In Conversation With The Brains Behind The Ad Company That Believes In Hyperlocal Advertising
- 22 Feb 2017
- FWD Admin
- Features
Onflea.k held on 4th and 5th February 2017 was Kochi’s first ever flea market. The event was lauded for bringing together a number of great vendors and also for their great marketing tactics. Media Jockey was the official Media partner for the event and helped make the event a roaring success. While Onflea.k was their latest venture, Media Jockey was founded an year ago by Thomas Kuruvilla. We caught up with him to know the story behind the company that believes in localized advertisement.
Starting from your latest campaign, how did the association with Onflea.k happen?
One of the founders of Onflea.k, Bhavya is actually my wife’s cousin and they approached us to be the Media partner. This meant that we were responsible for all their publicity campaigns including the hoardings, transit vehicles etc. They started off the venture without a lot of capital and were skeptical about spending on advertising. Through the effort of the entire Onflea.k team, the event became a huge success. An event that had an expected turn out of 400-500 people, ended up having a footfall of around 4000 people in just two days.
Did you plan on becoming an advertising guy? How did this happen?
I did Mechanical Engineering and then MBA from IIM Kozhikode and joined my father in his business. I hail from Allepey and my father owns a company called Allepey Parcel Service or APS. We entered into the field of education and started APS School of Logistics that was related to our main business. At APS School of Logistics, we teach multiple courses related to the logistics field. While running APS School of Logistics, I met a guy from an advertising company for creating campaigns for the school. This is the time when I got interested in advertising and learnt about various campaigns and more and finally ended up creating Media Jockey L.L.P.
How and why did you decide on the name ‘Media Jockey’?
It took me nearly 3 months to come up with the name Media Jockey. So there are things like Radio Jockey, Video Jockey and then we landed on Media Jockey. Media can be anything ranging from outdoor, indoor, transit, digital, and mobile and when we started I didn’t have anything specific in mind. Media was essentially an umbrella term for all the work that we do.
What are the main tools used by the company for promotions?
Initially when we started off, we didn’t know exactly what we wanted to do. All we knew was about hoardings and outdoor advertisements. Somehow we started doing campaigns for some hospitals, education institutions, micro finances companies and such. Some of the works that we did became hits and things fell on track. In the time we have beenin existence we have become all Kerala branding specialists.There are many companies that stick to the tried and proven techniques when it comes to advertising. But there are many tools that can provide great results and are cost effective. A technique that we swear by is Hyperlocal Advertising.
What exactly do you mean by ‘Hyperlocal advertising’?
There are many bakers, accessory shops, textile shops and other small scale businesses who don’t think that they have advertisable products. They believe that by coming up with superior quality product, they will sell on their own. But until people realize that something like this exists inside a home or a shop, they won’t come to purchase it. We try to give ventures like this visibility through advertising. Once the potential customer enters the store and tries out a good quality product, they will keep coming back for more. There are many such ventures in Kerala and we are trying to educate them about the power advertising through these localized campaigns.
On a lighter note, Is it true that you are an aspiring actor as well?
(Laughs), I am not an aspiring actor as such. But I have gotten chance to act in a few movies and ads and have taken up the offers that came my way. When I was younger, I had acted in the movie Lal Salam and recently has acted in a few other advertisements such as for Vasundhara Sarovar Premier in Vayalar.
Words By: Fathima Abdul Kader
Photos From: Various Sources
