Outdoor ASIA - July 2018

66 August 2018

year, an interactive unipole was created that felicitated

team spirit; a live scoreboard was up on OOH; a

rotating ball display and live gaming experience were

created in malls. Commenting on its mammoth FIFA

communications, Amrith shares, “For Adidas, FIFA, is

like a brand moment happening once in four years.

Eventually it becomes a great brand moment to talk

to the consumers because it is an authentic sporting

moment. Therefore, all the campaign designed for

the world-cup targets beyond our TG and reaches the

masses because everybody becomes a fan during the

FIFA World Cup. Hence, OOH becomes an effective

medium to talk about the grandeur of the game with

the large Indian consumer. And OOH, at least in our

experience, has given us a lot of eyeballs and exposure

for the brand and the whole property”.

While he recalls a few previous international FIFA

innovation done in other countries such as Oliver

Kahn’s diving innovation to save the balls and a vertical

football innovation, Amrith articulates, “We have

these great ideas from other countries and developed

markets that we are exposed to being in Adidas, and

that makes us plan differently for the Indian market.

We try and measure them on factors like practicality,

feasibility, cost and execution. But the whole crux is to

not have anything vanilla. We want consumer to recall

our campaigns and innovations for a long time.”

The media planning parameters are straight and

simple, that is, the media close to the high-footfall

premium areas like Saket and Gurugram are the

preferred display sites. Also, the brand has its in-house

team which does market recces to assess the impact

and visibility of different sites; the sales team and

franchise store owners also offer valuable insights on

the campaign deployments. The specialist agency helps

with data of those sites which as footfall, eyeballs, etc.

The brand also amalgamates OOH with on-ground

activations. Amrith is a strong votary of DOOH media.

“Our whole communications gets designed for digital

screens so it would be great if we can have OLED

and Curved Screens. DOOH is active inside malls but

it would be great to have digital medium at premium

locations like Juhu Beach or Marine Drive.”

The brand’s wish list also includes improved quality of

sites. “Like international markets, you don’t need 500

outdoor sites in a city. You just need 50-100 of them of

really good quality, strong construction, proper lighting

and important components,” Amrith explains.

Amrith also pointed out that there is too much clutter of

OOH sites that negatively impact the consumer connect.

Additionally, the biggest challenge for the brand is to

deal with the unavailability of appropriate sites.l

BRAND SPEAK