‘OOH provides scale & visibility’ : Peeyush Bachlaus

What role does OOH medium play in your marketing strategy?

Today, there are various modes of marketing used by brands. Amongst all the tools of marketing and advertising, OOH is one of the most important and necessary tool to deliver a boost to any product business as it reaches the consumers outside of their home. OOH provides the necessary scale and visibility that in turn helps marketers capture consumer attention.

Nerolac has been using airports formats quite innovatively. Tell us a little more about your initiatives in this space.

Kansai Nerolac Paints has successfully turned conveyor belts in the baggage claim area of airports, into an animated, shade card. The company did it as an outdoor act in which the conveyor belt featured shades of paints offered by Nerolac. There were also gifts delivered to the travellers waiting to collect their bags. This in turn created a lot of buzz amongst the audiences – delivering clutter breaking brand visibility and enabling brand conversations. The objective was to reach out to our target audience in an innovative manner.

You also go big on rural marketing with interesting CSR activations like those done at the Kumbh Mela. What was the central idea behind such initiatives?

The MahaKumbh is one of the largest and sacred collective acts of faith celebrated in India. In an endeavour to transform India through transforming lives, Kansai Nerolac Paints Ltd (KNPL), along with extensive support from its paint trade dealer network, acted as distribution centres, made lakhs of customised cans available for the devotees to carry the holy-water from the Ganges home. To retain the purity of the canned liquid, they included a shankha made of alum to champion the cause of purifying the holy Ganges.

Kansai Nerolac, the pioneers of ‘Healthy Home Paints’ further beautified Indira Bhavan, in sync with the theme of Kumbh 2019 from January till March 2019. The art-depiction on Indira Bhavan, located at Civil Lines in Prayagraj, was to commemorate saints, sadhus and pilgrims from all walks of life on the auspicious occasion of MahaKumbh. Kansai Nerolac has also actively participated with Delhi Street Art in beautifying the town of Prayagraj, by painting 10,000 sq. ft of the city walls.

What are the parameters by which you select OOH sites or your campaigns? How do you ensure your brand presence in the smaller cities where the format options are limited?

While selecting OOH sites, we ensure good visibility for our brand and is contextually relevant for the message being disseminated.

Do you think that with many more OOH avenues opening up, storytelling on the OOH medium has improved?

Outdoor channels have become extremely popular and are in demand as they reach a wider audience and create a long-lasting impression of your brand in the minds of individuals. People today spend a lot of time out of home, which offers an opportunity for the outdoor channels to communicate with them effectively.

OOH at the metros, malls, and airports have immensely contributed to brand storytelling in the OOH space. Although billboards continue to draw a large share of spends, the other formats like media on Metro networks and at malls, corporate parks and airports provide more vitality to the medium.

What challenges do you face while planning and executing any OOH campaign?

The challenges include monitoring and reporting on real time basis, price evaluations, etc.

How do you ensure monitoring and ROI measurement of your brand’s campaigns? Do you have any internal mechanism to the track performance of your OOH campaigns?

We have an internal mechanism that includes a mix of trade and consumer responses to gauge the campaign success.

Do you think that OOH is at par with other mainline advertising channels?

It’s not about coming at par or comparing with other mediums, but OOH as a medium should be able to seize the opportunities deliver great experience and impact.

What changes do you anticipate in this medium?

OOH will evolve and merge into the experiential marketing space soon, with technology playing a stronger role. Further, technology in OOH will eventually evolve and of course we do see it coming in a variety of formats - be it static, dynamic or interactive.

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