The Hindu Business Line : The great outdoors

A huge pug sat cosily on the stairs ... it never moved, even as people walked all over. Somewhere else, you saw the pug again on a small boat. And when you looked up, you spotted someone working out on the treadmill ... yes, at some dizzy height in the air! Things got more unbelievable ... you suddenly saw ingredients in a soap bar flowing out, even as a fancy car propped up almost just on thin air vied for your attention ...

No, this is not a chronicle of all things strange in Narnia ... Welcome to the world of outdoor advertising — in a dashing new avatar.

The outdoors have never looked so colourful and exciting. With technology and creativity taking over, static billboards are slowly making way for catchy outdoor concepts such as building wraps, scrolling display, light projection, LED display, mobile billboard, balloons, floor graphics, advertising on lamp posts, bus shelters, aerobridges and many more. Even traditional billboards are changing face with the arrival of live billboards, 3D projections on billboards, mobile hoardings and floating billboards.

With 360-degree communication gaining prominence today, the outdoor medium is being increasingly sought after. Telecom companies are the most visible category outdoors.

Says Nabendu Bhattacharyya, Country Head - Landscapes & Signscapes, Ogilvy Activation, which has done quite a few creative campaigns for brands like Hutch and Lux: "Telecom categories spend 30 per cent of their total spends on outdoor even in multi-city campaigns, banks and mutual funds spend 40-50 per cent of their total spends on OOH (out of home) advertising; TV, radio and press also spend huge monies on outdoor. The DNA (the newspaper) launch in Mumbai was done largely outdoor. Bollywood movies are launched primarily on outdoor. Nowadays, FMCG and automotive categories also heavily rely on outdoor."

Says U. Jayraj Rau, Senior Vice-President and General Manager, JWT Chennai, "Today outdoors is fast becoming the prime medium in many campaigns, earlier it was just a reminder medium. There's a growing belief that if you want your brand to be perceived as flamboyant, extrovert and outdoorsy, the medium should reflect that too. So it works well for categories such as soft drinks, tourism, hospitality, and youth brands such as, say, sunglasses."

According to industry estimates, the outdoor advertising industry is worth about Rs 1,000 crore, growing at a relatively slow pace. But the last few years have seen a rapid rise with a growth rate of 20 per cent.

The outdoor medium is constantly evolving, keeping pace with changing lifestyles and times. Says strategy consultant Harish Bijoor: "Consumer society is today all about a fast-paced consumer who does not have too much time to dawdle. The new-age consumer is impulse-driven. And the outdoor medium is a huge impulse-driver. In-home advertising is getting less and less effective as more and more people follow a huge outdoor-oriented lifestyle. One is at home very little. Also, outdoor can be divorced from language altogether. The only language is the visual language. A picture is enough do the job. Very few media can claim this possibility."

Innovation in form and content is the order of the day with brands scrambling for space not just in air but everywhere else too. For instance, Hutch explored all kinds of options outdoors while designing its campaign — 3D graphics on a staircase in a mall, air-lit balloons and even floating billboards. Lux too incorporated 3D graphics to create a `cascade' effect in a mall in Mumbai. While Lenovo put up a live billboard in Bangalore sometime ago, the Ginger brand of hotels from the Tata group created a `touch and feel' experience by replicating its hotel rooms in life-like sizes in Mumbai.

And it is not just brands that are resorting to innovative outdoors. Kathalaya, an organisation that seeks to promote story-telling, last year ran a campaign to promote its story telling festival in Bangalore. As part of the promotion, agency Ogilvy put up a long golden nylon and coir plait from the window of a building in the city with a message on the building that said `Rapunzel is back.'

Says Rahul Welde, General Manager - Media Services, Hindustan Lever Ltd, which has put up innovative hoardings for its brands Lux, Hamam and Bru: "As companies look to communicate their brand values through multiple touch points, the outdoor medium is gaining importance. But the difference lies in standing out from the clutter by doing things differently to be visible in various high-impact areas such as malls, high street locations and busy areas. Today one can see a shift from outdoor advertising that is static to one that is interactive and engaging."

Rajesh Mehta, Head-Marketing, Pidilite Industries, says one has to remember outdoors is a "seven-second medium — the message has to be simple and snappy to register impactfully."

When Fevicol entered Egypt, its hoarding announcing the entry featured the Sphinx — with a nose stuck on.

The Fevicol Champions Club for carpenters uses this medium to great advantage — the carpenter's photo is put on the hoarding, which creates a certain amount of prestige and has a positive fallout on their business, says Mehta.

Rau of JWT advocates blending the outdoor medium with the environs. He also says there's greater understanding between advertisers and civic bodies about putting up installations as they bring in good revenue.