Surina Sayal
OOH

Bindass hangs a cab in the sky

A real cab mounted on a hoarding for the promotion of a new show grabs attention

It's not every day that you see a vehicle mounted on a hoarding. Bindass, the youth entertainment channel from UTV, has launched a game show on wheels, Airtel Bindass Cash Cab, which went on air on September 15 at 7.30 pm. To promote the show, the channel actually put up a cab on a hoarding in Mumbai's prime advertising location, Mahim Causeway.

In the show, unsuspecting people get into a seemingly ordinary cab only to learn that this is no ordinary taxi. They are actually on national television – with the unique opportunity to win a grand cash prize of Rs 20,000 en route to their destination. To win the money, the passenger must give the right answers to the questions asked by the ‘Cash Cab Haryanvi Jat driver-cum-anchor’, Munish 'Munna' Makhija.

The questions get progressively challenging and the cash increases apace. Incorrect answers get a strike and three such strikes get the passenger out of the cab, irrespective of the distance remaining to his destination.

Bindass hangs a cab in the sky
Click on the image to enlarge
The passenger also gets two lifelines to help him when he doesn’t know the answer to a particular question. He can either call a friend or stop the cab and pose the question to someone on the road. Currently, the cab is running in Mumbai and Delhi, but will be taken to Kolkata and Bengaluru soon. The international format of the show has won an Emmy award.

Bindass launched an innovative hoarding campaign for the show. The hoarding, positioned at the Mahim Causeway, had an actual cab mounted on it, with fake currency plastered all over.

Ashok Cherian, vice-president, marketing, Bindass, tells afaqs!, “This may not be the first time that a vehicle has been mounted on a hoarding for a promotion, but in this case, it fits the concept very well.”

He says, “People usually pay money to hire a cab, but here, you actually get paid for hiring the cab. Since the concept of the show itself is innovative, we had to ensure that the creative was equally clutter breaking. At Bindass, we try to do things differently, be it programming or marketing.”

Cherian shares that the innovative hoarding went up on September 14, a day before the show was launched; it was up for a week. The process of putting up the hoarding took about two weeks from ideation to execution because of the logistics and the permissions involved.

He says, “We actually had to cut a taxi in half and mount it on the hoarding, but when seen from afar, you can't make out that it’s only half a cab. We're doing the same hoarding at another location in Mumbai. This time, we’ve figured out how to mount the whole cab.”

Cherian did not disclose how much the hoarding cost, but he pegs the figure at double the cost of creating and executing a regular hoarding.

He says the innovation could not be executed in Delhi because of the city’s hoarding and outdoor advertising laws. He adds, “We've seen that innovation does not need numbers. It does not need to be plastered across cities. Just one or two high traffic locations such as the Mahim Causeway get the eyeballs and create the required buzz.”

The creative idea for the innovation and the overall campaign came from Vipul Thakkar and his team at Grey Worldwide. The innovation has been executed by the outdoor agency, MOMS.

Regular hoardings have also been put up as part of the campaign. The show, a clever diversion from the archetypal trivia programmes on television, is being backed by marketing efforts on TV, radio and below-the-line as well.

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