Outdoor Media Industry In Manipur

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E-Pao! Features - Outdoor Media Industry In Manipur

By: R K Lilapati Devi *

Media in any sense is generally used to put messages across the mass. Newspapers, magazines, radio, TV, internet and traditional art forms like lai-haraoba and theatre platforms like Sumang-lila all have played important role in disseminating various messages.

Outdoor media is also playing a dominant role in disseminating messages. It is a big part of advertising industry. The advertising world is played by three elements: Advertisers(manufacturers/service providers)), Advertising agencies and Media .

Advertising agencies are engaged in whole work of putting the messages of the advertisers in the media. Media gets huge revenue from these advertisers. Ad agencies earn from the commissions given by the media for those ads put in that media.

As for outdoor media the revenue is rendered to the authority of the concerned site where ad is put. Outdoor media is any form of communication media which is out of home / studio.

Advertising professionals also call it OOH (out of home) media. They may be stationary or transitory. They are prevalent where their visibility hits the public’s eye. The stationary ones are usually at the roadside.

Ubiquitous cinema poster in Imphal city
Picture Courtesy: Ranjan Yumnam

Posters, billboards/hoarding, non standardized signs such as roadside signs, highway advertising, aisle displays, in- store clocks, public restroom walls, rail platforms, shopping mall displays, telephone kiosks, rail /air/bus terminals, painted bulletins( painted on walls , roofs, stones, hill’s side), neon signs, sky writings etc.

These things are listless. The transitory are associated with transport vehicles like buses, trucks, rickshaws etc.

In Imphal city and in other district headquarters of Manipur, we find many hoardings/ billboard on the roadside. Some of the walls of the buildings or simply walls of the fences are too occupied with bold letters and pictures with messages.

In an unindustrialized state like Manipur, OOH media has lesser function unlike it does in metropolitan cities of India and other western countries. However, it is an indispensable communication media in any society.

In Imphal city, there are around 136 hoardings scattered around the spots like

Keishampat junction (10),
Nupilal Complex (41) ,
Opposite side of GP Women’s college(11),
North AOC (10),
JN Dance academy(19),
Khuyathong(3),
RIMS gate (3),
Singjamei(5),
Porompat (1).

Hoardings are mostly of the size 14x18 ft. The sites above mentioned hoardings are owned by different ad agencies, the revenue being rendered to Imphal municipality Council. The tax on these media is fixed by the convetion “Tax on advertisement Bye-Laws, 1979, under section 70(1)(i) of the Manipur Municipalities act 1976.

According to the taxation system contained in this law, Imphal Municipality fetches Rs 420 per annum for a hoarding measuring 14x18ft. From all the hoardings fixed in the Imphal city, Imphal municipality fetches an amount more than Rs 80,000 per annum.

There are other hoardings that are solely owned by certain organizations. They belong to the site of their concerned organizations. So, the question of taxation does not arise in these hoardings. In case an advertiser wants to put an ad on the site, then the tax has to be incurred to the concerned authority.

Tax on advertisement Bye –laws, 1979 charges different rates of advertising on hoardings, kiosks, traffic islands, non illuminated sky signs, vehicles or conveyances, lorry, rickshaws, tongas etc. They have a rate for a week, a month, or a year.

For example an advertisement shown in a rickshaw draws Rs 2.00 per week, Rs 7.00 for a week and Rs 70.00 per year. A motor car or a bus having an ad on its walls have to pay the Municipality Board a sum of Rs 10 per week, Rs 40 per month or Rs 400 per year.

The making of these ads, installation and the overall execution of this work is performed by a number of advertising agencies based in Manipur. Some of the names of these agencies are Dina Art, Singh Art, Narayan advertising agency, Bell etc.

Singh Art has clients like reliance, star Cement. They have put about seven hoardings for Reliance and six hoardings for Star cement.

These hoardings shine at North AOC, Airport Road, Lamlong and Governor road. The revenue collected from these clients is around Rs 80,000 excluding the payable taxes.

Dina Art has been providing these outdoor media services for the last thirty years. Among the clients, it has brands like Aircell, Reliance Diamond , Kaziranga. Apex, SBI, DIPR, Thinknet, Luxmi Toy Collection and many a Cinema posters.

The hoarding spots are located at Khuman Lampak Main Stadium, Governor Road, Khuyathong road, Canchipur, Air port Road, Nagamapal, Uripok,& Manipur University campus etc.

Narayana Advertising agency was established way back in 1969.It has got brands like Rayband, Reebook, John Player, Levis, Turtle, Peter England, Garnier, Indigo Airlines, Airtel etc. The spots where these hoardings shine are around Raj Bhawan, JN Dance academy, Head Post Office, RIMS Gate, North AOC, Airport Road, Singamei, Palace compound etc. They own altogether 30 hoardings and 300 kiosks.

