Lisa Pollard – ‘Standing Up To Be Counted, Evaluating The Effectiveness Of Magazine Advertising Into The Next Millennium’
Lisa Pollard, advertisement marketing manager, IPC Magazines
In this paper, I will summarise the progress made so far in measuring magazine advertising effects. I will then look ahead to suggest what we may expect future developments to be.
So, as we stare down the barrel of a new millennium, I will draw upon some wisdom which is about 2000 years old. In the words of Seneca: “Our plans miscarry because they have no aim. When a man does not know what harbour he is aiming for, no wind is in the right direction.”
Before embarking upon any process of evaluating advertising effectiveness, it is fundamental to return to square one and remember what the advertising set out to achieve. For each campaign the objective of the advertising will provide the relevant definition of effectiveness. How effectively did we:
- increase brand trial
- build brand awareness
- correctly position the brand in relation to its competitors
- generate sales
…….or whatever.
Unless you know exactly what you want to achieve, you won’t be able to select the best way of measuring the success. If you’re aiming to shift product, look at short- and medium-term sales. If you intend to build the brand in order to achieve sale after sale over the longer term, measures of branded ad awareness and brand imagery may be more appropriate.
Until recently, magazines have been poorly served by the methods of measuring advertising performance. Yet during the 1990’s, IPC, as market leader, has assumed the mantle of producing quantifiable results for the medium, first with Ad Track and more recently with the Sales Effectiveness study. As with every research project, there were no foregone conclusions, so it’s been a risky business. Reassuringly, the results to date have built the case for magazines more conclusively than we could have hoped.
1. AD TRACK (IPC MAGAZINES/MILLWARD BROWN)
First, Ad Track. A number of you may be familiar with the study, so I shall not dwell on it for too long. Instead, I will update you regarding its current incarnation. Before that, I will clarify where it fits in to the on-going evolution of measuring the effectiveness of magazine advertising.
Ad Track developed out of work which had been undertaken by Millward Brown in the early nineties, entitled Magtrack. Magtrack was a magazine awareness tracking study which used readership lag data, via Telmar’s TimePlan software. Gordon Brown, then Chairman of Millward Brown, published in ADMAP what was, on the face of it, a startling conclusion, namely that when they first appear, magazine ads are on average twice as effective as TV ads at building awareness. IPC set up Ad Track to test this claim.
The objectives of the study were to examine whether magazine advertising could build branded ad awareness, influence individuals’ propensity to purchase and outperform TV as suggested. Commissioned from Millward Brown, continuous telephone interviewing took place between January and December 1994. Alongside the telephone interviews, hall-tests were conducted to examine the creative communication of one execution per brand. When the findings were unveiled, they were even more dramatic than we had anticipated. Andy Farr, then Research and Development Director of Millward Brown UK, wrote in the final report: “Rating for rating, the magazine campaigns produced as much advertising awareness as TV at lower cost.”
Not content with having established a set of findings which endorsed the power of magazines, our next step was to introduce a way of allowing all advertisers to participate in continuous magazine ad tracking – Enter Rolling Ad Track. Our aim is to make Rolling Ad Track a standard industry tool for evaluating the effectiveness of magazine advertising.
The new study started on April 15th 1996. Advertisers can join the study at any time, to suit their campaign dates, and one week away from its first birthday, well over 20 major brands have participated and have benefited from the learnings.
Numerous developments have been implemented, including the introduction of a question which measures agreement with an image statement relating to the brand, to accompany the traditional ad awareness and purchase consideration questions. In addition, the questionnaire used in the creative hall test has been extended. Here is what a couple of participants have to say about Rolling Ad Track:
The Consumer Research manager of a Nationwide Retailer says:
“Having decided to use women’s magazines in the media mix, it was imperative that we were able to be accountable for our decision. Ad Track has proved to be a well formulated methodology and a cost-effective tool for demonstrating that we made the right media choice and has helped us in learning how to optimise the medium, both creatively and as an awareness-builder”
And from the Category Manager of a major food manufacturer:
“The findings from Ad Track have been invaluable. They have enabled us to assess the effectiveness of our magazine activity in 1996, and are assisting
us in developing our future plans”
In the past, the cost of magazine research in relation to the media spend has often made it prohibitive. Advertisers can take advantage of the economies of scale which Rolling Ad Track offers, making it a cost-effective way of monitoring advertising performance. And because the advertisers are paying for the research themselves, the data remains confidential. The future may herald more studies set up in a similar way to Rolling Ad Track, so that both costs and learnings can be shared.
So all is looking pretty rosy if what you want to measure is ad awareness, propensity to buy and movements in brand imagery.
But what if you want to measure the contribution of advertising to shifting product?
