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: Car manufacturers are in a spot. They know they have to roll out a new model every now and then to drive stagnant sales, but in a slow market there is no money to advertise the new launches. The same dilemma confronts marketers in other sectors.

The internet is a good medium for low spend, high voltage campaigns that today’s market demands, but not in a country where broadband penetration is nothing to write home about (the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India reports that there are 5.45 million broadband subscribers in India as of December 31, 2008). The next, viable option is out-of-home (OOH) advertising as studies corroborate that the maximum media consumption these days is taking place outside of homes.

On a cost per thousand basis as well, the OOH medium works out more cost-effective than television and print (when reach is not an objective, as nothing beats TV on that score) except that plain vanilla hoardings don’t work any more. Increasingly, the need is for digital screens for a high impact contact.

“In a recessionary market, every marketer wants to stretch his budget to the maximum for both impact and reach,” says Samit Sinha, managing partner, Alchemist Brand Consulting. “Since there is no substitute for TV for reach, for impact, the outdoor medium could be a good option, provided it’s deployed innovatively both in terms of content and use.”

A classic example of great use of the outdoor medium was the 1983 Araldite campaign by British advertisng agency FCO Univas. The company stuck a canary yellow Ford Cortina on a billboard on Cromwell Road, London, with a punch line, “It also sticks handles to teapots.”

Later, to demostrate more of Araldite’s strengh, a red identical Ford Cortina was placed on top of the Cortina, with another tagline “The tension mounts” and finally, the car was removed leaving a hole in the billboard and a tagline “How did we pull it off?”.

“That was a vivid demonstration of a product’s promised attributes. You cannot get a better demo than that,” says Sinha. A recent international campaign—the recession-inspired marketing programme launched by Hyundai in the US on January 3—is a case in point.