Sue Read, Marketing & Research Director at Granada TV presented research into programming and promotions. Nearly twice as many viewers make viewing decisions based on reading about programmes,44%, to trailers, 23%. Of those who were influenced by trailers,64% made a special effort to watch.
Recall of advertisements and programme sponsorship were very similar in breaks with maximum and minimum clutter, but promotions had a better recall level in un-cluttered breaks. The ITVA presents results of clutter research this week..
Doug Reed (JWT) and Sheila Byfield (O&M) presented the Media Partnership’s Programme Appreciation research, which used 2,000 ex-TGI respondents in Meridian. Briefly, the research proved that highly involved viewers were 49% more likely to pay attention to a break, and that total correct brand recall was 18% better for these same viewers.
“Programme involvement will be a key issue for the remainder of the decade and beyond”,predicted Byfield.
Hilary Cade, Deputy MD at RSL, updated her earlier Quality of Reading papers She stated the importance of source of copy data over place of reading data, and added that time of reading and proportion read were only useful measures if more detail (parts of the publication read) was supplied.
Cade predicted that Quality of Reading data would be used qualitatively not quantitatively. She recommended the retention of source of copy data, and the extension of any “topics read” data to magazines as well as newspapers.
Nick Kelvin, Media Planning Director at BBJ presented qualitative research into the youth market, which BBJ had been running since the beginning of the year interviewing 100 under 16s. Unfortunately (or fortunately) this had been rather superseded by the Youth TGI which confirmed BBJ’s analysis. Kelvin pointed to one survey by Kiss FM which interviewed youths and media people about trends of the day – and proved very conclusively that media folk know nothing about youth fashion, trends, idols or buzzwords.
Andrew Robertson, Strategic Advertising Manager of Bradford & Bingley was asked to answer the question “Is Research Worth Paying For?” He provided some very quotable views.
“Clients do not have anywhere enough contact with media research departments. Information is what media is all about.”
“Much of the media owner research is PR hype.”
“Position in advertising breaks is not high on client’s shopping list.”
“The real cutting edge is people. That’s what the client pays for.”
