Scotsman Re-Positions With Largest Ever TV Ad Campaign
Scotland’s national newspaper, The Scotsman, is launching its largest ever TV advertising campaign in a bid to bring a new, more powerful image to the brand.
The six-figure campaign will run for 10 weeks and will feature a combination of 90, 60 and 30 second generic ads, with 20 second ads promoting the main property and recruitment platforms. This is further supported by 30 second ads highlighting a series of added value weekly editorial and promotional initiatives.
Commenting on the initiative, Iain Martin, editor of The Scotsman, said: “The Scotsman prides itself on understanding its readers and representing Scots’ views and opinions. In view of this, we committed ourselves to extensive consumer research in order to truly understand current moods and motivations.”
He added: “This research revealed consumer lifestyles are increasingly hectic which inevitably means people have less time to read and absorb a daily newspaper. From this we developed the fundamental theme at the heart of our new campaign – we all need to give ourselves a break and take the time to be informed.”
Pete Martin, creative director at Citigate SMARTS, which directed the new campaign, said: “The high impact creative concept came directly from the positioning work which identified changing newspaper usage. We set out to position The Scotsman as an oasis in the day for its readers and the campaign reflects this.”
The investment in The Scotsman follows a successful campaign to boost circulation at Scotland on Sunday.
Gordon Santana, newspaper sales and marketing controller at The Scotsman Publications, commented; “There’s no room for complacency in the Scottish newspaper market and it’s crucial for us to keep our brand images healthy and front of mind with readers. We’ve achieved that objective over the last six months with Scotland on Sunday resulting in excellent sales figures and now intend to apply the same principles to The Scotsman. It’s not rocket science, just hard work.”
The latest ABC results for the March to August 2003 period brought bad news for The Scotsman with circulation dipping by 8.1% year on year to 70,946 from 77,168 in the same period in 2002.
More than three quarters of regional newspapers recently halted the practise of bulk sales, which many media buyers believe artificially inflates circulation figures (see Regional Newspapers Move To Abolish Bulk Sales).
The Scotsman: www.thescotsman.co.uk
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