These and more issues were on the forefront at the 12th edition of Outdoor Asia Convention (OAC), 2016, which was held on 17-18 June at Hyatt Regency, Gurgaon. The annual convention, India’s foremost OOH industry platform for knowledge sharing, business-to-business meetings, and exhibition of digital technologies, media and materials, came to Delhi-NCR for the first time.

Like all previous editions, the event saw the participation of global and Indian OOH media owners, specialist OOH agencies, brand marketers, civic authorities, media and materials suppliers, printers, senior OOH industry professionals and new entrants in the industry. The convention featured thematic sessions covering areas like change management, financing of business, innovation and creativity, use of cost-effective interactive technologies and sensors for impactful OOH advertising, talent management, eco-friendly industry practices, self-regulation, innovative media, among others.

The event was inaugurated by Noomi Mehta, chairman and MD, Selvel One Group and Guest of Honour Sunil Vasudeva, managing director, Pioneer Publicity, Sanjeev Goyale, CEO – OOH & Rural, IPG Mediabrands and Vasant Jante, founder and MD, VJ Media Works.

After the inauguration, audience geared up for an inspirational talk by motivational speaker Prakash Iyer. The sessions that followed focused on the newest trends in OOH industry, new entrants in OOH media, among others.

‘OOH has relevance in most significant growth areas’

Presenting his session on “OOH in the Digital Economy” at OAC 2016, David Gordon, Insight Director, Posterscope UK, shows how using data effectively can pave the way of growth of out-of-home advertising.

Starting his presentation with a few interesting data like how increasing connectivity will connect 1 trillion people worldwide, he went on emphasising how, like every other business, OOH also requires digital economic solutions. Calling data, the new currency of business, David said, “OOH reaches 90% population and instrumental in either launching a product or to create brand awareness. The need of the hour is transformatory investment in digital OOH. The investment should include several growth areas in marketing like use of data, personalisation, geo-targeting and content marketing.”

Striking difference in impacts created by static and dynamic OOH, David also stressed on importance of personalisation in OOH on both real-time digital OOH as well as classic OOH that should be able to use more data. “Personalisation of OOH has proven brand effects,” Gordon added, after citing examples of Microsoft Lumia Cortana campaign that had almost 875 cites with local relevance. He also added that OOH has 200% more effectiveness if double up with mobile data in order to achieve awareness, purchase consideration and online searches.

‘It’s time for outdoor advertising in India to evolve’

Media has transformed newspapers into ePapers and television into mobile apps and now is the time for the outdoor to evolve. This was emphasised by Emraan Kureshi from Active Media Innovations while speaking on ‘How innovatively can we transform OOH?’

On ‘why innovate’ and ‘why the need to transform’, Kureshi argued that the current scenario in OOH was confusion on where to advertise, lack of space and engagement with users as well as price rise. All this calls for transformation, evolution and innovation. It can also create high PR buzz and lead to instant digital sharing through social networking sites.

Kureshi, who started his work from a cyber café in Mumbai and now runs offices from the Middle East, Europe and the United States, provided interesting details and innovations his own company took to innovate within the outdoor space. He shared several campaigns where they engaged technology effectively to engage customers through virtual reality, augmented billboards, etc. The need of the hour in outdoor advertising in India, concluded Kureshi.

‘Think, plan, do mobile’

In the panel discussion on integration of mobility solutions in OOH to deliver more effective brand messages, moderator Milind Pathak, COO - Madhouse - South Asia insisted on bringing OOH ‘alive’. “There are endless possibilities where we can take OOH if we engage some mobility solutions like real-time location scanning, etc,” said Pathak.

Joined him was Satyajit Sen, director - media management, Samsung India, who suggested to tackle challenges like permission issues, investment hurdles, etc before embracing technology to the desired level. Manu Seth, senior director - South Asia, HTC, said, “There’s no ATL or BTL, everyone is my consumer. Hence, we must stitch mobility solutions to OOH seamlessly to achieve maximum brand effect.”

‘OOH plays a key part in Jabong’s success’

Consumers using eCommerce are young and constantly on the go and OOH fits perfectly to reach this target group. Speaking at OAC 2016, Rahul Taneja, chief business officer, Jabong, highlighted the role OOH was playing in the success of Jabong.