2. MAGAZINE ADVERTISING SALES EFFECTIVENESS STUDY
(IPC MAGAZINES/TAYLOR NELSON AGB)
IPC’s second project is the Magazine Advertising Sales Effectiveness Study, commissioned from Taylor Nelson AGB.
The objective of this project is to examine the impact on sales of fmcg advertising campaigns in magazines, using Mediaspan advertising effectiveness measurements. It draws on single source data collected via AGB’s Superpanel, to find out what the households buy and what they read. A panel of 10,000 households records all their packaged groceries, fresh foods and toiletries purchases using a key pad and bar-code reader in the home. These same households also record their media consumption habits, by way of a self-completion questionnaire. A frequency of reading question on the readership questionnaire allows us to calculate their probability of exposure to a given campaign. Then we compare the buying behaviour of Superpanel housewives who are heavily exposed to a magazine campaign, with those lightly or not at all exposed.
The brand volume share of each group is tracked before, during and after a campaign. Average price and multi-buy purchases are also tracked, to flag up other promotional activity in addition to print advertising. Having taken these factors into account, the additional brand share amongst the exposed group relative to the unexposed group can be deemed to represent a pure advertising effect.
These tests can address issues such as:
* the magnitude of the short-term sales effect
* longer term influences
* who is responding and how – in other words the profile of the purchasers
* and the impact of other marketing activity
Here is an example. Anchor Foods had a campaign introducing the relatively new spreadable butter variant in the summer of 1995. The advertising objective was to sell units quickly in advance of an imminent pack redesign. In addition, the campaign was intended to encourage new purchasers to try the brand and to develop their loyalty to Anchor Spreadable. The magazine schedule consisted of Women’s and TV weeklies.
Anchor Spreadable’s charts (which show the brand volume share of the exposed group -v- the unexposed group, before, during and after the campaign) show that a clear advertising effect amongst the exposed groups visible. Their volume brand share increases over the short term and is then sustained over the medium term too. In the immediate six weeks after the campaign, the exposed group had increased its volume brand share by 31% relative to the unexposed group. This uplift was sustained, so that by 12 weeks it can be quantified as being worth £451,000 and by 24 weeks nearly three quarters of a million pounds – that’s an extra 200 metric tons of butter.
Further analysis shows that those responding to the advertising were younger and more likely to be upmarket. More importantly, they were historically light-buyers of the butter market (perhaps favouring other types of spread) and were disloyal buyers, in other words brand-switchers. This suggests that the campaign brought new buyers into the brand, rather than just encouraging current users to buy more heavily. Anchor’s objectives were met. Product was shifted in the short term and new buyers became loyal to the brand in the medium term. To summarise the story for Anchor Spreadable, James Galpin of tnAGB says:
There is a clear short-term response to the print advertising, plus evidence of strong long term impact, up to a year after the campaign. The advertising seems to have introduced the brand to a significant number of new users, many of whom have stayed with the brand.
The campaign was efficient as well as effective. Anchor, who historically have not used magazines, are now committed to the medium.
The Anchor story is not an isolated case. We are compiling a significant bank of examples which together make a case for the effectiveness of magazine advertising in terms of driving sales. Other brands include: Bernard Matthews Cooked Meats, Comfort Silk fabric conditioner, Cussons Carex, Domestos Bathroom Cleaner, Krona margarine, Lux soap, Persil Washing-up liquid and so it goes on.
The responsiveness of magazine readers cannot be doubted. The fact that direct response advertisers invest approximately £60 million in IPC titles alone each year, and place over half a billion loose inserts with us, is testimony enough. Now, with the Magazine Advertising Sales Effectiveness findings, we can finally prove the value of our readers to non-direct response advertisers too.
3. FUTURE RESEARCH DEVELOPMENTS
As with the Ad Track project, we are looking for new ways to evolve the Magazine Advertising Sales Effectiveness study. Likely developments for the study may include:
1. First, introducing a matched sampling technique which would allow us to establish a set of individuals who collectively behave in a similar way in a market – showing similar purchase cycles, response to price promotions etc. This set would then be sub-divided into exposed and unexposed groups enabling us to get even closer to a comparison of like with like.
2. Secondly, establishing common themes amongst those campaigns which were most effective. Nielsen looked for common patterns in their “Strategies for Successful Brands” work. In a similar way, we could identify whether there were any shared characteristics amongst those brands showing sales effects. How does the response pattern differ for a brand launch, in comparison to an established brand?
3. Next, we could look at improving performance diagnosis – in other words, as well as reporting what happened, we want to be able to supply more information about why it happened. With ever more sophisticated ways of cutting and slicing data (such as examining heavy and light market buyers, loyal and disloyal purchasers), we can begin to interpret purchase behaviour. But more information on the attitudes of the purchasers – going beyond demographics and market behaviour – would provide advertisers with a fuller picture of who was responding and why.
