design, concept, copy, so all the creative is done in-house right
through printing and production to installation including post
installation maintenance. The world doesn’t stop that you’ve just
installed, our bus will go through the hustle and bustle, wear and
tear but it is a guarantee and a peace of mind to our clients that
if anything happens to the bus your ad will be replaced for free.
Did you conduct any consumer research
or what informed this kind of idea from a
consumer perspective?
When starting a new venture, it’s important to do research with
all stakeholders. One of the key things we did when starting
TRIA was to partner with Ipsos who helped gather insights
on how receptive the market was. Our target respondents were
commuters, pedestrians and motorists. Ipsos administered
questionnaires to these audiences which gave insights on what
they felt about transit media, what they felt had been lacking,
what they thought needed to be done. One interesting thing is
that they associated OH with those things of “Mganga”- ads. The
research was very important, and we shared with top clients and
media agencies.
So, the products were informed by the needs
of the market?
Yes! Remember if they say they don’t like this or it’s not informative
or they find that it’s on their face then we cannot succeed. The most
important insight we got was if there is anytime you can talk to us
44 MAL31/19 ISSUE
- consumers this is the time, when we are transiting. At TRIA
we fully run the bus. We go to the next level - the human touch.
We put brand representatives inside buses to have one on one
conversations and sampling opportunities with the consumers
and even run mini competitions. The consumers who went and
posted selfies on the facebook page for Fresh for instance were
being given free merchandise like Caps, T-Shirts if they went
over and above in their brand interactions and tagged friends.
We had beautiful interactions. We are always keen to innovate,
and tailor make products depending on our client’s needs.
Describe mall advertisement, how do you
go about it, let’s say a consumer is walking
into the mall, what is the first contact?
The simplest and most obvious one is the entrance where they
do the checking in and you proceed to take your ticket, we are
doing advertisement on the parking barriers. We have built our
structures around the infrastructure of the mall so it blends
in, it looks like its natural so if you see the parking barriers,
it feels natural when you see the ads, if you look at the TRM
mall currently there’s an advertisement there we are running for
noodles, it’s been built into the mall as part of that, what we
are calling the entrance art way. It’s literally passive subliminal
messages that when they are walking on the stairs, when they
are going into the shops, something as simple and innovative as
branding food court pillars, if its entertainment brands we have
got pillars near the cinema.