Outdoor Builds Awareness Faster Than TV, Says New Research
New research suggests that outdoor advertising can build awareness three times faster than television campaigns, despite being a much less expensive medium. However, the research, undertaken by the Media Edge and revealed at the MRG conference in Munich this year, also showed that awareness decay for outdoor campaigns was around three times faster than for TV advertising, running at around 10% per week.
The research was part funded by Colgate, which has worked with The Media Edge for more than five years. An eight month collaborative tracking study, at a cost of £150,000, was designed to counter the lack of qualiative data focusing on outdoor media.
Carol Middleton, media strategist at The Media Edge said, “This is a major advancement for the outdoor industry, allowing the integration of POSTAR data into awareness modelling.”
Colgate, which had increased its outdoor spend from 0% of total advertising budget in 1994 to 40% in 1998, ran 11 bursts of activity across seven different outdoor media during the course of the research. The major outdoor contractors, JC Decaux (which co-presented the research findings at the conference), Maiden, More Group and Mills and Allen, agreed to take part in the study. 5,000 interviews were conducted with 16-44 year old shoppers in London, Birmingham and Manchester, with awareness being polled throughout the eight months.
Millward Brown’s awareness modelling showed that consistent creative strategy and increased familiarity can diminish the speed of awareness decay. In addition, although decay is inevitable, brand awareness nevertheless increases with repeated exposure.
In relation to other media, it was found that even where an outdoor campaign runs alongside a heavy TV campaign, the outdoor advertising will reach additional consumers. When TV is not used, outdoor is still thought to provide effective competition against heavier spenders. In terms of press, brands are thought to benefit from the synergy created by campaigns using both press and poster advertising.
Lynne Deason, account director at Millward Brown, said, “The project revealed clear findings about this medium for each of the participating companies. It produced evidence to show that outdoor can work well in many situations (for big and small brands, in combination with other media or solus, in different competitive contexts) as well as providing an understanding of the ingredients of a successful outdoor campaign.”
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