Strategic multi-media planning: casting an eye on the opposition: why the advertising impact of the competitors has to be considered, to maximise sales

Axel Springer AG has developed new planning tools to analyse the effects of different media strategies for packaged fast moving consumer goods. Invariably they show the superiority of using print and TV together, compared with TV on its own. The new planning tools are software which measures Contact Concentration and Advertising Pressure. In Germany advertisers of packaged goods typically spend about 90% of their media budgets in television. But the new Contact Concentration tool shows that a TV-only schedule creates an unfavourable concentration of exposures. One third of packaged goods target persons receive 70%-75% of the contacts. Using print with TV improves the situation dramatically. Print reduces over-spending among one segment of the audience and substantially cures under-spending among the other segment. This can be demonstrated by the Contact Concentration tool much more simply than by the conventional exposure distribution.
Nearly all packaged goods competitors also concentrate on television. The Advertising Pressure software calculates, for each target person, the advertising pressure of each product category.

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