Ron Graham, Chief Consultant, Media On The Go
More than anything else, consolidation is at the core for survival and success. With consolidation, the bigger entities will stay relevant and be better equipped to deal with the media buying community. Efficiencies through consolidation should lead to more investment in product improvements, including measurement.
More than anything else, consolidation is at the core for survival and success. With consolidation, the bigger entities will stay relevant and be better equipped to deal with the media buying community. Efficiencies through consolidation should lead to more investment in product improvements, including measurement.Ron Graham has more than 30 years of experience in the OOH advertising sector. In 1997, Graham joined Poster Publicity and returned to Singapore. In 2005, Poster Publicity and Portland merged in Asia Pacific. On completion of the merger, the agency was renamed and launched as Kinetic Worldwide, head-quartered in London.
Kinetic Worldwide has become the world’s largest out of home media specialist agency. Graham held the positions of Chief Operating Officer of Kinetic in Asia Pacific and was a Director on the Board of Kinetic Worldwide. In 2008, Graham left Kinetic to set up Media On The Go, a new and independent consulting business, serving the out of home media industry.
He is also a keynote speaker at the fourth edition of exchange4media’s OOH Conference & Awards to be held in Gurgaon on March 20, 2014, where he will speak on the future of OOH advertising. In conversation with exchange4media’s Abhinn Shreshtha, Graham touches upon various pertinent issues facing the OOH sector. Q. Where do you think the next boost in terms of growth will come from for the OOH industry? It will mainly be from digital OOH due to the development of more screens and reaching new audiences, plus the conversion of a proportion of suitable traditional OOH into digital. Secondly, it will be from infrastructure expansion. The third component is from smarter use of the medium and its inherent value, but this will take time and needs improvements in data, insights and education.
Q. The outdoor industry in India is quite fragmented with issues such as lack of measurement being a common complaint. Comment. Fragmentation is an obstacle with multiple operators with disparate set of sites, locations and formats. Sellers become preoccupied with selling their vacant locations, not the goals of the advertiser. Brands and agencies spend too much time dealing with too many sources of sale, with little differentiation aside from price, pulling down the value and squeezing operator margins.
No one can complain that brands and agencies want tangible and reliable information about the audiences reached. The backdrop to this is the infinite measurability of digital media. Without some comparable assessment of OOH value versus spending, it is too easy for OOH to be taken off the plan or for spends to reduce to a token showing. Other traditional media are lifting their game on measurement and insights and the pressure in on OOH to get on board.
Just as much as I hear brands and agencies calling for innovation in the briefing process, I see bold ideas for OOH being rejected as too risky, unproven, etc. I guess this is related to the measurement and insights gap.
Q. What would be your advice to Indian OOH players to remain relevant in an age where consumer habits and client expectations are both changing rapidly? More than anything else, consolidation is at the core for survival and success. With consolidation, the bigger entities will stay relevant and be better equipped to deal with the media buying community. Efficiencies through consolidation should lead to more investment in product improvements, including measurement.
There are many forms of consolidation, including collaboration and aggregation. Not everyone has to be big to survive, but OOH players could try to concentrate their efforts to, perhaps, become significant in a particular area, format or niche.
Q. Wide-scale adoption of digital OOH (DOOH) still needs to be seen here. What are the learnings that we can take from other countries? Do not underestimate the importance of regulators. Early dialogue, ideally representative of the whole industry (not by individual companies), should build trust and an agreed set of guidelines for operating DOOH and for considering the community benefits. Self-regulation should then be possible to keep on track and to maintain positive support from regulators. With a stable regulatory framework, investment will follow with minimised risk and then the DOOH game will change.
Q. What are your thoughts on cross-platform advertising? This is real and exciting. As OOH becomes the on-ramp for activation on mobile or online, as well as the place-based reinforcement of multi-faceted communications, which brands build across various platforms, the brand relationship with the consumer flows almost seamlessly from channel to channel. The device and platform become invisible to the content. Even the big, global brand names will admit that they are still experimenting in this area, but as case histories are built this will grow and bodes well for OOH.
Q. How can one build better synergies between OOH and other media? For OOH to be complementary with TV and print, the campaign timing needs to be in sync with the other media. This usually means relatively short campaigns. Much has been done in key cities in the past 4-5 years to get tactical weight campaigns posted promptly and on scale, for periods as short as 15 or even 10 days. More is need in this area and it is measurement, which will prove and reinforce what are the ideal mixes of OOH media in support of TV and print. For digital OOH, I see great potential synergies with online and mobile and this is starting to be realised in other markets.