Taneja gave a detailed presentation on ways to attract customers, keeping the nature of the target consumers in mind. “The idea is to first figure out customers you want to acquire. When trying to multiply business and aiming to widen your reach, keep in mind the target customers,” said Taneja, an IIM Bangalore alumni and former vice-president and head of category management, Snapdeal.

While eCommerce portals, such as Jabong target the young, the brand needs to compete for their attention and choose a medium of advertising that they relate. One such current medium is mobile phones, which are personal and constantly available. Keeping these strategic points in mind, OOH is emerging as a medium fit for mCommerce consumers, said Taneja. “While there is massive growth in online shopping in non-metro cities, it’s the metro cities that are contributing to 70% of revenues and transactions of the e-commerce portals. Therefore, OOH is highly local and efficient medium for customer attention,” said Taneja.

‘Our plans may sound ambitious, but we are realising them’
Shunning the ambiguity of bureaucratic plans, RP Thakur, executive director, non-fare revenue, ministry of railways, took the audiences through the most advanced plans on infrastructures and technologies. Joined him was Bharat Rajamani, director and solution leader, marketing and advertising risk services (MARS), EY, who shared more details of those plans and how OOH can effectively engage itself to that.
 

Approaching towards new-age OOH, Rajamani said the Indian Railways is installing more than 1 lakh digital screens across 2,173 stations, which will have 50% time of railway info while other 50% will have time inventory for advertisers. “Railway’s mobile assets are expanding while new areas of mobile assets and getting explored. Railways is also looking at various innovations to club mobile phone engagements with OOH,” Rajamani said.

Railways is also modernising regimental processes by increasing contract periods to new age advertiser-friendly policies. “Our railway minister’s vision may look too ambitious but we are fast approaching towards such dynamic growth. We have already developed our soft assets to a large level and re-developed 400 stations in new formats,” said Thakur.

‘No limit to innovation on metro networks’
Commuters are travelling on metro in great numbers and this has increased chances of innovation and expansion for outdoor advertising, said Sanjay Kapoor, GM & head, corporate communications, PR and marketing, L&T Metro Rail. Talking about ‘How Metro metworks can transform transit media advertising’, Kapoor drew from examples of the Hyderabad Metro, which is yet to start operations but is already generating revenues though OOH.

“Transit oriented advertising has led to innovations on metro base. We now have train wraps and advertisements inside trains and on tokens and smart cards,” said Kapoor. He also spoke of two kinds of innovations in transit-oriented advertising. One of these is OOH on Transit, which provides opportunities for brands for everything that can be seen from the sky, like on metro pillars. Second is the Rights Business, which is a different form of OOH. This includes station naming rights, corridor-naming rights, pouring rights, broadcasting rights and experiential marketing rights. All these are indicators of massive innovation opportunities available on metro networks for outdoor advertising.

Kapoor called on for swift adoption of new business models, which could bring higher ROI to brands through transport processes and speedy actions. This, he said, was urgently required because less than 10% of total OOH inventory is digital at present since it demands higher investment.

‘OOH will complement digital and boost its growth’

Presenting the most futuristic session, ‘Planner’s Purse 2025’ at OAC 2016, Sanjeev Goyle, CEO - OOH and rural, IPG Mediabrands, explained that OOH is lagging behind as the industry has failed to keep pace with evolving nature of brands as well as consumers. Goyle shared hopeful data on the share of OOH in the whole media pie in Japan and China, which are 16% and 14% respectively, while India still struggles with a meagre 6%. Despite having the ability to capture 76% Indian population in a week, OOH is lagging behind as the industry has failed to keep pace with evolving nature of brands as well as consumers, said Goyle.

“In the US, both digital and outdoor grew in the last 5 years, while other media have not. Interestingly, unlike digital, OOH has the advantage of being immune to blocking. It’s high time that we explore maximum opportunity of OOH," Goyle added. Discussing on suggestions to maximise its growth, he emphasised on adopting data science and embracing technology. “By 2015, OOH should be a preferred medium only if we innovate wisely and bridge the gap between OOH and digital,” concluded Goyle.

‘Delhi Metro looking for ad revenue’
From its humble beginnings in 2002, the Delhi Metro has come a long way in 2016 and is looking for greater avenues and opportunities towards increasing revenues through outdoor advertisements, Sharat Sharma, director (operations), Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC), said. Sharma shared data on the success of the DMRC, which recorded a turnover of Rs 370 crore last year. Currently, it has 160 stations in Delhi & NCR and a network as long as 350 km. It carries an average of 94 crore passengers per annum and the trains run at the frequency of 2.18 minutes.

