Five OOH companies in Kerala unite to form Screenery Media

The formation of Screenery Media is a unique chapter in the out of home (OOH) story in India. In April, for the first time, five big companies owning more than four lakh sq. ft display space at 1,500 different locations came together to form one entity called Screenery Media.

The five OOH companies, Jaycee, Outlook, Century, Delta and Travancore, are major players in the OOH media with abundant resources and in-depth knowledge of the industry in Kerala. With its combined strength, Screenery now has offices in Thrissur, Kottayam, Kozhikode, Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram.

Interestingly, each company brings with it a different skill, with Jaycee specialising in street furniture, Century in billboards, Outlook in digital, Delta in highway signage and Travancore in transit media. Screenery has five directors representing the individual identities, each with distinct responsibilities such as finance, operations and printing.

While consolidation is the way forward, Jayachandran says that until now, the OOH industry has seen the emergence of smaller companies set up by people who have left an OOH company, taking a few clients with them. The coming together of five companies is definitely unique.

Each partner has contributed Rs 50 lakh, creating a corpus of Rs 2.5 crore to provide the working capital for Screenery and make it eligible for all major tenders.

He adds that Screenery's strategy is to acquire and achieve a national footprint and leadership in the OOH industry through innovation, technology and alternate advertising.

He claims that Screenery is now the largest OOH media owner in Kerala, based both on the number of advertising faces and revenue generated. Screenery has ownership in formats including hoardings, bus shelters, unipoles, street furniture, transit media and ambient media. It has been instrumental in putting up bus shelters throughout Kerala and the first LED display screen in Kochi. It has added technologies such as digital LCD screens, true colour LED digital display walls, scrollers and trivision.

Screenery's client list includes Tata Indicom, BSNL, Tata Sky, Panasonic, Godrej, Sansui, Vodafone, Britannia and Reliance Mobile.

Screenery has bagged the OOH media marketing rights for the Indian stopover of the Volvo Ocean Race 2008-09 at Kochi Port, December 3-13.

For the first time in its 35 year history, the race will see a stopover in India at Kochi's Willingdon Island. A Race Village being created on Willingdon Island will come alive with concerts, parties, sailing and cultural events and activities attracting people to the stopover port. The route to the Race Village and the arterial roads in Willingdon Island are branding opportunities that include billboards, mini billboards, signages, display boards and LED displays at strategic locations.

To connect with the right audience appropriately, Screenery is restricting the number of clients/ advertisers to 60. The total available OOH media products are being divided into 60 units placed at high traffic areas and other strategic locations on Willingdon Island. A single unit is a 3,000 sq. ft area made up of 16 billboards and other displays (five on the main road and 11 on the interior roads) for marketers to showcase their products/ services. The total cost of a single OOH media unit is Rs 60 lakh.

Jayachandran concludes, “A booming economy with new highs in average disposable income calls for strategic ad spends. Visibility and retention are difficult if the advertising is interrupted for long intervals and that is precisely where Screenery steps in, providing OOH media all over Kerala."