Q. What is the future of OOH advertising? The short answer is “bright”. Fundamental factors support the further growth of OOH and digital OOH. In addition, changes in the ways brands expect consumer engagement are actually favouring OOH as it can connect and engage with individuals but on a broadcast scale.
OOH is place-based media and this combination of people and places is at the heart of one of the major marketing focuses right now – location marketing. Location data, technology systems and good old-fashioned OOH media combine to offer perhaps the most relevant and valuable brand communication with consumers, when it matters most.
Kinetic Worldwide has become the world’s largest out of home media specialist agency. Graham held the positions of Chief Operating Officer of Kinetic in Asia Pacific and was a Director on the Board of Kinetic Worldwide. In 2008, Graham left Kinetic to set up Media On The Go, a new and independent consulting business, serving the out of home media industry.
He is also a keynote speaker at the fourth edition of exchange4media’s OOH Conference & Awards to be held in Gurgaon on March 20, 2014, where he will speak on the future of OOH advertising. In conversation with exchange4media’s Abhinn Shreshtha, Graham touches upon various pertinent issues facing the OOH sector. Q. Where do you think the next boost in terms of growth will come from for the OOH industry? It will mainly be from digital OOH due to the development of more screens and reaching new audiences, plus the conversion of a proportion of suitable traditional OOH into digital. Secondly, it will be from infrastructure expansion. The third component is from smarter use of the medium and its inherent value, but this will take time and needs improvements in data, insights and education.
Q. The outdoor industry in India is quite fragmented with issues such as lack of measurement being a common complaint. Comment. Fragmentation is an obstacle with multiple operators with disparate set of sites, locations and formats. Sellers become preoccupied with selling their vacant locations, not the goals of the advertiser. Brands and agencies spend too much time dealing with too many sources of sale, with little differentiation aside from price, pulling down the value and squeezing operator margins.
No one can complain that brands and agencies want tangible and reliable information about the audiences reached. The backdrop to this is the infinite measurability of digital media. Without some comparable assessment of OOH value versus spending, it is too easy for OOH to be taken off the plan or for spends to reduce to a token showing. Other traditional media are lifting their game on measurement and insights and the pressure in on OOH to get on board.
Just as much as I hear brands and agencies calling for innovation in the briefing process, I see bold ideas for OOH being rejected as too risky, unproven, etc. I guess this is related to the measurement and insights gap.
Q. What would be your advice to Indian OOH players to remain relevant in an age where consumer habits and client expectations are both changing rapidly? More than anything else, consolidation is at the core for survival and success. With consolidation, the bigger entities will stay relevant and be better equipped to deal with the media buying community. Efficiencies through consolidation should lead to more investment in product improvements, including measurement.
There are many forms of consolidation, including collaboration and aggregation. Not everyone has to be big to survive, but OOH players could try to concentrate their efforts to, perhaps, become significant in a particular area, format or niche.
Q. Wide-scale adoption of digital OOH (DOOH) still needs to be seen here. What are the learnings that we can take from other countries? Do not underestimate the importance of regulators. Early dialogue, ideally representative of the whole industry (not by individual companies), should build trust and an agreed set of guidelines for operating DOOH and for considering the community benefits. Self-regulation should then be possible to keep on track and to maintain positive support from regulators. With a stable regulatory framework, investment will follow with minimised risk and then the DOOH game will change.
Q. What are your thoughts on cross-platform advertising? This is real and exciting. As OOH becomes the on-ramp for activation on mobile or online, as well as the place-based reinforcement of multi-faceted communications, which brands build across various platforms, the brand relationship with the consumer flows almost seamlessly from channel to channel. The device and platform become invisible to the content. Even the big, global brand names will admit that they are still experimenting in this area, but as case histories are built this will grow and bodes well for OOH.
Q. How can one build better synergies between OOH and other media? For OOH to be complementary with TV and print, the campaign timing needs to be in sync with the other media. This usually means relatively short campaigns. Much has been done in key cities in the past 4-5 years to get tactical weight campaigns posted promptly and on scale, for periods as short as 15 or even 10 days. More is need in this area and it is measurement, which will prove and reinforce what are the ideal mixes of OOH media in support of TV and print. For digital OOH, I see great potential synergies with online and mobile and this is starting to be realised in other markets.
Q. What is the future of OOH advertising? The short answer is “bright”. Fundamental factors support the further growth of OOH and digital OOH. In addition, changes in the ways brands expect consumer engagement are actually favouring OOH as it can connect and engage with individuals but on a broadcast scale.
OOH is place-based media and this combination of people and places is at the heart of one of the major marketing focuses right now – location marketing. Location data, technology systems and good old-fashioned OOH media combine to offer perhaps the most relevant and valuable brand communication with consumers, when it matters most.
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