am afraid the OOH media does not measure up to such expectations, and so it is a challenge to come up with a major media plan for OOH.

Now that you are well and truly leading Madison World, do you have a new strategy to drive your OOH business?

I believe that we need to reinforce our integrated approach. That is, in managing our clients' entire media business, we need to ensure a seamless fit for OOH media as well. If our OOH team is involved in the media planning stage itself, there is a big chance that OOH will get its due share and respect. To the contrary, if the OOH comes into the picture only after the planning for TV, print and digital is done, then the OOH team will at best get a silo brief. To prevent this, at Madison we are working toward integrated planning by which we will be in a position to advise our clients to look at OOH not as a reminder media but as one that delivers big impact.

Apart from our integrated approach, there is strong felt need to usher in OOH measurement tools. For this, we recently launched a planning tool suite that deliver good results for OOH media planner.

We are also attempting a degree of consolidation of our own OOH media business. While we have two conventional outdoor buying agencies -- MOMS & Platinum, we are centralising the buying function under Krishnendu. We expect this move to take us way above our current business of Rs 300 crore.

Also, we will soon usher in rate benchmarking by which pricing will become more transparent. We would want to engineer the pricing mechanism so that our clients obtain the best prices, which can come about by centralising the buying function.

On a larger plane, there is huge scope for consolidating OOH media owning businesses in the country. When that happens, we will not have to deal with thousands of vendors, but may be a few hundreds.
So, a combination of an integrated set-up, more reliance on planning tools, consolidated backend for buying, will give us the edge.

Somewhere along, specialist agencies are seen to be grabbing one other's business instead of pushing for quantum growth. Your thoughts?

This is happening because the specialist agencies are not strategic enough in their approach to business. When I left the country some 3-4 years ago, the OOH industry size was about Rs 1,800 crore. Today, it is about Rs 2,000-2,300 crore which is no substantial growth.

There are issues with the way we sell the media. Telecom went big on OOH some years ago but did not sustain the spends. Likewise, entertainment industry including TV channels were big spenders on OOH but that is not the case now.

Partly, clients are moving towards the digital media. At the same time, automobile and dotcom companies are coming back to OOH media. I believe we have to work toward finding a permanent and clear role for OOH via-s-vis different category advertisers.

Right now, the OOH media serves as a launch pad for some of the brands. It is important to get the advertisers to believe that the OOH is a compelling media for sustained brand building.

Most clients tend to shift their business from one agency to the next, on a project-to-project basis instead of settling with an AOR. Your comments.

There are many clients who seek the lowest price and maximum savings even when it comes to mainline media. But clients who appreciate the importance of strategy, planning and innovation would prefer to partner with an agency for a longer duration.

I believe that when it comes to OOH, we need to impress upon clients the importance of strategy and link that to integrated planning, better measurement tools and better processes likes price benchmarking tools.  

In the OOH industry, there are way too many individual price points. Another aspect most talked about is the consumer journey. So your ability to actually say there is an outdoor touch point will stimulate consumption closer to the point of purchase. All these things are possible but obviously not happening on expected lines. Also, the way forward for all agency is integration between OOH and digital -- the only way to keep your client with you for the longer term.

Agencies are generally focused on working with national brands. How difficult is it to work with local brands? What are the typical challenges?

I must say that we handled a designer label Nirav Modi with great success. This brand has presence in few international markets and yet is highly localised. We believe we did a pretty good job for Nirav Modi, both in print and outdoor.

Most of local clients goes directly work with media owner, but If a person is looking to trade inventory, he is likely to go to a media owners. But if that person values marketing advice and strategic planning, he would approach an agency.

Would you share some ideas on how the OOH industry could enhance its image?

I think if the ability of a media owner is predicated to some kind of research, it will remove the shady part of business. Transparency is important, but measurement, accountability, innovation and method of trading are also vital. The ability to talk the more professional language, where measurement is at the heart of it, will improve the industry's image.     
Right now, people believe that outdoor media has got a lot of middlemen. You do not know what kind of margins are involved and how they are passed on at each level. You also have corruption and money exchanging between hands. This won't do good to any industry.

We need to look at other industries and how are they trading and work on it. So, where has the industry association worked towards bringing a strategic trigger in outdoor? As an industry what are we doing to get sectors like FMCG, auto and others to come back to OOH media?
The lack of professionalisation is hurting the industry. The good news is that organisations like Times OOH and JCD India are still there.

Monitoring is a big issue in the outdoor industry. What is the way forward on this?

The ability to catalogue all the inventory and create a dashboard with each hoarding having a code and last monitored date will help monitor the media. If you use technology then monitoring becomes easier. I don't think it is that complex. Technology will give you error-less monitoring.