Advertising is meant to provoke a response. If the ad is forgotten, it cannot possibly invoke a call to action. Hence, innovation is a key element to gain the attention of the audience. OOH is a medium where you have to be loud, bold and on your audience’s face to create a powerful impact on people. Creative agencies and brands need to explore innovative ways to communicate the brand and its USP in a meaningful and relevant manner.

exchange4media Staff May 20, 2013 12:00 AM

Clients are now becoming quite brave in terms of the choices that they might take, but I think it is still a slightly risk averse bravery. Clients are not in a position where they can endlessly experiment, so they need to know that if they are being brave there is a strong likelihood that there is going to be some kind of success at the end of the day

exchange4media Staff May 17, 2013 12:00 AM

I think that two things would drive data consumption in the future. One would be videos and the second would be gaming. For carriers like us, developing a business model and capitalising on these two factors would be a game changer.

exchange4media Staff May 13, 2013 12:00 AM

Digital has to be our focus area, under that digital space you have got everything – from saying how do I use the data that the digital world is generating to give me better insights, better accountability to help clients put together the data that they already have. The definition of digital is going to change as more of us migrate more of our online behaviour to tablets or handphones. I don’t know yet whether the advertising dollars are necessarily flowing in as quickly to follow our behaviour. But that has certainly been a challenge as an industry for the last 20 years.

exchange4media Staff May 10, 2013 12:00 AM

If you are talking about digital or traditional, you are obsolete; today everything is holistic. When consumers are exposed to different messages, they don’t think ‘now I’m going to watch traditional’ and ‘now is my time to watch digital’. They just watch. They are just impacted. It is all about how to be efficient to reach the consumer and to influence the consumer.

exchange4media Staff May 3, 2013 12:00 AM

I am a firm believer of ‘less is more’ paradigm. We can look at having lesser number of billboards with standardised sizes. OOH should get integrated in the fabric of the cityscape rather than creating visual pollution. Also, the look and feel of the billboards should have consistency across cities. Maybe consolidation is the key here.

exchange4media Staff Apr 29, 2013 12:00 AM

Brand aesthetics and the financial impact cannot live in isolation, what you will see is more focus on the brand being able to financially justify themselves. Design of the brand is the best way for it to truly distinguish itself, as long as the design of the brand is representative of the experience consumers expect to have with it.

exchange4media Staff Apr 26, 2013 12:00 AM

Today, marketers are not worried about building online communities, but are focused on and questioning their digital agency partners how they can leverage their strategies to the already existing community. With this, digital agencies are also facing a lot of challenges; today, there are too many specialised digital divisions which is leading to fragmentation. What marketers want today is one-stop solution and I think this is a shakeout period for agencies.

exchange4media Staff Apr 24, 2013 12:00 AM

Substantial categories will enter radio only once broadcasters have the permission to air news. In international markets, programming line-up consists of talk plus music and talk is extremely relevant to a consumer’s life. With news and topical information, every player’s offering becomes very unique, whereas in music it is duplication of content. News and current affairs will help every broadcaster take their own stand and create unique superior content. Also, consumers of radio are ready for news content. Our experiments with fictional talk content have been received really well. Consumers are ready for much stronger content. Also, news will help broadcasters create their differentiated voice and thus create loyalty among their audiences.

exchange4media Staff Apr 23, 2013 12:00 AM

The readers are heading towards a zone of content and zone of information not necessarily bound by traditional vehicles. Readers are continuing to consume content, but their format is changing from access A to B. Hence, my feeling is that it is the peripheral people who had came in, who are dropping out, because the value that they were getting earlier because of some promotional activities are no longer available.

exchange4media Staff Apr 20, 2013 12:00 AM

Most of the Indian brands on social media today are still running after likes and trying to creating engagements for their fans. If we look at the top 50 Facebook pages in the country with regard to page likes, 33 of them belong to brands. Globally, only 15 of such highly popular pages belong to the corporate world, the rest belong to celebrities. Same is the case with Twitter.

exchange4media Staff Apr 18, 2013 12:00 AM

I see India as a hub of excellence for data analytics for the whole of Asia. A lot of thinking, technology and many of our approaches will be born here - David Gould, Global Digital, Managing Director, Starcom MediaVest Group

exchange4media Staff Apr 12, 2013 12:00 AM

Digital is the way ahead in OOH. Globally, digital is the lifeline of many media formats in the outdoor landscape. India will have to adapt to similar media formats. The concern that needs to be addressed is from the regulatory side. It is high time the media formats in India got into new avatars. All this can fall in place only when all the stakeholders of the industry come together to work towards this positive change for the business.

exchange4media Staff Apr 10, 2013 12:00 AM

India is far more complex, if you had to compare it with Europe. Yes, there are cultural differences in Europe as well but by and large the imagery is fairly consistent and homogenous; because the social stratification and education is such that you can have communication that works across the board. You regionalise it for bits and pieces and language, but you are not looking at the lowest common denominator when you are creating communication. So, India is complex from that point of view, which is why the extra science helps.

exchange4media Staff Apr 6, 2013 12:00 AM

Ministry of MIB has taken several path-breaking digital initiatives. YouTube channel of MIB Ministry is a big hit; we have more than one lakh likes. Also, every meeting that takes place on digitisation or any other important issue is put on the website of the ministry. We also have a regular blog. Ministry has appointed special set of officers from the Indian information service who have been specially drafted by the ministry to work on social media and they are doing extremely well

exchange4media Staff Mar 29, 2013 12:00 AM

Censorship is really important, but I think at times the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting goes overboard on things that we can say and things that we cannot. I am sure guidelines are required, but somewhere the guidelines are really stringent. It really curbs a lot of creativity and a lot that you as a person would like to put out to make a difference.

exchange4media Staff Mar 26, 2013 12:00 AM

New media is not eating into the pie of print content. If you pick any successful digital media portal, invariably it is a replica of the print publication. Most digital content is riding on the back of traditional media, whether it is broadcast or print… As long as we can evolve a new paid model in digital, print has nothing to fear. But so far there are no successful and sustaining digital revenue models. Some day all publishers will realise that we need to have a paid model on digital as well.

exchange4media Staff Mar 22, 2013 12:00 AM

With changes in times and generation, consumerism has changed too. In fact, it’s a cycle. It will change again, and so will OOH in the coming time. However, as we know, the consumer’s mind space has increasingly shrunk over a period of time due to competition. The need of the hour is to be innovative and subtle while grabbing the consumer’s attention at a lower cost. This is where OOH has taken a leap from a recall media to a compulsive media.

exchange4media Staff Mar 15, 2013 12:00 AM

Engagement is no longer the only tool of evaluation for marketers. Technology has caught up with marketers’ need for a sharper way to gauge RoI, and many companies are beginning to evolve from measuring more superficial social media metrics like clicks, retweets, and likes to tracking metrics that are tied more closely to a company’s bottomline. Social search has made its way into the minds of the marketers as well.

exchange4media Staff Mar 13, 2013 12:00 AM

TV advertising remains a powerful medium. Our efforts with regions with a localised approach and tailored content should help us tap the market further. Increasing audience engagement will also be key. We will work with our clients on ad formats and targeted ads. Innovative content distribution over digital platforms, better video experience for users, and consistency of experience across our platforms will help us on the distribution side as well.

exchange4media Staff Mar 8, 2013 12:00 AM