MAM
Percept and Aegis bring OOH agency Posterscope to India
MUMBAI: Out-of-Home (OOH) advertising has arrived in India. While a handful of ad agencies already have their OOH divisions in place, like O&M’s Ogilvy Activation, Mudra’s Primesite, Lintas’ Aaren Initiative and Madison Communications’ MOMS, a new player has stepped in this space. The Percept Group today announced the launch of Posterscope India through a joint venture with UK’s Aegis Group Plc, which is the world’s leading OOH planning and buying company Posterscope Worldwide.
Posterscope India will be headed by Jignesh Sharma in the capacity of CEO. Posterscope is part of GBP 7.1 billion Aegis Group Plc – one of the world’s leading marketing services company.
This comes in the wake of the Percept Group’s plans to consolidate its position in the fast growing Rs 13 billion OOH market. Percept’s OOH clientele include Airtel, FedEx, SaharaOne, Phillips, Pantaloon, Kingsbury among others. Percept was also one of the first agencies to offer 360-degree OOH communications including urban, rural and retail media.
Posterscope India currently has offices in 16 locations comprising 120 people and has plans of strengthening their manpower to 375 across 20 full service locations this year.
The company also has plans of launching its proprietary tools and practices to meet the advertisers needs. ‘Orbit’ – proprietary tool ‘for 360 degree service delivery, ‘Prism’ – industry leading tools for improving effectiveness and efficiency of OOH campaigns, ‘Horizons’ – dedicated research for better accountability and ‘Hyperspace’ – to explore and create new OOH channels and to create new media options. Percept will also be setting up the first ever state-of-the-art creative studio by an OOH player in India.
Announcing the launch of Posterscope India, Percept Group vice chairman Harindra Singh said, “Posterscope is a global leader in OOH communications with its creative approach to OOH backed by technological innovations and proprietary research tools. Coupled with our market insights, nationwide penetration and a strong track record in this market, we see Posterscope India as the beginning of a great partnership that will offer unparalleled value to clients and a logical extension of our existing relationship with Aegis in Carat.”
Posterscope (Asia Pacific) CEO Koh Tai Hong, on the other hand said, “India presents a vast and common, yet diverse, market that offers a dream of opportunity for OOH business. While it has leapfrogged in various aspects of technology adoption across categories, OOH business is still at an evolving stage and the global expertise of Posterscope in providing state-of-the-art and innovative solutions will surely provide a communication experience never before seen in the Indian market.”
The business model of Posterscope India will be based on the four pillars of Posterscope globally – Orbit, Prism, Horizons and Hyperspace. The global business practices of Posterscope will be adapted for the specific needs in India to cover:
Urban: conventional media like billboards, bus shelters, mobile media; new media like advertising in malls, multiplexes, inflatabies,
Rural: Billboards, bus and wall painting and comprehensive rural communications Melas, Haats, HTH / DTD, floats, van operations,
Retail: POP, merchandising, complete shop / space makeover, signages at vantage points.
Posterscope UK/Worldwide strategic development director Terry Alexander said, “We had a market share of 18 per cent in 1991 and since then it has grown to 40+ per cent. We achieved billings of 365 million pound sterling by the end of 2004 and we understand the full complexity of the total media buying, planning and implementation as far as out-of-home is concerned.” Posterscope Worldwide works with agencies like Mediacom, ZenithOptimedia, Carat, MPG, OMD, Total Media and Walker Media to name a few.
Alexander also said that the Asia Pacific region was one, which had the highest amount of spends on outdoor – 11 per cent as compared to Western Europe (9 per cent), Latin America (7 per cent), Eastern Europe (6 per cent) and North America (4 per cent).
Sharma, on the other hand said, “Over the last year and a half we have built a knowledge and network capability covering the key commercial areas across India. With over 15 cities already covered we are uniquely positioned to offer OOH solutions that will enable clients achieve micro marketing goals like never before – uniquely, effectively and efficiently.”
The Indian OOH market is currently growing at 15-18 per cent (compared to 9-10 per cent growth in overall media market). The OOH spend as a part of the overall media spend of major buyers has grown to 40 per cent compared to 10 per cent five years back.
One of the key reasons spurring the growth of OOH media is the growth of innovative/new media. Innovative/new media share is now 20 per cent of OOH and is growing at 100 per cent annually. Another significant development is the shift in the market towards organised sector whereby currently 55 per cent market now ties with the organised sector compared to 20 per cent five years back. In the next five years it is expected that 95 per cent will shift to the organised sector.
The major customer segments that have spurred the growth are telecom (25-30 per cent share), films (20 per cent share), finance – banking, insurance, mutual funds, etc (7-8 per cent share), television channels (8-10 per cent share) and consumer durables, consumer electronics and white goods (8 per cent share).
Another significant development is the increased shift to non-metros. Currently almost 90 per cent of spending goes to metros. In the next five years, non-metro share of outdoor spending is expected to go up to 40 per cent.
The biggest conversations in entertainment usually revolve around scale. Bigger launches, bigger stars, bigger production budgets, bigger platform strategies. Yet one of the clearest signs of market maturity shows up somewhere much smaller. It’s in the words they use every day: title cards, app menus, summaries, promotional descriptions, and push notifications. If all content sounds the same, the line blurs before they even click play.
