News brands affect behaviour change at two key points in the buying journey, according to research from Newsworks.
The UK body for news media teamed up with research company Future Thinking to evaluate the reaction of 2,946 people to 14 multi-media campaigns for brands including John Lewis, Huawei and Uber Eats.
This found that average campaign awareness was measured at 46%, but this increased to 54% among news brand readers.
“News brand readers are very attentive to advertising, which is an integral part of the experience, and are more likely to take out key campaign messages,” notes Newsworks insights director Denise Turner, writing for WARC. (For more details, read the full article: What news brands can offer and other channels can’t.)
And she highlights three things that news brands do especially well:
- They help to create a brand story by increasing brand knowledge. Knowledge was 18% points higher due to news brand exposure.
- They help drive sales by increasing purchase intent. Purchase intent was 23% points higher due to news brand exposure.
- They sustain customer loyalty and influence other purchasing by prompting word of mouth and brand advocacy. Word of mouth increased by 29% points and advocacy by 23% points due to news brand exposure.
The consolidated findings from the 14 in-market multi-media campaigns, Turner says, show that news brands affect behaviour change at two key points in the buying journey:
- Driving purchase consideration at the ‘Preparation’ stage (when people don’t currently buy but are planning to do so).
- Creating loyalty at the ‘Maintenance’ stage (when people currently buy and intend to continue doing so).
- The research demonstrates the particular role that news brands can play in multimedia campaigns, she argues; “they are not simply interchangeable with other media”.
In fact, “brands are missing out by not including them in their campaigns,” she adds. “Our research shows they are missing out on £3bn profit by leaving news brands off the table.
“If I was a client, I’d be urgently reassessing my campaigns on this basis alone.”