4. Finally, establishing an evaluation continuum in terms of awareness, propensity to buy and actual sales effects. There has always been controversy surrounding the significance of branded ad awareness scores. One opponent, Paul Feldwick, commented:
“A high awareness score is neither essential nor sufficient for effective campaigns”.
By linking Ad Track to the Sales Effectiveness project, perhaps we might finally be able to look for signs of some patterns emerging. Do people actually do what they say they are going to do? Are there circumstances in which a direct relationship can be established between awareness and sales?
4. THE CHALLENGES FACING THE MEASUREMENT OF MAGAZINE ADVERTISING EFFECTIVENESS BEYOND 2000
I would like to briefly outline the key challenges facing the effectiveness of advertising as we look beyond the year 2000. Two themes emerge. First, that of communication overload, which will change the way in which the reader/viewer/listener consumes media. Secondly, the more sophisticated and complex approach to marketing communications by advertisers in the form of integrated solutions. The first raises the question what will it be important to measure?, and the second, how do you go about measuring it?
In 1985, 471 hours of television programming was transmitted each week; by 1997 the figure had multiplied ten-fold to over 4,000 hours. And with the arrival of digital TV and more extensive use of the Internet at work and in the home, the threat of communications overload becomes a reality. This will change the consumer’s response to both media and advertising.
Firstly, the variety of choices available means that the consumer will become more and more selective, giving rise to the threat of ad avoiders. Perhaps their selectivity will mean they choose to steer clear of advertising altogether, rather than accepting it as part of the package.
Second, the attention span of the consumer will become shorter – am I interested, yes or no – meaning that advertising will have to work harder both creatively and in terms of targetting to gain any attention at all.
Thirdly, by dint of receiving so many communications messages in one day, the method of processing the message is bound to become more superficial – will this mean that advertising will need to become more blunt. Perhaps the consumer will have neither the time nor the inclination to solve clever advertising? Or alternatively he may reject blunt messages and look for more interesting, salient advertising instead.
And finally, in this tale of doom and gloom, consumers will cease to trust the many, often conflicting, messages which they receive, be it from a politician or a manufacturer. The cynical consumer will be likely to reject the authority of advertising altogether. What does this mean for establishing the effectiveness of media?
With audiences ever-harder to find in large numbers, these factors will combine to make the value of the communication, in terms of its significance to the consumer, more important than coverage. More quantitative research into quality of reading could shed light on the value of communication via magazines. What is the frame of mind of the reader? What is their relationship with the publication? How much endorsement does the editorial environment impart to the advertising message?
To look forward to the Brave New Media world beyond 2000, perhaps each magazine page will have a sensor pad on it, which would register the number of times a page is read, for how long and even the mood of the reader…….
Moving onto integrated communications – as advertisers require media owners to be more and more flexible and creative regarding the media solutions delivered, to what extent does this complicate the evaluation of individual elements in the mix? On-page advertising is now more likely to be linked with coupons to encourage trial, advertorials to provide endorsed ideas about product usage, competitions to involve the reader and to allow the advertiser to compile a data-base, sponsorship of a relevant regular page. And alongside all this, product, pricing and distribution policies will interact to ensure that the consumer is receiving a consistent and coherent message about the brand.
So with many simultaneous communications taking place, how can the individual contribution of one element, such as on-page advertising be isolated? Will we be able to tell whether people are buying more cans of Heinz baked beans because of the advertising, or because they have been tempted by extra points on their Reward card?
The challenge facing research companies such as Taylor Nelson AGB is how to deconstruct consumers’ buying behaviour, which is becoming ever more complex. Yet the development of increasingly sophisticated methods of data collection and analysis has facilitated enormous progress to date, as we’ve seen, and should allow research to keep pace with the consumer.
One thing is for sure. Research companies will stay in business. As new research techniques enable us to make more informed judgements about advertising effectiveness media planning can develop accordingly. These changes may relate to the weight and timing of media spend, the number of executions used or whatever. Advertising patterns will change, and as the consumer wises up so their response patterns will change. The wheel has come full circle.
There is no holy grail – no easy formula which says do this for a great campaign. Yet it is crucial that media owners use the tools available to establish their case.
CONCLUSION
The magazine medium has never been so accountable for its results – it is truly standing up to be counted. There has been dramatic progress in this decade alone. And looking to the future, magazine owners, either individually or collectively, will continue to do whatever it takes to demonstrate the effectiveness of our medium. Magazines work – and will work even harder as their true potential is harnessed.