How print ads from Cartier and Yeo Valley made consumers stop and take note despite different approaches.

You can read the full article from Marketing Week here

The Advertising Association have an ongoing partnership with Kantar and Marketing Week called “The Works”. This media partnership is a crucial initiative within their plan to increase public trust in advertising.

Established in April 2021, The Works celebrates those advertising campaigns that generate the most positive public response, sharing what marketers can learn from them.

Every month, Marketing Week publish a featured article revealing the winners and analysing the campaigns, providing a regular and informed reminder of just how advertising can drive positive responses from the public and fuel marketing success.

Print media can often be overlooked in the digital era, but it remains an effective and sometimes rewarding way to reach consumers.

The latest edition of The Works study from Kantar features an analysis of print magazine ads, and highlights two contrasting examples that each illustrate effective use of the medium. Both employ insight into consumers, the magazines used and their readerships, to ensure the titles became part of the message.

Produced in association with Marketing Week and the Advertising Association’s Trust Working Group, The Works study asks 750 consumers what they think of five current print ads – 150 consumers per advert. The study also tracks the facial expressions and eye movements of those viewing the ads.

Luxury brand Cartier has been identified as the best-performing ad this month. It ranks among the top 12% of UK ads on this critical ‘stop and look’ measure.

Kantar’s measurement shows the ad falling into the top quartile for the measure of distinctiveness, which plays to the tendency of the human brain to notice things that are different. The ad also ranks as very likeable, again scoring in the top quartile, and interesting – where 31% of consumers ticked the top box against an average of 15%.

Crucially, consumers find it easy to make the connection between the ad and the Cartier brand. The elegant aesthetic used in the ad feels familiar to the brand and is undisturbed by any visual clutter.

Stand out

The second ad to stand out this month shows there is more than one way to skin a cat when it comes to creating compelling magazine ads.

Yeo Valley’s Kefir ad is based around a classic insight – that while many of us want to make healthier choices, this is made difficult by all of the irresistible yet unhealthy options that try to tempt us to do otherwise. The ad takes a lighthearted and empathetic tone, presenting the Kefir products as an easy and pleasurable way to make at least one good decision.

It is also another likeable ad, in the top 25% on this scale, and distinctive, placing in the top 15%. The consumer panel were pulled in by the entertaining copy, finding it funny and reading the entire ad, as illustrated by eye tracking data.

Print media is effective at conveying numerous and more complex messages than other mediums, because of the way it is more actively consumed, as illustrated in Kantar’s Power of Connection report. She notes that the Yeo Valley ad is a good example of that rule in practice.

You can read the full article here