The power of advertising

The impact that advertising campaigns have on the drinks ordered over your bar is unquestionable.

Put simply, the more advertising there is for a brand, the more demand there will be for it and you would be wise to stock it. The difficulty for licensees has always been how to gauge the effectiveness of a particular ad campaign.

So a series of reports analysing individual campaigns by advertising industry body the Newspaper Marketing Agency (NMA) is very welcome.

One recent report by the NMA looked into a burst of advertising by a brand that knows more than most about the power of promotion: Guinness. From toucans to today, "the black stuff" has been pioneering in promoting its stout.

As Guinness launches a new burst of advertising running throughout April and May (see box, below), it's high time to look at the conclusions

the NMA drew on one of the brand's old ones. The campaign in question was a series Diageo placed on TV and in the sports and entertainment sections of national newspapers in 2006.

What the report found​

The conclusions that the NMA drew were as follows:

1) Marketers want their advertising to do two things: firstly, to support or enhance the value of the brand. Secondly, to drive sales.

2) This Guinness campaign was designed so that the TV and newspaper elements would work in synergy.

"It's remarkable how often advertisers run campaigns where there is little or no evident connection between the two," says NMA communications controller Tom Lynch.

The NMA advises advertisers to use newspaper and TV advertising concurrently because each compensates for the weaknesses of the other.

The average viewer of the sports and entertainment programmes around which Guinness ran its advertising tended to be male, younger, more upmarket and more likely to be Southern and metropolitan - crucial consumers for Guinness basically.

Newspaper reading is more active and engaged, meaning the ads will have been seen by a different set of consumers.

Regular newspaper readers are also, according to the NMA, 50 per cent more likely than the heaviest TV viewers to go out for a drink four or more times a week.

3) Monitoring its effect on prospective drinkers, the TV ads on their own had a powerful effect, but not as powerful as TV and newspapers together.

While the research didn't monitor the impact on on-trade sales, it did draw many revealing conclusions on the campaign's impact on the value of the brand, and therefore the likelihood of consumers ordering it in pubs.

TV and newspapers significantly increased the likelihood of consumers considering buying Guinness by four per cent among the sample, compared to TV alone only increasing consideration by one per cent.

4) The campaign successfully got across Guinness' key messages, including "worth waiting to be poured", "a drink to really savour", "high quality", and "modern and stylish".

Again TV and newspaper advertising had a stronger effect than either medium on its own.

5) Another key factor in a campaign is to force re-appraisal, making people take a fresh look at a product or service. For Guinness, using both TV and newspaper led to much stronger re-appraisal.

The research pointed to TV and newspapers provoking 40 per cent more brand re-appraisal than TV on its own.

Guinness' new advertising

Diageo launched a new TV advertisement for Guinness at the start of April as part of celebrations to mark the 250th anniversary of Arthur Guinness signing the lease on the St James's Gate brewery in Ireland.

The advert "brings to life the distinctive energy and life of a pint of Guinness," according to Diageo. It will run throughout May.

Part of a heavyweight marketing campaign that also includes a great deal of newspaper advertising, it was designed to particularly target consumers who are less frequent Guinness drinkers.

Guinness marketing manager Paul Cornell says: "The advertisement is set to drive footfall in outlet from people who want to enjoy a great pint of Guinness while making the most of the Bank holidays, as well as the culmination of the domestic sporting season."