MUMBAI: The 6th edition of the Outdoor Advertising Convention will be held on 11 and 12 June in Mumbai.
The convention, conceptualised on the theme "from Fragmentation to fraternity???", will focus on the imperative need for everyone in the industry to get together and work in concert for the growth and development of the industry.
Says project head, OAC & publisher VJ Media works Vasant Jante, "The fragmented nature of the OOH business in India has been one of the biggest impediments to the development of the medium as a whole. The ‘each person for himself‘ approach has so far meant that the medium has never been able to achieve its warranted status as an industry, define and implement industry-wide standards or present one representative face to address operational and regulatory issues."
"But of late, efforts from the IOAA (Indian Outdoor Advertisers Association) and the DOAA (Delhi Outdoor Advertisers Association), for example, have demonstrated that together the industry can achieve much more than when pursuing individualistic agendas. OAC 2010 will discuss, again, the advantages of a united industry, define the issues that can only be resolved with a cohesive approach and develop a concerted agenda for the future," he adds.
The two-day event will culminate with the Outdoor Advertising Awards. One significant change in the awards module has been the decision to drop the Poster category.
"The creative part of the awards, the other being the media awards, follows a classification by product and service categories rather than by OOH format or application," says Jante.
"Posters are the only format-defined category and even as an OOH format, posters hardly have a presence in the Indian OOH landscape and hence, the decision to drop the category as a whole. If posters as a format were to evolve and become a significant part of the OOH portfolio, then the creative efforts in that format can be accommodated within the existing product/service categorisation," Jante adds.
The creative as well as the media categories at OAA will have their own jury that will be finalised and announced soon.