“The typical metro user is male, belongs to the service class, uses smart phone and in the age group of 20-30 years,” said Sharma. This data on extensive use of metro as well as their socio-economic composition has led the DMRC to take fresh steps towards encouraging outdoor advertising on its network.

Sharma said in 2014, the DMRC took measures like exclusive advertising rights, consolidating tenders, eTendering, promoting goodwill, uniform tender condition, policy for licensing and introducing realistic reserve price to promote advertising on its network. Further, semi-naming rights, branding of stations, train wrapping and other such measures were adopted to make the network feasible for advertising. “Of the 80% revenue increase Delhi Metro had, 30% has come from advertising of which outdoor advertising takes a big share,” said Sharma, adding that the network had great opportunities in outdoor advertising like on billboards, staircase, tokens and walls.

‘Be an indispensable part of the planning’
What will it take for Indian OOH to achieve double digit growth? Speaking at OAC 2016, Vikram Sakhuja, group CEO, Madison World & OOH took us through the real-time scenario as to where OOH stands vis-à-vis print, radio, cinema and digital along with suggesting some dynamic solutions to take OOH up there.

According to Sakhuja, although there has been some 14% growth in OOH in 2015, traditional OOH remains a challenge. While the Rs 600-crore market of digital media attributes its success to high level of interactivity and other media mix is catching up fast, OOH in India is stalled.

“Today, we have a share as megre as 6% in the media mix. We should ideally be following survival strategies that other media are following. The advertisers must feel that OOH is an indispensable part of their consolidated media campaign,” said Sakhuja.

Pointing at the fact that more brands are looking at consumer journey, Sakhuja said that OOH industry has brilliant thinking but there is no noticeable scale currently.

Sakhuja also suggested deeper collaboration between owners and agencies, stronger regulation in banning illegalities, streamlined trading of sites and building accountability through rigid softwares, audit trails, etc. “Let us be an indispensable part of media planning of the brands,” Sakhuja concluded.

‘Ad industry needs to look towards the environment’

Looking beyond generation of revenues, Avijit Dubey, national business manager, Tyvek Graphics, called upon the advertising fraternity to give itself a green edge and take responsibility towards saving the environment.

Talking on ‘How innovatively can we transform OOH’, Dubey provided grim details about the harm flex boards used by advertising agencies were doing to the environment. These are a big generator of dioxin and PVCs causing cancer and infertility. Besides, these are known to leave permanent carbon footprint on the environment. Therefore, needs of the hour are to find alternatives and that little push from the advertising industry.

Dubey spoke of Tyvek, which can bring some green difference to the industry. Tyvek is 100% recyclable, non-toxic and leaves little footprints on the environment. As Dubey put it, Tyvek is a unique high performance product made of HDPE fibres, which has natural white substrate possessing strength. With being lightweight, high-tear, UV and water resistant, it is also incinerated with minimal toxic emission and does not affect water table if dumped.

“Its unique and distinct looks help keep a brand outstanding and the both side printability feature gives better visibility to brand colour. The product is also cost-effective; the fact that it can be stitched, seamed, taped or glued means it’s easily applicable,” said Dubey.

‘Challenges in Indian OOH are as it is worldwide’

Resonating fellow speakers’ opinions that OOH is fascinating and offer tremendous possibilities, David Payne, founder, Mediabridge, UK, took the audiences through some amazing OOH campaigns around the world, along with presenting some real-time scenario. “With the advent of smart cities, OOH is emphasising its core strength and pushing itself in the core of mainstream media.” As a common challenge, Payne pointed out that OOH is still looked at as a real-estate business than any other. To take it to the further level, OOH must focus on four points – accountability, quality, relevance and flexibility.

Payne cited the example of Sao Paolo and how the city, after some infrastructural changes and removal of almost 15000 sites, brought back OOH with utter effectiveness. He also showed how “Link NYC”, a wi-fi enabled city connecting system, contributed majorly to the welfare of the citizens while drawing a new landscape in OOH of the city.

“Similarly, in India, you have a synthesis of creative workforce, growing economy and Government policies conducive to smart cities that can translate in exponential growth oh OOH of the country,” Payne added.