Term is used when an advertiser buys up all the advertising on a channel for a given length of time like a full day (vertical roadblock), or across a band of channels at a particular time, say an hour (horizontal roadblock), thus preventing any other advertiser from being present at those times.
Vodafone-
International mobile communications group Vodafone collaborated with STAR India to launch an unprecedented 24-hour nationwide re-branding campaign on all commercial airtime across the Star India network starting Sept. 20, 2007 for mobile service Hutch Essar, which is being renamed Vodafone Essar following Vodafone's purchase of a controlling interest in Hutchison Essar, spend an upward Rs. 10 crore.
Vodafone ran TV commercials, transition bumpers and contest spots to promote the Vodafone Essar brand from 9 pm on Sept. 20, to 9 pm the following day to potentially reach 63 million viewers in five languages of Hindi, Tamil, Bengali, Marathi and English through 13 channels including Star Plus, Star One, Star Gold, Star Movies, Star World, Channel [V], Star Utsav, Star Vijay, Star News, Star Ananda, Star Majha, National Geographic Channel and History Channel to build awareness in the shortest possible time.
Vodafone’s roadblock initiative with Star brought in 90-95% brand recall and opened up a new avenue for advertisers wanting to make a splash.
Airtel way-one brand, one mall
In August, 2009, Airtel came out with a first-of-its-kind deal with RK Cineplex — a ‘branded’ mall in Hyderabad. It guaranteed exclusive advertising and naming rights to Airtel for two years. The RK Cineplex in Hyderabad’s up market Banjara Hills has been renamed “Airtel RK Cineplex”. The deal disallowed other products from any static branding in between. The complex is home to Airtel’s mobile, broadband and DTH kiosks and 18,000 sq. ft of exclusive Airtel branding that caters to 5,000-7,000 visitors a day. With Blackberry and DTH service inquiries on the rise, the mall itself functions as a retail store for the telecom giant
CADBURY
Introduced one of its commercials for Dairy Milk, “aaj pahali tarikh hai” through three-day roadblock advertising on MTV in July 2009.
HUL-
Hindustan Unilever has blocked a whole day on Star India’s entire network of channels. Brands of Unilever alone will be advertised on Thursday across Star Plus, Star One, Star Gold, Star Utsav, Star Movies, Star World, Channel V, Star Jalsha, Star Pravah and Star Vijay. Lifebuoy will lead the pack. Though roadblocks cost between 100% and 200% over regular advertising rates, the popularity of the concept has been on the rise among large advertisers.
Unilever embarked on traffic plans of its own, blocking the Star roads on the 17th, the Zee roads on the 24th and the ETV ones on the 29th. Every roadblock so far has been for a brand, these were the first ever for an advertiser, across several brands
Lintas Media Group met 240 housewives and working women across four cities, all in the age group of 15 to 44 years, the day after the Star and Zee network roadblocks. We primarily checked out whether recall levels of advertised brands were higher than normal , and whether viewers noticed anything different about their viewing experience that day. Were any extra special brand benefits understood beyond achieving higher recall?
HUL's two-day roadblock cost the company a fourth of Godrej's overall advertising expense.
On an average day, the Star Network enjoys a 24% share of total Unilever GRP’s , while the Zee Network garners another 19%. On the roadblock days, this shot up to 55% for the Star Network (ensuring, we hope, an excellent bonus for Uday Shankar and his team), and 47% for the Zee Network (joy for Joy!) . Overall average daily GRP’s for the company doubled from 860 to 1650.
79% of the women we met did not notice anything different about the day’s viewing. The ‘shock and awe’ factor was therefore limited to the media planning community, and rightly so, since that did not appear to be the objective of the exercise. Recall levels for Unilever brands were however an outstanding 40 to 50% of all brands recalled. (In a day after recall exercise, not-advertised brands will also inevitably enjoy a baseline recall level). Average recall levels per HUL brand ranged from 7 to 16% of the women we met. Perhaps there were specific brand objectives that were met as well.