It’s becoming more apparent as global platforms compete against regional ones in a world that’s increasingly multilingual and mobile-first. A team can spend hours crafting a content slate, but then rush to get the announcing copy out to the world. In a frenzied world like that, a grammar checker can be a lifeline in weeding out bad writing, awkward structure, and unwanted mistakes in content that’s going to be displayed on platforms, banners, and notifications.
The era of generic entertainment language
A strange sameness has crept into digital entertainment. Too many shows are described with the same flat phrases. Too many thrillers are called gripping. Too many dramas are labeled emotional. Too many reality formats are described as exciting journeys. The words may be completely right, yet they don’t stick in the reader’s mind.
It’s crucial to keep in mind that individuals take in material at an unprecedented rate. They are not meeting content through a critic’s essay or a full trailer every time. Often they meet it through a few words on a screen. Those words are doing more work than many teams admit.
Words have become a part of the user experience in a cluttered streaming world. They set the mood, build anticipation, help people make choices, and show them if something fits with their way of thinking, their style, or their daily life. If the writing isn’t very good, the platform itself can start to feel like it’s not very good.
That is a bigger issue than simple copy fatigue. If every title is presented in the same voice, brands begin to blur together. The audience may still watch, but the platform stops building a distinct editorial identity.
Why platform voice now matters more than ever
Entertainment companies used to rely heavily on channel identity, release schedules, or star power to define themselves. Those signals still matter, though the digital environment has changed how users experience them. A streaming app is a living product. People move through it quickly, often alone, often late at night, often half-distracted. They encounter dozens of pieces of micro-copy in a single session.
That makes voice consistency more important than many product teams expect.
A platform that sounds sharp, clear, and culturally aware feels more premium. A platform that sounds overproduced, vague, or repetitive feels less alive. This is especially true in markets where viewers move easily between local television, global streaming, short video, sports, and social media. The standard for attention is high, and bland wording rarely survives first contact.
The strongest media brands tend to understand a subtle truth. Good copy is not only about selling a show. It is about shaping the personality of the service itself.
This happens through many small choices:
● how drama is framed versus comedy
● whether youth content sounds natural or forced
● whether mobile notifications feel urgent or annoying
● whether homepage descriptions carry rhythm or read like database entries
● whether language changes intelligently across regions and devices
These details may seem minor in isolation. Together, they define how a platform feels.
The cost of speed in modern content operations
One reason entertainment language becomes repetitive is simple pressure. Media teams are under constant demand to move faster. There’s more content to create, more spaces to fill, more regions to cater to, and more forms to accommodate. What once might have been a single piece of copy can become a complex network of related content within app stores, smart TV interfaces, social media, push notifications, email marketing, and ad-supported spaces.
Under that pressure, safe language becomes tempting.
Safe language is quick. It passes review. It offends no one. It can be reused across genres with minor edits. The problem is that safe language is often forgettable. It tells viewers what category a title belongs to, yet does little to communicate why anyone should care.
This is where media teams face a real strategic choice. They can keep treating copy as a production step, or they can see it as part of audience experience design.
That second view changes the workflow. It encourages stronger editorial direction, clearer brand vocabulary, and tighter review processes. It also creates room for experimentation. A show summary does not need to sound like a press release. A release alert does not need to sound like a machine-generated reminder. There is space for specificity, texture, and voice, even within short-form platform language.
Multilingual markets reveal the problem faster
This is especially the case in a market where there are a variety of languages and a complex identity for the audiences. A text that reads well in one language can sound clunky in another. A translation can preserve meaning while losing energy. A tagline built for desktop can fall apart on mobile. A youth-oriented campaign may become overly formal when localized too literally.
That is why the best media writing in multilingual environments depends on adaptation rather than simple conversion.
The goal is to preserve intent, tone, and audience fit across versions. That takes editorial judgment. It requires people who understand how entertainment language behaves in real life, not only in style guides.
Some of the most common problems appear in places audiences notice immediately:
● subtitles that are grammatically fine but emotionally flat
● app descriptions that sound translated rather than written
● genre labels that fail to reflect local viewing habits
● promotions that use the same vocabulary across very different titles
When these weaknesses accumulate, viewers may not consciously analyze them. They simply sense that the platform feels distant or mechanical.
The hidden power of better wording
There is a reason sharp writing continues to matter even in a highly visual medium. Before viewers commit time, language gives them a frame. It tells them what kind of experience awaits. It reduces uncertainty. It can even create an appetite.
This is valuable, and it is valuable in a somewhat nebulous way. Well-crafted text can increase click-through rates, reduce bounce rates, increase trust, and facilitate the spread of content across discovery surfaces. It can also be useful for the spread of advertisements by making the overall platform feel more refined.
But the real value is in the culture. Entertainment organizations want to be modern. They want to know how people feel. They want to be able to state that they live in the same place. That is very hard to achieve through templates alone.
The platforms most likely to stand out over time may be the ones that invest more seriously in their editorial layer. They will care about sentence flow in metadata, tone in alerts, nuance in translation, and clarity in every line that appears before the content starts. They will treat words as part of content packaging, product design, and brand building all at once.
In a business obsessed with scale, this may seem like a small idea. It is not. When streaming platforms start sounding the same, language becomes one of the few tools left to restore distinction. A sharper voice can make a familiar interface feel more thoughtful. A better sentence can rescue a title from invisibility. A more human line can remind the audience that somebody on the other side still understands how people actually choose what to watch.
