August 2010 Creative Benchmarking - Colgate
(2m, PowerPoint (.ppt) format)
June 2010 Creative Benchmarking - Tooheys New
(5m, format)
ActionMap results included.
Creating talkability
Creative Benchmarking research shows a connection between certain types of newspaper advertising and word of mouth brand exposure.
Every two years Nielsen releases the results of its Global Trust in Advertising report. In the latest report released earlier this year, newspaper advertising was once again the “most trusted” among paid advertising channels within Australia
It’s probably not surprising to anyone that the most trusted source overall is recommendations from people we know (and that means people we know in real life, and not only via social media)
“Word of mouth” as a communications channel doesn’t occur in a vacuum and it rarely happens organically. There has to be something that triggers the conversation, and the aspiration of marketers is to instigate positive brand conversations, and override any potentially negative chatter. There are many advertisers who do an exceptional job at using their newspaper advertising to get people talking about their brand.
In March 2010, The Newspaper Works began using our third proprietary benchmarking metric, Action Map. Action Map seeks to plot the respondents’ most likely actions having seen the advertising. One of the potential actions is that the advertising will encourage readers to “tell family and friends”.
By far, government advertising is the strongest type of newspaper advertising at generating word of mouth. On average, government ads are more than twice as likely to generate word of mouth than other newspaper advertising. If you think about the nature of most government ads and the need to disseminate information around issues relevant to most of the population, this makes sense.
However, there are a few surprising examples of non-government advertising (tested since March 2010) that achieved strong results in generating word of mouth from their newspaper advertising.
Spotlight’s newspaper ad looks simple enough – but the strong offers were enough to generate significant intentions for word of mouth at almost twice the average for retail advertisers.
Colgate clearly hit a nerve with their newspaper advertising, with respondents more than twice as likely to tell family and friends about this product versus newspaper norms.
Tooheys New rubbed respondents up the right way with a humorous scenario, making them two times more likely than newspaper norms to tell their family and friends about it.
Interestingly, all three of these ads are pretty simple in both message and execution.
They’re not trying to be too clever, and they communicate just enough to get their point across. The conversations newspaper readers might start off the back of seeing these ads are likely to be contained within the original intentions of the advertising and the brand. It’s these types of casual conversations that start to weave brands into our lives, making each subsequent communication more recognisable and effective and that’s a pretty good return on advertising investment.
Download the Creative Benchmarking research for Colgate and Tooheys New below.
Visit these sections for more information
See more Creative Benchmarking research across a range of advertiser categories.
Learn more about the Action Map, which identifies what form of action a newspaper ad is likely to generate.
Government Report 2010: This report showcases how newspapers help Australians form their views on issues of national importance and demonstrates that they are a powerful medium for government advertising.
July 2012
