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Outdoor advertising is the
oldest form of advertising.
Traders in ancient Greece and Rome were the first to use
signs in advertising . Traders in those days used signs outside their
buildings and along the routes as a means of mass communication.
Today's outdoor advertising is a refinement of the ancient method of
delivering a message to a large group of people.
Billboards are the most accessible and obvious medium of
information for vehicle drivers and passengers. Billboards can be equipped
with external or internal illumination, thereby enabling continuity
of exposure. An advertisement placed on an illuminated billboard is
always doing its jobday and night, on weekdays, on weekends
and holidays. The image is mainly produced by large layout printing
on vinyl sheets on paper posters and PVC (Polyvinyl
Chloride) applications.
This article takes a look at the outdoor advertising
strategies adopted by different jewelers located in Tirunelveli in Tamil Nadu.
The billboards located within half a kilometer range on
the Kanyakumari-Chennai National Highway (NH47) at the entrance
to Tirunelveli town have been studied in this article. The beauty of
these billboards is that all of them are distinctly different and cater
to differing tastes and needs of consumers and also to
different target segments. As extreme product differentiation cannot
be does not exist in the case of jewelry, the jewelers cannot resort
to comparative advertising. Hence, the jewelers in Tirunelveli relied
on innovative out-of-home billboard advertising to gai an edge over
the competitors. Also, the fact that each billboard advertisement
was different from the other ensured that advertisement did not wear
out and the customers' interest in the advertisement was sustained. |
