Guest Column: Ajay Mehta, Founder & MD, Interactive Television (iTV) & MD, Kinetic India, says, this is the time to move from being perception-based mediums to data-driven & technology-enabled mediums The first quarter of 2020 started with a lot of promises for both, the OOH as well as the cinema industry and, both the mediums were poised for good growth. Cinema showed enough signs that it will continue to be the second-fastest-growing medium after Digital. When the year 2020 emerged, we were all excited, but as they say, “Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans”, Covid-19 struck, and everyone was homebound. Since everyone was home, “Out of Home” was not in anyone’s plans. From March to September, any business which was dependent on people moving out of their homes was severely affected. Talking of which, both these mediums were no different and it is only with the advent of the festive season and the various Unlocks that people started venturing out of their homes and the advertisers have followed suit.

The last nine months have been a bigger crisis than anyone could have imagined, and we will do ourselves a huge disservice if we waste this crisis. The demands of our clients have changed, and we will have to adapt to the new reality. Our clients like ourselves are coming out of a major disruption and this meant that the earlier trend of advertisers being concerned about predictable and measurable outcomes out of their media spends have only accelerated. To remain relevant and ensure that we as an industry get our due share of investments, we must reinvent ourselves and ensure that we enable business results for our clients. To do that we have to move from being perception-based mediums to mediums that are data-driven and technology-enabled. Analytics based on authentic data has to become a part of every stage of an OOH or a Cinema campaign. We will have to reimagine our business and see ourselves not as buyers or sellers of media assets but as solution providers to business concerns. This process will mean that in the new reality some touchpoints will perish, and some new ones will emerge. We have to be nimble enough to identify these and flexible enough to deliver solutions around them. Programmatic, Digital Out of Home, Traffic Patterns, Mobile Integration, Remarketing, Ad ID’s are some of the terms which one can expect to a lot more while talking about OOH in 2021. We will also need to bring creativity and out of the box thinking to our mediums. Look at the possibilities of the medium with fresh eyes and deliver innovations to communicate brand messages more impressively. The confluence of analytic and creativity, the mix of heart and mind, art, and science will make the OOH and Cinema mediums stand out. While 2020 may have been extremely tough for cinema houses and the movie industry, we must remember that we are all social animals, and the movie-going consumer is going to be back in the cinemas very soon. In a country like India, going to the movies is one of the main social activities and hence we expect audiences to come back stronger than before as the fear of the virus recedes and some of the bigger movies release. The large multiplex chains have taken the lead in terms of ensuring sanitisation, hygiene, and safety at their properties. We expect the leaders and the trusted to come back very strongly and garner a disproportionate share in this market. For every crisis is an opportunity in disguise and this one is no different. The fact is that people will continue to be out of home, for they need to be entertained outside their homes, the fact is that both OOH and cinema deliver unmatched impact. The Pandemic has just meant that tomorrow has arrived faster, and we need to evolve quickly and use this crisis to make ourselves Future Ready. Disclaimer: The views expressed here are solely those of the author and do not in any way represent the views of exchange4media.com