C&T advertisers should reconsider their marketing mix

Marketing campaigns for C&T brands are not delivering the best results for advertisers because they are using an outdated and unbalanced media mix, according to new research shows commissioned by the Newspaper Marketing Agency (NMA).

“Campaigns that focus too much on TV and magazines are in danger of missing connections with some very important customers,” says NMA ceo Maureen Duffy. “Our new analysis of sales data from TNS Worldpanel shows that regular national newspaper readers spend just as much per household on cosmetics and toiletries products as the heaviest third of TV viewers.

“Yet campaign after campaign virtually ignores newspapers, and the heaviest third of TV viewers receive more than half of each campaign’s weight. So people who watch a lot of TV are saturated with ads, while lighter viewers of TV receive little or no communication.”

For premium products, the media mix switches to concentrate on magazines. Yet newspapers are read by millions more women every day than magazines. And the new research suggests that it is hard for a C&T ad to stand out in the clutter of magazine ads for rival brands.

Among the findings of NMA’s research, which included quantitative research by BMRB as well as analysis of TNS Worldpanel sales data, was that:

• Regular newspaper readers spent more per household than the heaviest third of TV viewers last year in ten out of 20 categories surveyed, including the £1bn-plus skin care market
• Three quarters of women newspaper readers use their newspaper as a source of information, including for C&T products
• Women rate their newspapers as more credible and authoritative than magazines
• C&T ads pack a bigger punch in newspapers than magazines
• Beauty product manufacturers that advertise in newspapers send the message that they are confident about the product
• Science-based claims about C&T products are more credible in newspapers – 81% said newspapers are an important source of information when deciding about new products with scientific claims and 72% said they would tend to be more open to scientific messages if they read about them in newspapers
• Tests on 75 C&T ads found that they made a generally strong impression on women, but there was a wide gulf between the strongest and weakest performing ads, and many of the ads were less successful in generating active engagement

The Newspaper Marketing Agency was set up by the national newspaper industry to raise awareness of the power of the medium among advertisers and their agencies.

The full research findings can be downloaded free after 1 June from www.nmauk.co.uk.