Media&Marketing:Readers may have noticed a lot of ads in newspapers in the last 18 months for Glenisk yogurt and Brady ham. These were unusual, because grocery brands hardly ever advertise in the press. The spend also seemed way over the top for such small brands writes, Siobhan O'Connell
It now turns out that the ads were all free. They were part of an 18-month competition called "Press Builds Brands" which was conducted by the National Newspapers of Ireland (NNI) to prove newspaper advertising effectiveness, and how press advertising could transform the profile and profitability of three small indigenous food brands.
Says NNI chairman Gavin O'Reilly: "Demonstrating effectiveness has become a critical part of the media planning process and so it should be."
NNI incorporates 19 member titles, including The Irish Times.
Each year the NNI comes up with a different initiative to persuade media buyers that the press deserves more support as an advertising medium. This year, it took 22 small indigenous companies from Bord Bia's range and assigned each one to an ad agency. The brief was to create a press campaign that would revolutionise the fortunes of the brand in question.
The campaign judged most likely to yield a success story, which turned out to be Glenisk, won an NNI budget of about €1.2 million at full rate-card cost. The two runners-up, which each won press budgets of €750,000, were the Life Fibre Bread Company for its campaign "A Bread Less Ordinary", created by Gospel TM/Vizeum and Brady Family Ham for its campaign "Our Family", developed by two agencies, Initiative and Bloom.
Based in Tullamore, Co Offaly, Glenisk was established in 1987 as an offshoot of a locally established dairy business. Glenisk went organic in 1996 and now sells a range of organic dairy produce, including those based on goat's milk.
TMP Worldwide, which devised the Glenisk's campaign "The Way It Should Be", said: "The Glenisk brand and organics are completely interwoven. On any piece of Glenisk packaging, the word 'organic' is bigger than the company logo/name.
"This is a deliberate policy that has served the company very well - indeed, Glenisk sees organic as the brand and the company has ridden on the coat tails of organics."
Glenisk's prize was spent across 18 newspaper titles in the NNI. This equated to a total of 229 insertions. During the campaign Glenisk awareness among all adults rose by 33 per cent and by 41 per cent among core customers.
Trial levels increased by 73 per cent among core users, while regular usage increased by 75 per cent.
Glenisk is chuffed with the 20 per cent year on year increase in total sales, with some core lines up more than 30 per cent. Says managing director Vincent Cleary: "The newspaper campaign helped us to double our growth expectations and communicate fundamental messages about our brand and our credibility among Irish consumers, supermarkets and potential investors."
The Brady Family Ham campaign began over St Patrick's weekend 2006 and was scheduled to run continuously until December 2006. However, after three months, the client felt that sales were not rising as expected. Interim market research later confirmed that brand awareness had actually fallen slightly. The campaign was halted in May and adjusted to give more prominence to the company logo/branding and to include a product visual. The campaign restarted at the end of August and ran until the end of November.
Following the campaign, research company Behaviour & Attitudes noted: "It is clear that this market is very stable, with an established and consistent pecking order. However, Shaws as a brand has achieved its consumer salience via advertising more than any other brand. While Shaws ranks third in terms of brand awareness, it ranks first for spontaneous recall of advertising.
"There is remarkable consistency in spontaneous ad recall for most brands in the sector. The one exception is Brady Family Ham. Spontaneous awareness of advertising for this brand has risen more sharply than for any other brand in the set - from 1 per cent to 8 per cent."
Bill O'Brien, managing director of Brady Family Ham, said: "This has been a major learning curve for us. At first the campaign didn't perform as well as we had planned, but that in itself was a valuable lesson. We learned a lot about what consumers look for and expect to see in consumer meat advertising.
"When it comes to deli meats, most consumers buy with their eyes. The decision to purchase is based on the appearance of the product at the time. This means that while advertising has a role to play in brand-building, it is not necessarily a factor in whether or not a person decides to buy. That was one of our key learnings."