IDEA-
On June 30th last year, Idea Cellular made a quiet attempt to win over its customers without upsetting the traffic cops. A horizontal roadblock from 9 to 10 pm across 30 national news, movie, music and entertainment channels announced the start of “what an idea, Sirji!” Prior to that, newspaper ads and teaser tv commercials promoted the new campaign like a movie release. Spontaneous awareness scores within a week of the campaign breaking with the roadblock were the highest ever for the brand.
Volkswagen ‘Road-block’ for India-
The date was 11th November 2009, when I started reading the Time of India, front full page ad by Volkswagen, 12 pages out of the 22 had ads for Volkswagen. Then over and over again as each page was turned on there was only Volkswagen in the newspaper that day. I was confused & in awe only because of the gravity of the money that had been spent by Volkswagen for the day, 11th November 2009. This was a 40 crore campaign by Volkswagen India, who have also come up with a Television ad recently, showcasing their brands.
The media agency that has created the roadblock is MediaCom.
The print ads were showing the fact that the company is trying hard to indianize itself, with the front page ad showing the pronunciation of the word ‘Volkswagen’ in different Indian regional language. The print ads also introduced and appraised readers to the various Volkswagen brands that are currently available (Passat & Jetta) & the ones that are lined up for India (Polo, Beetle, Touareg). The media spend will include print, TV, outdoor & the internet. Expect the internet & outdoor impact to be similarly innovative as their creative agency is DDB Mudra Group.
The 40 cr. question?
is whether this will boost their numbers, which were poor in Oct’ 2009. They operate in the very niche top end of the business, which accounts for less than 2% of overall car industry sales. India is touted as one of the growth markets for Volkswagen and they are not that far behind Mercedes or BMW in their numbers. April to October sales show that they are only around 700-900 cars behind.
My Name is Khan-
Like the big advertiser HUL, Cadbury India, Vodafone, Airtel etc, “My Name is Khan” is the first movie to implement roadblock strategy for promotion of the movie. The roadblock, which will be the film’s three-minute trailer, will be on air on all Star India channels. "This kind of roadblock has never been done before for a film. About eleven Star India channels including Star Plus, Star One, Star Gold, Channel V and Star Pravah, will telecast a three minute trailer of the film. Movie is produced and directed by Karan Jauhar is set to release in Feb, 2010.Fox Star Studios ( a production and distribution company, is a joint venture between Twentieth Century Fox and STAR) has acquired the worldwide distribution rights for this film for around Rs 80-90 crore for a 15 year period. It covers all rights except music, which has been bagged by Sony Music.
ITC-
Vertical roadblocks can take the form of ‘day associations’ to work wonders for a brand and its essence, thus delivering impact not just by hogging up all the inventory, but also by fitting in with what the brand stands for. Bingo worked with MTV to sponsor April fool’s Day this year, turning it into a Bakra Din, so much in character with the brand’s irreverent whacky persona. All commercial breaks were exclusive to Bingo of course, but beyond that the content itself was recreated to showcase the brand and its ‘no confusion, great combination’ message. Fake cricketers, spoofing VJ’s, all paid ‘tribute’ to the brand as ‘foolishly’ as possible!
Nokia-
If anyone knows how to make a vertical roadblock work, we have to say it’s MTV. They associated with Nokia on Independence Day last year, promoting the launch of the new N96 through Freedom of Expression. Not a single normal commercial was used. Instead the entire day was peppered with celebrity vignettes branded by the N96, teasers showcasing the features of the product, interactive scrollers offering special mobile downloads of the national anthem, and so on.
now, it is becoming the trend in advertisement to adopt roadblock strategy for faster reach and better effectiveness. media person are also contacting big advertiser for such activities. big advertiser are adopting this way for faster reach, like Vodafone did it successfully and spread word of mouth that hutch is vodafone now. i hope that we will see such campaign frequently in future.
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