Have you ever wondered which ads placed in the national newspapers are the most effective at engaging readers? Newsline has partnered with Lumen Research to find out.
This time last Thursday at 11.15am, along with many other people, you would have found me in Starbucks, queuing shamelessly for my free latte.
While I may have missed the offer in last week’s Metro (ah, the power of word of mouth…), Starbucks’ offering of free Guatemala Antigua goodness – despite being tucked away at the corner of the page with the smallest of text (I wonder why) – managed to attract 83% of coffee-loving Metro readers for all of 2.6 seconds before they united on the streets of London in complete and utter hysteria.
Just in case you did miss it, the ad gave people the chance to dust off their detective specs and get a free tall latte if they said the word ‘Cocoa’ between 11am and 12pm that day. Unfortunately for me, my game as a coffee spy was ruined by the barista who didn’t even ask me for the code.
“It’s always a challenge for ads to get engagement with text,” said Lumen. “This is particularly important when attempting to win business through persuasion.”
(I’m guessing there wasn’t much persuading needed here.)
“By offering something to people for free, Starbucks managed to get a good number of people to read the copy,” added Lumen.
“On further analysis, we found that although fewer people looked at it, those who did engage with the copy looked at it for an average of 0.3 seconds longer than the people that looked at the headline.”
If you want to claim your free latte from Starbucks: tough. But you can go get one for the ever-so-generous price of £2.45.
Remind me again how Starbucks UK managed to avoid paying any corporation tax for five years…?
