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.
The Hyundai scheme allowed buyers to return loaned or leased cars with no penalty if they lost their jobs. The promotion helped the company report a small upswing in its year-over-year sales for the first quarter while the industry overall was down 38.4%. What?s more, according to media reports, brand awareness went up 25% across the board and consumers began to look at the company differently because of the offer.
Closer home, WPP media arm, Mediacom-led Gillette campaign of 2008 ?India votes: To shave or not,? also worked for the simple reason that it had the potential to go viral. Taking off with a Nielsen-commissioned survey intended to gauge the country?s attitude toward shaving, the campaign kicked up a national-level debate. Giant screens were propped up at gyms and malls, there were celebrity-led panel discussions on TV, online voting, house-to-house trials and first-ever surveys on male grooming carried in city supplements?and the results soon showed.
According to market reports, the campaign managed to generate record sales (40%) for Gillette?s Mach3 razor, which, ironically, is at least 10 times more expensive than an average Indian razor brand.
?There are pressures in both good times and bad times but the fundamental business principles stay the same?innovate and delight the consumer,? says the Proctor & Gamble spokesperson, commenting on the Gillette campaign.
?OOH, or any medium for that matter, works only when the campaign is spectacular, it spreads the message fast and manages to create a buzz around the brand,? drives home Sinha, citing the case of the Reebok treadmill with human dummies currently placed on Mehrauli Road that no Delhi-Gurgaon (on the outskirts of Delhi) commuter is likely to miss.
Ask any creative director. She will tell you that every client wants the same?how to make their campaign last longer. While earlier this was just one of the objectives, today, it?s a necessary condition for survival?survival of the fittest, leanest and the meanest campaign. The time is to think big. Cash in on big ideas even when the budget happens to be small. This could be the most creative phase of growth for the industry.
?Take 29 Zoozoo creatives of Vodafone. A great idea presented at the right time,? says VS Mani, senior vice-president and general manager with Lintas Media Group (LMG). History certainly supports his argument that downturns are great opportunities for companies?and for corporate marketing. It was during the Great Depression that P&G pioneered the soap opera and Chevrolet invented the billboard. In 1931, Ford was outselling Chevrolet, but its outdoor advertising campaign helped the Chevy 6 become the best-selling car in its class, which it remained until 1938.
Analysts have argued such tactics work. John Quelch, a professor at Harvard Business School and a non-executive director of WPP Group, argues, ?It is well documented that brands that increase advertising during a recession, when competitors are cutting back, can improve market share and return on investment at lower cost than during good economic times.?
For instance, LMG?s launch campaign for Maruti Suzuki?s Ritz. Since car launches have become a matter of routine, Aaren Initiative, the outdoor arm of LMG decided to do something different for Ritz. It began to ply a fleet of trucks, fitted with video wall units on metro roads that came alive with Ritz videos by nightfall.
Another campaign that falls in this buzz bracket is C3CUBE?s Dilli Dil Se campaign that helped Coca-Cola leverage its sponsorship of Delhi Daredevils during last month?s DLF Indian Premier League 2009. For the purpose, 27 kiosks were installed all over Delhi, Noida and Gurgaon, fitted with 19-inch touch screens and a 32-inch LCD TV that streamed rich, interactive content. This included games, a private social network, video mail, SMS tweets, a jukebox, bluetooth 2.0 downloads, videos, ads, team player game cards, 3D virtual tours and more, woven, of course around the Coca-Cola brand.
The result? Over 20,000 users registered at the Dilli Dil Se kiosks, with an average of 465 persons per day and total hits on weekends were 18,520. Happy with the engagement, the company is planning a repeat show during the Commonwealth Games in 2010.
?Although the outdoor medium is limited by geography, if you use it stunningly, even people who are not in the vicinity will get drawn to it through the press, the social media, e-groups etc,? says Sinha.
?During difficult times, marketers want to influence consumers in order to help them make their decisions faster. The challenge is to shake the status quo when the tendency is to defer purchase decisions,? explains Ravi Kiran, CEO (South Asia), Starcom MediaVest Group. ?BTL seems to work better at such times in delivering short-term results. Targeting your consumer through TV may be a more complex game,? he adds.
However, he is quick to add, ?The debate is not between above-the-line (ATL) or below-the-line (BTL) activities?ATL, BTL have become redundant definitions in my opinion, when the demand is for integrated media?but to choose a judicious mix of media to say what you want to say, where and how you want to say it,? says Kiran, citing a promotion done for Aircel during the IPL matches, wherein the winner was entitled to meet MS Dhoni in person during a match in South Africa. ?That was not a thematic campaign. It was a clear promotion for the brand. But we used a variety of media to announce it,? argues Kiran, adding that, ?consumers are not married to any media.?
That may be so, but a sharp cut in advertising budgets and the highly- fragmented nature of TV viewership definitely appears to have skewed the choice in favour of BTL activities.
As per a GroupM forecast on the Indian media, the Indian advertising industry will grow by a miniscule 4.7% in 2009 (compared to 14.3% in 2008). Facing heat from the outdoor medium and radio, the biggest hit this year would be borne by the print medium (of the top 10 newspapers, six grew less than 10% in 2008), while the OOH market grew 4% and closed at Rs 1,448 crore, last year. This year?s growth forecast for the OOH medium is the same (4%) with telecom service providers likely to contribute the maximum to the medium.
?This is the time when brand managers want results, immediate, fast and measurable results that may not be possible with the conventional media,? says an ad executive, on condition of anonymity.
All this is fuelling demand for a ?pay for performance? model of advertising, a trend set by Google instead of the flat fee model followed in the conventional media.