By Rizwan Sajan, Founder and Chairman, Danube Group

There is a saying in business: "Put your money where your mouth is." In marketing, I say put your money where consumers' eyes are, and more importantly, where they look. Outdoor marketing can be a disaster if billboards, hoardings or branding are not in the right place.

Marketing Is Art and Science

Plenty of studies on consumer behaviour guide manufacturers and agencies when launching fast-moving consumer goods (FMCGs). Applied properly, marketing works wonders in consumers' minds, but the key is to spend wisely and place your branding where it gets the most eyeballs.

When Oppo launched its phones, it promoted them as "The Selfie Expert", appealing to millennials and Gen Z, who love selfies, and won market share in South Asia and elsewhere at its rivals' expense. Apple now focuses mostly on photo and video quality when promoting new iPhones, because so many young people use smartphones to create videos for social media.

Why Outdoor Still Works

Over the last decade, advertisers have shifted their focus to digital and social media, which works very well for consumer products and services. Companies have cut print and outdoor budgets in favour of Google, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram, and part of our budget goes to digital too.

Our experience, however, shows that outdoor and print media still generate leads and convert them into sales. We have seen this with Danube Properties, and I believe outdoor will remain a powerful format.

There are many outdoor options, from rooftops and building wraps to bus and taxi wraps, highway billboards and lamppost banners. We had other ideas: we chose bus stands.

The Power of RTA Bus Stands

We have been fortunate with our outdoor strategy. Early on, we struck a deal with Dubai's Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) for a concession to use all bus stops for advertising our products and services, whether Danube Properties, Danube Home, Milano or Casa Milano.

It has worked well. Every time we launch a new project or product, we promote it on RTA bus stands, which are seen not only by commuters waiting there but by every passenger in every passing vehicle. The response is tremendous: as soon as we advertise a launch on the bus stands, the job is almost done, and people call our sales team asking when the project will go on sale.

Just last month we opened Opalz for sale, and it was snapped up the same day by buyers, brokers and investors. All 575 apartments sold on launch day, so by the time we held our evening press conference it was already sold out, and we had to change the press release from a launch announcement to "sold out on launch day".

That success was driven mostly by outdoor marketing; we did little advertising elsewhere, and the campaign had been running on RTA bus stands for a few weeks.

Opalz is not an exception. We launched and sold out four projects between October 2021 and September 2022. The last three sold out within days of launch, and most buyers came after seeing them on RTA bus stands, which have worked better for us than any other medium.

The Role of Print

Print media also helped build the Danube brand over many years, especially from 2003–04, when we began investing heavily in it. Our presence in daily newspapers and major magazines made us famous and repositioned our brand in people's hearts and minds; before then we were seen simply as a building materials supplier, a B2B brand.

From 2013, Danube Home emerged as a B2C brand, followed by Danube Properties as a developer, and both needed to appeal to consumers. Overall, we have found greater value in outdoor and print media, though print is, unfortunately, declining fast.

Source: Campaign Middle East