'Toot toot' says Airtel again: Plasters new look across Airtel Bangalore Rajdhani

Airtel has taken its new logo and identity on ground with a total train branding campaign on the Rajdhani that reaches out to more than 85,000 people every day across 11 states.

Airtel is painting the town red, quite literally. The telecom brand has taken its new logo out and about by branding the Delhi-Bengaluru Rajdhani with its look.

The branded train will be seen chugging across the country for two quarters.

The new campaign, with the new Airtel logo, is printed on a high quality vinyl and pasted on the external body of the train, making it a moving billboard with 17 coaches and 25,000 sq. feet of media space.

"Besides this, internally, 400 panels, 200 table tops, 400 brochure holders, door posters, brand colour carpeting, branded passenger service team, upgrade, cleaning and maintenance are all attributed to Airtel. Apart from this, the audio announcements are also branded and play the new jingle. Internal media will engage about 1,500 passengers for long travel hours every one way trip," informs Sandeep Chawla, director, Peacock Media.

Airtel Bangalore Rajdhani will reach out to people across 11 states, starting from Delhi and extending through Central and South India. Since this rake will be shuffled across three Rajdhani train routes (Delhi-Bangalore, Delhi-Chennai and Delhi-Trivandrum and return from all three routes), it will capture 85,000 eyeballs everyday on stoppage platforms, while being visible to a very large audience across its movement areas. The train supposedly covers 60 per cent of Airtel's target market according to its circles.

A recent Nielsen research has reported 57 per cent unaided recall from platform audience for branded Rajdhani trains, making it a highly effective and impactful medium.

Industry estimates are that only external branding of a train's façade costs around Rs 1.2 crore for a period of six months, while the total branding, including audio inside the train, ad panels, staff branding and activations, could cost about Rs 1.5 crore for the same period.

Peacock Media, which has partnered with Indian Railways for upgrade, cleaning and maintenance of passenger services on Rajdhani and Shatabdi trains under a PPP agreement, executed this campaign over a period of 10-12 days.

Earlier, Peacock Media had branded Rajdhani trains for Max New York Life Insurance, Kerala Tourism, National Stock Exchange, BSNL and a Shatabdi train with Omaxe, a real estate company.

While the company believes that total train branding is still at its nascent stage in the country and has to go a long way to establish its place in the OOH industry, it has in fact proven its presence and clutter-breaker value.

Earlier, Airtel Rajdhani won a bronze in SOAA (Singapore Outdoor Advertising Awards) 2008 and PrintWeek India's Best Innovative Printer awards in 2009. HUL's brands, Domex and Lifebuoy, have used the trains for branded washbasins and branded toilets and cleaning services, and have won a bronze in Media Abbys 2010 and a gold in Emvies 2010 in the Ambient Media category.