Weeklies As A Short-Term Solution
Increasingly popular women’s weekly magazines offer marketers a new type of print advertising, according to Peter Stevens, marketing director at The Publishing Consultancy, who explains their advantages in driving short term sales, a previously under-rated attribute.
When a brand manager is tasked with driving sales in the short-term, traditionally the response has been to pile money into Television advertising. Whilst there is no doubt that this can be both an effective and measurable solution, there are alternatives that should be considered.
Although magazines have always been an extremely effective advertising medium, they have often been treated as vehicles for longer-term brand building. Over the last 2 years however, the magazine industry, driven by the PPA, have made great strides in positioning themselves as an effective alternative to the problem of driving short-term sales with the launch of Magazines Uncovered.
The first stage of Magazines Uncovered, Sales Uncovered, clearly demonstrated the ability of magazines to deliver a positive return on investment. The study analysed purchase records from August 2002 to February 2004 using TNS’s Superpanel. Aggregating the results of all 20 FMCG brands studied, the average increase in sales value during the campaign period, compared with the pre-campaign period, by individuals seeing the magazines advertising was 21.6%. Those people not exposed saw an increase in sales value of only 10.0%, hence the magazine advertising sales effect generated an extra 11.6% increase in sales overall.
Whilst this is fantastic news for magazines, it only reaffirms what many previous studies have found. John Philip Jones’ extensive work on the effect of advertising on short-term sales for example, produced his measure called STAS (Short Term Advertising Strength), which measures gain in market share of sales. Whilst television generated an impressive 18% increase in market share for those exposed to the advertising, magazines managed to increase share by 19%. The clear conclusion is that magazine advertising is equally as effective as television advertising.
However, the PPA’s real breakthrough over the last 2 years has been the Reader Accumulation Study, which allows advertisers to know exactly when magazines readers are reading them and crucially, when they are exposed to the advertising. Hence we are now able to accurately measure what effect magazine advertising exposure has on sales, both in the short and longer term.
Which is where we come to women’s weekly magazines. The reader accumulation study clearly shows that weekly magazines build readership very rapidly, thus making them a viable candidate for driving short terms sales. The explosion in popularity of women’s weeklies – circulations have risen by 23% since 2000 – also means that it’s possible to generate very high levels of coverage. If advertisers start to plan print campaigns with a similar weight to TV, then there is no doubt that short-term sales effects will be extremely impressive.
Furthermore, the very nature of weekly magazines means that brand exposure in these titles is especially high. The closer reader relationship generated by weekly magazines, their higher levels of reader loyalty and the thoroughness with which they are read all make these titles a very attractive advertising proposition. The truly active nature of women’s weekly magazines gives advertisers a real opportunity to not only get brand and product messages across, but to generate short-term sales growth, used either alone or in conjunction with TV advertising.