Jean-Michel Geffroy managing director, JC Decaux Asia
What can agencies do to tackle governments which take down their posters without warning or reason?
The best strategy is to buy from vendors who adhere to prevailing laws or guidelines for outdoor advertising — in any market. This gives clients piece of mind, and, more importantly, the resources to cope when the unexpected happens.
How did Sars affect the way your company approaches the outdoor market?
What is the biggest obstacle to outdoor growth in the region?
There are a series of them. Primarily the fragmentation of the industry, a lack of homogeneity of product and the practice of treating outdoor as a support medium (although it's fair to say this has been changing in some markets quite dramatically in the past few years).
What's the best technological innovation in outdoor to hit Asia?
Put simply, quality. It may not sound like an innovation, but compare outdoor in any major Asian market to how it was a decade ago and you'll see my point.
What type of advertisers suit outdoor best?
In some Asian markets, outdoor used to be almost exclusively a brand platform used by tobacco and alcohol firms. This has changed. It now plays a key role on the media plans of all big Asian brands. With improved speed of implementation, choice of formats and variable campaign durations, it is now a medium for all types of advertisers.
What's your all-time favourite poster, and why?
The campaign from Avenir in 1981 is both strong on art direction and proposition…. check out: http://www.micheldurso.be/tfe/082_miriam.php. No really, have a look...
Ron Graham COO, Asia-Pacific, Kinetic Worldwide
What can agencies do to tackle governments which take down their posters without warning or reason?
The main issue is due process. When people are injured from falling billboards, it's not the advertiser's fault. It's the site owners. A taskforce with a carte-blanche to take posters down is no good to anyone. You need proper warning. Besides, I don't buy the 'visual pollution' argument. I think politicians want to make a bit of noise and outdoor is an easy target.
How did Sars affect the way your company approaches the outdoor market?
What is the biggest obstacle to outdoor growth in the region?
There's an interest in outdoor but there's a lot of missing information on research and measurement. This is the biggest challenge. Outdoor would play a bigger part in budgets if there was more objective measurement available. Restrictions and red tape are challenges too, but lack of measurement is the Achilles' heel.
What's the best technological innovation in outdoor to hit Asia?
Broadly speaking, digital. There are so many things that you can do with outdoor, beyond billboards and bus shelters. You can put screens in taxis, in McDonald's, link your ads to the internet or mobile phones. It's a broad arena, giving us a lot more inventory. Plus advertisers who wouldn't normally use outdoor before—because it was a static medium—do now.
What type of advertisers suit outdoor best?
A remarkable feature of OOH is that there are literally hundreds of different media. No other platform offers the flexibility that outdoor does — through ambient or non-traditional channels, demographic or geographic targeting, and the ability to be short- or long-term, tactical or a support medium.
What's your all-time favourite poster, and why?
The Perrier posters. I've been in the industry for 20 years, and this is one of the first campaigns I saw. Perrier spends most of its budget on outdoor. In fact when they first launched, they only used outdoor — they didn't have the budget for anything else. Only when sales grew did they start using print and TV. But they've stayed loyal to outdoor and it's paid off.
