Sunday, June 07, 2009

OOH, what an ad !

Out Of Home (OOH) advertising caught my attention always, and with companies using it innovatively these days its even more fun to watch ! A description to start off - OOH is marketing in forms that you see can out-of-your-home (!), e.g. hoardings in the simplest form. But then, the best part lies in either capturing attention with a clutter-breaking hoarding (like the red Economist's Interpret the world hoardings that you see these days) or by the use of the media beyond the billboards. I have uploaded some of those from the latter category that I really feel deserve an applause for their creativity. (Click on images to enlarge)

Starting with some international ones. AXE, as usual, starts the pack. Here you see the ad being placed over a women's dorm in the form of a calendar, with each window being a day of the month. The concept being obvious - a girl for each day. I am sure it would have caught attention of every guy who had walked past this one in Seoul.


Scotch Brite had another brilliant concept to go with their USP of 'absorbs everything'. They had simply replaced the basins below taps in public places (I think in Australia) with a sponge. And just the brand name and tagline on the sides. Caught the attention & conveyed the message - clear and concise !


Coming to some Indian examples of conveying the USP- recently read about this Pantene's OOH campaign. Had a sticker on doors of common places like salons, etc with hair being stuck to it. They actually replaced the door handles, and whenever anyone pulls them to open the door, he/she was actually experiencing the brand message. And the text - Pantene:Strong Hair. It needn't say anything more, does it?

Closer home, before the elections, UTV Bindass had these hand signs over public places with the inked index finger pointing out (Ungli utha bindass campaign). The messages differed, urging them to vote if they needed development to happen. Have a look at this one - 'Desh khadde mein hain? Vote kar' with the finger pointing to a dug road. Other messages included 'Desh ki batti jala' on a lamp post; 'Batvara nahi, divider chahiye' pointing to a divider on the road.


Though I said that companies should look beyond hoardings, Orient Fans proved that even hoardings can be used innovatively. This ad simply had a large image of the fan and the brand message 'More air everywhere'. Just beside the hoarding on both sides were two hoardings which were almost torn down and looks as if it is due to the fan(I believe they had bought these spaces :) ) depicting exactly what the tagline says.

Pidilite industries - known for their TV ads for Fevicol - also had some excellent concepts for their starch Ranipal. Human-like figures at high footfall areas, but with no heads, legs, hands. There's no message written, but isn't it clear enough that the clothes are standing on their own? And their pose is also natural so that they won't mistaken for mannequins (the one here is climbing the stairs, others include a woman shopping at a store and a guy on a bike in the parking lot). Excellent, though the brand name would be visible when seen closely, which I doubt how many people would have done.

(Thanks afaqs for the pics!)

Talking of OOH, one thumb rule I read somewhere that people have an average 3-4 seconds to interpret the message on a hoarding. Still I saw these four hoardings stacked side-by-side at Bandra (wanted to get the sealink in the background, which I couldn't unfortunately). Why would anyone buy space here, if the audience can spare 4 seconds for the entire spot i.e. 1 second per hoarding. Surely atleast 2 of the hoardings would always be missed out by the viewer. (Unless everything is for the same brand, e.g. Sony TV has recently bought 2 of them and have a big ad for Dus Ka Dum)

7 comments:

Samir said...

Nice be.. U really are a marketing enthusiast.. :)

Sumit said...

Awesome stuff, Seshadri. Reading your blog is an insight in itself! Let me know if you need help in 'marketing' it... :P

Nishant said...

Interesting ... but like Kotler, am not a big fan of advertising :) ...
regarding hoardings, the rule of thumb of the visibility being 3-4 seconds ... the hoarding serve the purpose of spreading visibility, how many hoardings actually resulted in people going and buying a particular product? the point is, while driving or walking, one has noticed the hoarding for 3-4 seconds, will the message be retained in the mind? given the fact the person will be engrossed in driving and other thoughts...

Seshadri said...

@sumit, thx..wud surely let u know :P

@nishant, exactly! thats the point...it may or may not trigger purchase (infact, anything besides consumer offers, rarely can guarantee purchase trigger), but getting the message across is the key. and that's why conventional hoardings wud never be remembered.. its more of getting consumer's mindshare, so that he recalls ur name during his next purchase (mktg jargons avoided!)

Mandar Kulkarni said...

awesome compilation...absolutely loved the Orient Fan concept...sadly 9 out of 10 of the banner ads easily fall in the mediocre category..for instance the SBI ads ..I just dont understand what they expect a person to do on seeing them..there r two persons in the B&W ads..and both r labelled SBI customers..first time my eyes were searching for some line somewhere that will spell out the message a bit more clearly (the message of course is that SBI customers r everywhere..but the way they hav put it is very dull)...I expected much better frm SBI!

Manoj said...

very good ones.. n kudos for the pains taken to click the pics..

Seshadri said...

@mandar, luking at the sbi ad, i wud agree even more..they'v taken ppl for granted to be that smart in realizin the msg :)

@manoj, i repeat - thanks afaqs for the pics..i hav jst taken one of them :)