Road Blocked!!

Pegasus, Turkey’s youngest airline company recognises that when customers want to buy a ticket, they often search online for available dates and prices. Aware of the important role internet plays in the marketing mix, Pegasus turned to MSN Turkey to announce the launch of its new flight routes and drive consumers to its Web site. It created a road block for other brands on MSN. It bought all the advertising space on MSN for that period of time.

Road Block Advertising is a term coined for an advertising strategy where the concerned company buys up all the available slots on a particular kind of media for a particular amount of time.
It is the practice of buying all or a major portion of advertising space on a media or communication channel, leaving very less or no opportunity for other brands to display their  products. This is a good strategy in the sense that it registers the brand in the consumers’ mind.

Unilever India employed a road-block on the Star & Zee Networks for an entire day – all the ads on these channels were for brands from the Unilever stable. According to some reports, this was seen as a ‘perplexing move’ as there was no ‘new news’ or re-launch that was linked to these roadblocks. The last time such a road block happened was for Vodafone India’s name change from Hutch.

Consumers are completely aware of all the brands in the Unilever stable. Almost every one of them is a household name. But seeing every brand time and again and only these brands, each signed off with the company signature gives it a larger than life image. It also conveys a leadership stance to the consumers and the competitors alike. Advertisers like Unilever don’t take such steps unless they are sure of the returns.

Although it is a good strategy to announce something with a bang, unless meticulous planning and analysis precede it, the benefits remain in the dark and may actually take the companies’ image deeper into the woods.

The untrained may be tempted to believe that this is a better strategy than the periodic advertisements that have been done by the corporate traditionally. “Why not?” they would say, “it gives a sharp focus on the product(s) of the brand... registers the brand strongly into the customers’ mind... delivers a stronger message”.

But, there are quite a few very crucial issues you need to remember while thinking of a road block campaign. It is very expensive. You can see it in a way that you have two choices, either you choose daily or periodic advertising lasting for more time or you put the same amount of funds into a road block and run the campaign for a shorter amount of time. There is always a chance of misjudging the time frame of the campaign. A small error can hurt the brand badly. Do any of us want to see the same thing again and again? Imagine Unilever advertisement running for 3 days on the same channel all day long. Everybody would wonder what has gotten into the head of Unilever Management. Time frame is thus a very important factor in such a strategy.

It is needless to say that the content of the campaign should be very important. It should be some kind of news, just like in the case of Volkswagen or the transition of Hutch to Vodafone. If the target audience gets confused about the whole exercise, you lose your whole advertising expense there. It’s a high risk, high gain strategy and needs impeccable analysis and planning before execution. Though its effectiveness has not been found experimentally but the response and results of the Volkswagen campaign were encouraging. This opens up one more innovative avenue for companies to climb over their competition.

Volkswagen had a very successful road block campaign in 2009. They had content, they had a proper plan, they were crystal clear on the idea or rather ideas they wanted to communicate to their prospective customers about their brand. Volkswagen India took over the Times of India newspaper; 12 of the 22 pages of Times of India had ads for Volkswagen. An entire Times of India edition blanketed with only Volkswagen, over and over again as each page was turned on by surprised readers & confused marketers. Confused & in awe only because of the gravity of the money that had been spent for the day, 11th November 2009. This was the kick start of a 40 crore campaign by Volkswagen India.

The print ads introduced and appraised readers about the various Volkswagen brands that were currently available (Passat & Jetta) & the ones that were lined up for India (Polo, Beetle, Touareg).

Brand building? A definite Yes!!

But at what cost? That is the 40 cr. question.

Kushal Lokhande

Marque

IIM Rohtak