Bell Advertising agency is comparatively young. It came in 1995. However it has handled a number of big brands. Aircell, Amul, Samsung, Sansui, Onida, Viscol , Nestle, Brahamaputra Iron and steel Co ltd, Shree Sanyijee, and products like Tata Tiscol, Adhunik TMT Bar, LT Cement, Prism Cement, Classic century cement(now changed to Birla Gold ) and services like Haokip Travels, AHA, DAVP etc.

Bell’s outdoor spots are widely scattered across Moreh, Churachandpur, Ukhrul, Chandel, Imphal west, Imphal East,Thoubal, Nambol,Palel, Kakching. It has too extended to other states like Mizoram, Agartala, Shillong, Arunachal Pradesh.

The Narayana ad agency works in collaboration with the major outdoor ad agency Sevel. The bell works with Frontier. These ad agencies are dominant outdoor ad agencies playing world wide.

Kiosks are usually of size3x2 ft. It fetches a sum of Rs 50-Rs300 excluding the taxes payable to Municipality council or Electricity dept or MU authority or whoever the concerned authority. Normally, Agencies charge Rs50-60 per sq ft for a hoarding.

Brands like Reliance, Airtel, Aircell renders regular monthly revenue of Rs 15-16 thousand to the ad agencies. As for the cinema hoarding, the production companies hire for 3-6 months prior to the release of the films and the amount of the tax is also fixed at lower rate.

The biggest hoarding is the ad done for Airtel at Khuyathong executed by Narayana ad agency in collaboration with Selvel. It measures 60x20 ft. The next big hoarding stands at Kangla gate measuring 40x15 ft. This is for Aircell put by Dina Art.

These agencies are also engaged in making posters, banners and glow signs and many other art works. The overall printing is sometimes executed by firms located in other states. Now-a–days, the Nest advertising agency at Babupara handles the digital printing and so the there is less hassle in the process of transportation earlier faced by the ad agencies.

The outdoor advertising industry is mainly a local business operation. The OOH advertising is geographically selective. The messages can be selectively put at the desired place. It is a 24 hr medium of advertising. It is a visual medium par excellence.

There is no remote control to change the view. They are seen by the thousands of commuters repeatedly. Commuters may be on their way to office, bazaar, school etc. The transit advertising is les common in Manipur. It offers a sure exposure and repetitions.

It reaches a large population which is continually on the move. The AIDS awareness campaign, the Swajaldhara campaign, the Family planning awareness campign, the Polio campaign, the SPF govt achievement campaign or any other campaigns issued from other govt departments like Electricity dept, Health &Family welfare dept all gives a mass awareness of the issue concerned.

Not only these, the big life size image of beautiful Kamala, the hunk Gung standing at the backdrop of a Manipuri hillside all depicting a lovely romantic story , the pictures of meritorious students topped in the competitive exam, a recently opened eating outlet, ad of an Imphal based footwear industry all give invocative messages and all the more are entertaining to the onlookers.

To measure the effectiveness of outdoor media, professionals have developed OSCAR((outdoor Site Classification Research).They have devised

Visibility Index= ( ( Vd + C + A) / 100 ) x O x D x H

where

Vd = Visibility Distance

C = Competition

A = Angle of vision

O = Illumination Obstruction

D = Deflection

H = height above the ground

A good location is one where there is great visibility of the site, an angle to the road should ensure that the outdoor ad is closer to head-on while people approach it. The worst location is one parallel to the traffic. In the location where speed of travel is slower, the opportunity to see and read outdoor ad is greater.

At a curve or a diversion on highways or at blind turns, the speed of traffic is necessarily slower, such a location is ideal for the ad to be seen. However, the OOH ads have to abide by the two elements : traffic safety and aesthetics of the city.

OOH media is one of the oldest ad media. With the advancement of technology like web, cell phone, applications like blue tooth, this media has become very fashionable in western countries. Onlookers can download music, play video games, watch movie trailers, download a pair of sneakers and purchase them all by interacting with outdoor ads.

LED or high definition LCD screens flash new images every few sec. The screens fine tune their messages depending on the time of the day. For example Mc Donald could advertise a breakfast food in the morning and something else in the afternoon or evening.

There are billboards that change ads depending on the gender of the person standing in front of the billboard. They say 45% are accurate in this case. These are some changing face of the OOH ads.

World’s marketers spent $22 billion in the year 2005. In Manipur, it is a few crore rupees business. Some of the ad agency owners find it hard to arrange the huge cost of a billlboard coming up more than one lakh rupees. They lack financial support and so cannot grow their business fast.

References:

Imphal Municipality Board
interview with the ad agency proprietors Dina singh, Meipak, Narayan, Singhajit
Advertising Theory and Practise by Chunawalla, Kumar and Sethi
Time Magazine

* RK Lilapati Devi contributes to e-pao.net for the first time. She is a Guest Lecturer, Dept. of Journalism And Mass Communication, at Manipur University. This article was webcasted on August 30th, 2007.

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