Outdoor out of the door?

I’ve been working on an outdoor feature for the October issue and I’ve noticed that outdoor often seems to get sidelined during the marketing campaign planning process.

Sometimes it might stand a chance of getting a position in the marketing schedule, but only at the last minute, when the campaign planning process is at its tail end and the marketer discovers he has money left over for an outdoor execution.

Keeping in mind the fact that securing outdoor can be a very lengthy process in Singapore, what with all the regulation and approval, why are marketers still treating outdoor as an afterthought? If they want to do outdoor execution, they should, as with every media, allocate proper lead time to ensure their money’s being spent on getting the most out of it.

After all, when the medium’s brought in so late, with no proper planning or dedicated creatives for the outdoor execution, what kind of result is the marketer expecting anyway? At that point, all the media planer can do to ensure the campaign rolls out on time is to check availability. And when the campaign does roll out, it really doesn’t add any value to the client’s marketing mix. There are of course examples where outdoor’s been given the time and planning needed, and when that happens, it achieves its aim for securing attention and engaging with consumers, and that’s pretty darn good. And that’s not because the campaign was special in any way, it’s simply because it was thought-through more clearly and given more time to develop. So I say marketers should think about making better and smarter use of their time and marketing budgets, otherwise they should just keep whatever’s leftover.