At the 5th edition of the e4m OOH conference, industry experts came together in ‘The Leadership Outlook’ Discussion. The panel had Saibal Gupta, Managing Partner & CEO, XPERIA GROUP; Haresh Nayak, Founder & CEO, Connect Network Inc; Dipankar Sanyal, CEO, Platinum Outdoor; Suresh Balakrishna, CRO, The Hindu Group and was moderated by Arijit Charkrabarti, Vice President of Strategy and Insights, GroupM OOH Solutions.
Chakrabarti opened the discussion by going a little bit back in time and said, “The outlook for out of home advertising can be easily categorised into two segments - Before COVID and after COVID”, and urged Gupta to speak about the principles he had to create, change and adapt to, coming from an experiential marketing agency set up right before COVID.
Gupta talked about how he has seen the industry evolving through decades and mentioned, “Nobody likes to see ads, when an ad comes on our phone we skip it - we have to accept it. The millennials and GenZ today hardly see any ads, but when it comes to experience creation - it is happening for them. Experiential advertising stimulates all five senses and that is why we tend to remember them. The COVID days and even after that were challenging because we had to sell this idea. Coming to principles, whatever you are doing in the ad world - if it is not stimulating the senses either through content or any impactful advertising it will not address the TG.”
Sharing his leadership style, Nayak added “We need to realise the speed of change. The change that has happened in the last 5 years vs what has happened in the last 20 years before. The speed has only increased and transformation is a part and parcel of life - it is one of the biggest learnings for us. As an advertising professional and agency, it is important that you add value to the client’s business.” He underscored the importance of two things - people who understand the trade are trained and the second thing is value add.”
Giving an outsider’s perspective on what the OOH industry can learn from digital space, Balakrishna said “The good part about OOH is that both conventional and digital parts are sunrise industries in India and both will grow. The main challenge is going to be how to keep conventional OOH growing and making money so that it can feed DOOH. Another challenge is veterans will be handling traditional and young kids be handling digital - again the balancing act. The third is the funding of the digital media - as there is a high investment in the beginning.”
As attracting the right kind of talent is as important as anything else in an ad agency, speaking of the top three actions that he would like to take to attract top talent to the OOH industry, Sanyal shared “It is about selling a dream. Outdoor is a career, it’s not just a part of an agency - it is a career. Selling and evangelising the power of this media to the younger generation is something that needs to be done. Secondly, the transformation that is happening in outdoor - that needs to come to the forefront. We have to show them the multidimensional aspect. Thirdly, we need to tune the employees to be a problem solver.”
In line with Sanyal, Balakrishna mentioned increasing entry-level salaries, thinking of better working environments and giving them opportunities to prove themselves as additional things that agencies can do.
As the panel concluded, Sinha was asked how he sees airports evolving in the near future from a leader's perspective. Answering the same, he said “I see it as a unified part of OOH. Only because it is an airport, it has some basic inherent advantages. The gross reach is available in the public domain, everyone knows how many people cross through my airport. If I understand that my airport is a granular space and I am getting people who are at different psychographic stages, I exactly know what kind of messaging and what kind of impact I can make.”
