MILESTONE – Impossible turned possible by Peacock Media

What next? This is the query, which keeps media industry on its toes and they all are looking for the new media options. The latest addition to everincreasing list of advertising medium is the trains of Indian Railways. In a yet another path breaking initiative, the Northern Railway, on the concept of “Public-Private Partnership” has come forward to provide passengers a never before travelling experience and earn for themselves great revenues by providing advertising opportunities to corporates in and around the passenger train coaches. Mumbai based Peacock Media takes the lead and enable first such train to carry a moving message all around.

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 Indian Railways on its way to open out-of-home advertising market, could earn more than Rs 2000 crore each year over the next 2-3 years by allowing advertising on nearly 300 major trains, including Rajdhanis and Shatabdis. All regular inter-city mail and express trains might have colour advertisements on the exterior of coaches. Moreover, they also have plans for providing onboard infotainment channels on trains specifically like the Shatabdi Express. For this plasma TV screens may be put up in the compartments where advertisements would be allowed. Bulk advertising rights for set of trains in different rail zones may be granted to individual firms or consortiums. And to start off this journey, Peacock Media Ltd (PML) with Bharti Airtel Ltd and CTS Management (Eureka Forbes) have become the pioneers to lead.

The first train – Rajdhani Express (Hazrat Nizamuddin-Bangalore), which was all decked up with Airtel branding went on its maiden voyage from Nizamuddin station in New Delhi on April 8, 08 and the team behind it looked very happy, “It took around 5-6 hrs to print the entire vinyl for the train on our two HPScitex Turbojets UV machines and around 10 days to prepare the surface and apply the vinyl. We have printed around 30,000 sq ft of vinyl for all the coaches of this train,” shared Sandeep Chawla, chairman and MD, PML.

 It was Airtel branding all over and inside the coaches, with an international feel. To maintain the quality, ISO 9001:2000 certified Peacock Media has taken extra care while choosing materials and media for the same, “Once the branding is done, it should safely last for desired period of time. We have used high-quality UV inks, which are crack resistant on cast vinyl, RDSO approved, and on top it is overlaminated. We have chosen it all as per harsh Indian weather conditions,” said Kuljit Suri, joint MD, PML. “Quality control is our prime concern and we had done several rigorous testing of materials. All our material specifications are as per RDSO parameters,” Kuljit added. The passengers of these trains will be provided with upgraded on board services like high quality flooring, neat and clean toilets, soap dispensers, tissue paper dispensers, deodorant based toilet flushing system and professionally trained on board housekeeping staff to maintain these services throughout the journey.

For such a big project, PML has aptly chosen Hewlett Packard (HP) as their print partner. Paresh Shetty, Graphics and Imaging business manager, HP, while expressing his delight on seeing the branded train, said, “HP is looking to encourage its print partners to innovate creative options and enhance their graphic producing capabilities. Inside the coaches more than 400 branded posters printed on HP designjet 5500 are installed with aluminium frames. This initiative has given a new medium in out-of-home to advertisers to communicate with the consumers. Vinyl wrap on trains will give a good competition to the existing media options like billboards and bus-q-shelters.”

With the implementation of such “PPP” (Public-Private Partnersship) models, Indian Railways will not only save the cost of providing and maintaining such upgraded services, but also will earn goodwill of the passengers along with a healthy revenue in the form of license fee.

 Peacock Media Ltd, an out-ofhome, multi-platform, lifestyle media company has expertise in indoor and outdoor visual communication concepts and solutions. They build this new medium for Indian out-of-home industry by means of this innovative idea of vinyl wrapping the entire exterior of the coaches giving these trains a totally new look and feel. At the same time it will also protect the exteriors of these coaches from the diversified weather conditions through which these trains operate.

As an intelligent move for making it big, PML has equipped itself well. Of late, Mumbai-based, Peacock Media Ltd has installed two HP Scitex TurboJet 8500 printers at their Mumbai facility. This is an industrial grade highspeed digital printer, which uses UV cured inks. The advantages of using UV cured inks are that output is instantly dry and image is lightfast, waterproof (depending on media), and eco-friendly. TourboJet 8500 prints in 6-colour with resolution of 600dpi in high quality mode and 448dpi in quality mode and has maximum media width of 1.65 metres x 3.70

metres and maximum print width of 1.58 metres x 3.60 metres. In its pilot project, the train will run at three routes i.e. Delhi – Chennai, Delhi – Hyderabad – Bangalore and Delhi-Trivandrum and the success of this project would open new doors of innovative ad media for advertisers.