Outdoor advertising player hits the roof!

(Marketingmagazine.com.my) -Nobody would have thought of running an ad on the roof of the Jalan Duta toll plaza, but when Andaman Media proposed the idea to client Shell Malaysia, the concept took flight.

And if one saw The Star’s story about the recent CNY rush back home (picture), the traffic at Jalan Duta toll hit the front cover and the ad platform went national!

Shell obviously saw the innovation in this roof-top idea and became the pioneering marketer to use this new advertising option, with more in the offing.

We spoke to S. Sooria, CEO of Andaman Media about the ‘behind the scenes’ story and he shared that more similar ads will be appearing in the coming months, starting with the toll plazas at Batu Tiga, Damansara and Subang.

He continues, “The Toll Plaza Rooftop Advertisement is the first and one-of-a-kind for outdoor advertising in Malaysia, standing out from conventional outdoor platforms like unipoles, gantries or arch billboards.”

“The entire process was split between two teams who worked from 10pm to 5am daily to complete the installation in 16 days. Stickers were hand-placed one at a time on each tile. There were many challenges, like working at night, rainy weather, etc.”

According to Sooria, there are about 500,000 vehicles travelling in and out of Kuala Lumpur using the Duta Toll Plaza daily, with an exponential increase during holidays.

Car drivers when interviewed were curious about the ad placement, saying it was impactful from a distance during the approach to the toll plaza.

On a separate note Jeff Cheah, President of the Outdoor Advertising Association of Malaysia (OAAM), shared last year that the estimated outdoor industry advertising spend size is around RM850million, while the whole industry is estimated to be worth more than RM1.2billion.

Media agencies involved in this campaign are MediaCompete Malaysia and Kinetic Worldwide Sdn Bhd.