Surina Sayal
OOH

IDFC relies solely on outdoor to promote mutual funds

The brand's outdoor agency MOMS charts out an extensive outdoor campaign for the mutual fund

March and April being important months for financial brands to advertise their investment options, IDFC (Infrastructure Development Finance Company) has taken the outdoor advertising route. Interestingly, it has only used outdoors to advertise its mutual funds.

The multi-creative campaign for IDFC Tax Advantage (ELSS) Fund ran across major metros and cities for a three month period. A recent creative shows two sketched faces of a man, one where he is smiling and the other with a broader smile. The copy reads, 'Saves tax on investment. Tax free on redemption. Simple and Smart'. A follow up on the same creative now shows three faces of the same person, the third face with an even bigger smile. This time the copy reads, 'Saves tax on investment. Tax free on redemption. 2 dividends in 1 year. Simple and Smart and Rewarding'.

IDFC relies solely on outdoor to promote mutual funds
IDFC relies solely on outdoor to promote mutual funds
Creative agency TBWA India worked on the creatives for this campaign, while the outdoor campaign was executed by Madison's OOH arm, MOMS Outdoor Media Solutions, and ran across Mumbai, Delhi and NCR, Bengaluru, Kolkata, Chennai, Pune, Ahmedabad, Kanpur, Baroda, Hyderabad, Kochi, Ludhiana, Indore, Jaipur, Lucknow and Chandigarh.

Also, one key location site was taken up in cities such as Coimbatore, Rajkot, Surat, Patna, Goa, Nagpur, Varanasi, Moradabad, Nasik, Amritsar, Dehradun, Jalandhar, Guwahati, Raipur, Bhopal, Jodhpur, Jamshedpur, Agra and Vishakhapatnam. The total media spend for this campaign was to the tune of Rs 2.5 crore.

Anirban Ghosh, business director, MOMS Outdoor Media Solutions, tells afaqs!, "It was not an easy task to reach out to all the major metros/cities and towns to enhance the awareness of the mutual fund as it had to be response-based within a limited period of time, as the scheme was ending today, that is, March 31."

IDFC relies solely on outdoor to promote mutual funds
He adds that the target group was SEC A, B in the age group of 25+ years, all adults with income potentiality. Thus, the mapping and visibility factors of each and every location on the basis of main roads, major traffic junctions and other high footfall areas was done before finalising the sites to get better response.

Besides hoardings, bus branding was also done in Indore. Station branding was executed at Mumbai's Bandra railway station, which is one of the major junctions for both Western Railways and Central Railways; the Star Bazaar mall in Mumbai also had front façade branding. In Chennai, only bus shelters were used due to lack of other outdoor formats.

Ghosh believes that IDFC chose to use only outdoor as "outdoor as a medium gives larger than life impact, constant visibility with zero wastage of money spent, unlike other traditional media. It also caters across all target groups as now-a-days, average time spent outside the home has increased tremendously. Outdoor is the future of advertising and many brands have come forward and used this medium with more than expected results".

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