The festive season in India has begun with full gusto, first with the arrival of Ganesh Chaturthi, followed by Navratri, Durga Pujo and Diwali. Right after monsoon ends, this is the time when roads all over the country are adorned with colourful and creative ads in order to grab consumers’ attention. Pleasant weather and celebratory mood among consumers triggers an urge to shop and brands leave no stone unturned to extract maximum value out of this season by promoting their festive offerings and heavy spends on marketing campaigns. In such a scenario, OOH plays a significant role in a brand’s communication and this is exactly why OOH business particularly thrives in the last quarter of the year. Unlike the previous year, the OOH industry is expecting a huge surge in traffic this year. This can be a great relief for the industry, which is looking to compensate for the losses of last year due to GST and demonetisation.
Amarjeet Singh, COO, Laqshya Solution, said, “Today OOH goes where most other media can’t go. OOH is everywhere consumers are. The fact that India has one of the highest chunks of millennial population and approximately 70% of their waking hours is spent outside, just makes OOH more lucrative for advertisers.”
“Marketers heavily ride on the festive fervour and OOH works well to connect them to their TG by being visible at congregations that are relevant to them. OOH follows them at B2B pockets, residential clusters, to the journey to and fro along with all destination points they can possibly visit- be it main arterial roads, malls, movie theatres, coffee shops, airports, and even golf course and grocery shopping. So OOH offers a customised media plan for different TGs,” added Singh. Alok Gupta, Graphisads, said, “Festive season means traffic snarls, outdoor as a medium always has had an impact value. 2-3 hours of forced viewing helps brands to create an immediate recall value, which leads to impulse purchase decisions.” When asked as to how much a brand’s marketing spends usually increases during the festive season, he added, “Many brands keeps aside as much as 15-20% of their annual budgets for this specific period. You would see many clients that are not visible during the year suddenly come up at the time of festive season.”
According to Rohan Srinivasan, Chief Marketing and Communication Officer, Vyoma Media, “The OOH Industry will hope to get 30-40% of its total revenues this festive season alone. (Country wide) Spends are expected to be significantly up from last year. The very nature of festivals has people gathering together in one place to celebrate, which brands use to their advantage and hence focus on this season in particular. The opportunity to target a vast audience, increased visibility for products by localising content reaps rewards by transforming into eventual sales.”
“We are very optimistic and are looking at a sizeable growth when compared to last year. Previously, the whole industry was affected by GST and demonetisation,” he added.
“OOH is the only impact creation option in the entire communication chain”, said Charanjeet Singh Arora, CO-CEO- India, Kinetic India. “No other media delivers the impact which OOH can deliver because of its size, and OOH is always the last mile media in consumer marketing so, if you plan and place OOH well, it helps brands with higher ROI,” he pointed out. A brand’s marketing spend purely depends on the brand’s priorities and product. “Like for automobile, white goods, jewelry, clothing and lifestyle products, Diwali is the peak sales period. All brands keep aside a festival budget for this period depending on specific priorities for instance which region matters more for which festival and then, brands spend likewise. All brands keep a consistency of presence in target priority markets and they create spike of media presence during big festivals. Spending goes up as high as even 100% for few product categories,” explained Charanjeet Singh Arora. “Typically consumer-focused brands hike their spends substantially. There are brands that spend 30-40% of their annual budget specifically during OND (October, November, December) quarter,” said Amarjeet Singh. The industry at large believes that this festive year will be positive for them in terms of budget. Gupta said, “This year, we are hoping that the outdoor industry shall recover the losses of past 2-3 years of sluggishness. Availability issues for getting key locations for clients have begun. Since outdoor media is so location-specific, important areas have already been booked.” Since media occupancy is going up, Gupta expects an overall 20-25% spurt in the top line this year, as compared to the last year. Haresh Nayak, Managing Director, Postercope, said, “Historically we have seen a 10-12% increase during festivities. Given that last year spends were adversely affected due to the policy changes, we see a possible increase of 15-18% as compared to last year.” “We should see a healthy double-digit growth. An overall growth of approximately 10% compared to last year is what we all expect,” said Amarjeet Singh. Read More
