Volkswagen's roadblock leaves its impact on print media

It was on November 11, that readers of TOI saw that ads of the German carmaker’s brands from Volkswagen Beetle to Volkswagen Jetta to Volkswagen Touareg dominated the print world, blocking out other advertisers. A kind of carpet-bombing or certainly called as the roadblock in ad circles was witnessed in Indian print media for the first time. Divya Gururaj, managing director of Mediacom, the media agency that created India’s first print roadblock said, At Google Hot Trends, Volkswagen was the most searched word on November 11, despite Cyclone Phyan dominating the airwaves that day. It worked.

Roadblock means to buy all the ad spaces in a newspaper or a television channel or a website for a day, in a way to block all other advertisers. Roadblocking is popular in the US, UK and South Africa markets, where it’s been in use since the 1970s. HUL, The country’s largest advertiser, created a roadblock in the Star Network on September 17 when only ads of its brands such as Surf, Lux, Liril and Lifebuoy played across Star channels.

Earlier it was noticed that in India, Hindustan Unilever which is the consumer product company, Nokia and mobile operator Vodafone have put roadblocks on television channels and websites before. Ravi Kiran, South Asia CEO and emerging market leader, specialist solutions, of global marketing communications agency Starcom MediaVest, warns that brands should be careful about such bigscale interventions. Be ready to welcome the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X in India soon.