Has OOH creativity come of age?

There was a time when print ads would be enlarged and pasted on hoardings. Out-of-home advertising has moved far ahead now. DNA asked media experts whether we’re finally seeing better creatives on outdoor sites.

Creative standards are improving. At Ogilvy, we have a creative cell that  adds value to what the creative agency has done. And that’s done without changing the original creative thought. We already command 35-40% of the outdoor media planning and creative in the country. We were also the first outdoor specialists to be a part of the creative agency. It’s simply an excuse when people say lack of measurement is slowing down growth in OOH. Local companies are showing renewed faith in OOH. Brands like Puma, Lacoste will spend heavily on outdoor in the future.
—Nabendu Bhattacharya, country head, Landscapes & Signscapes, Ogilvy Activation

3-5 years ago, only the print creatives were used on OOH sites. Today, agencies have made huge improvements in OOH creativity, but it’s still not on par with international standards. The international OOH creative scene is more structured and agencies can take lot of liberties. But in India, different municipal bodies have different rules and regulations for their jurisdiction. Also, OOH is not a protected medium, hence a lot of embellishments might disappear overnight. A lot of that doesn’t allow outstanding creative work to happen outdoors.
—Robin Carruthers, CEO, Clear Channel India

There’s much to be desired on OOH creativity. Besides some sparks here and there, there are many so-called designs that are not hoarding designs at all but merely adaptations of print ads which ignore the fundamentals such as functional consideration of size, distant viewing and speed of the viewer. OOH is about simplicity of thought that is both informative and memorable. The communication message must open out inside our minds, not on the space on which it appears. And the faster this happens the greater is its impact. A good OOH ad will make you do a double take. I call it disruption. In short, get your consumer involved.
 —Arminio Riberio, CEO, Platinum Outdoor

OOH creatives have always been challenged, since ad agencies focus on print and TV advertising and then run OOH on the basis of adaptations. We need to rise above such adaptations and ensure that the campaign’s key message is brought out in the OOH campaign. To a certain extent, it’s a very Indian habit to be verbose, to over-complicate rather than simplify. And this comes out in our OOH ads. Some exceptional creative agencies — like Encyclomedia — create fresh, invigorating concepts that come alive to give them depth, excitement.
—Madhuri Sapru, managing partner south Asia, Kinetic and Dialect