Branding Dr Margaret Faulkner, Course Coordinator

Topic 6

Media Strategy: Reach

Media Strategies to • Why reach in media planning is important

reach the market • How many ad exposures are needed to affect behaviour
• Media planning tactics that undermine reach/waste money

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 What is reach? Why reach is important
Reach - how many category buyers/audience your marketing activity Brand grow by getting more customers
touches at least once (in a time period) - enlarging the customer base
eg. 30% reach of a 6 week campaign means that 30% of category - need to reach these potential customers to affect them
buyers will have the potential to see the advertisement over the
duration of the campaign.
Only those who are exposed to advertising can be nudged by it

Frequency - how many times those reached are exposed to marketing

activity Therefore the reach as a major influence on the potential of
- Note this can be a specific marketing activity, e.g. an ad campaign or any marketing your marketing activity.
activity - High reach = big potential for growth
- Low reach = small potential for growth
Most media scheduled are planned and described in this way.

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The role of advertising How many exposures?

Advertising is about reminding people to buy.
- There is little evidence that advertising can grow a category, or
force people to buy something they don’t want to.
What ‘forces’ people to buy is preparing a dinner for
friends, the detergent running out, the TV blowing up, fitting
out a guest bedroom ...
The aim of a reach strategy is to ensure the brand will be
salient when this happens.
A common myth is three exposures are needed (for TV
advertising).
This leads to the (common) use of 3+ media planning
- schedule media for an average frequency of 3
- note this average does not mean everyone saw the ad/campaign 3 times,
some may see it once, and others 6 times, it just averages at 3 times.
This is based on a faulty assumption. The evidence is only one
TV advertising exposure is needed to get a positive sales
effect.

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Examples of 28 day advertising sales response from
single source data What stops that one ad working?
260 244 240 241
Single source Creative quality - doesn’t attract attention/cut through
238
data is where we Branding quality - no one knows the advertiser
218
197
202
213
have advertising
184 exposure and sales Message quality - doesn’t build useful mental structures
176 163 162
168 168
from the same Note: These will not be solved by additional frequency. Showing a bad ad
135 137
people more often will not magically make it work.
131 132
134

100 Bread
Crisps
92 Butter Competitor activity - can interfere with sales effects by neutralising your
Toilet Tissue
brands efforts.
50 No One
Lift
0 1 2 3 4+ exposures Exposure

Brand 1 100 102 +2

In all categories, the biggest change is going from zero to one
Brand 2 100 109 +9
exposures.
Brand 3 100 110 +10
TAYLOR, J., KENNEDY, R. & SHARP, B. 2009. Making generalizations about advertising's convex
sales response function: is once really enough? Journal of Advertising Research, 49, 198-200. Brand 4 100 146 +46
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The cost of reach The cost of reach

To make the most of the media budget, we want as many The first 50% of reach is far cheaper than the second 50%
people as possible to shift from 0 to 1 exposures.
40 Doubling campaign budget will not double the cumulative
reach of the campaign
30

20 This is due to fragmentation and patterns in TV viewing

Ad exposures
(also a mathematical effect - reach ceilings at 100%)
10

0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10+

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 The first 50% is easier than the remaining 50%
This means
GRPs/TARPS

Achieving 100% reach in a short period of time is very

expensive
And a dollar spent this week is a dollar you can’t spend
next week.

Spacing out your advertising exposures allows you to more

easily build cumulative reach.
So that reach cumulates each week, month, quarter, six-
GRPs/TARPS
monthly and year.
TAYLOR, J., KENNEDY, R. & SHARP, B. 2009. Is once really enough? Making generalizations
about advertising's convex sales response function, Journal of Advertising Research, 49, 198-200. 13 14

Achieving Reach Summary

The objective: to reach every category buyer, just before every
purchase opportunity
This translates to as high as possible reach in every planning
period, as well as reach that continues to build across time
This means evaluating schedules within and across media.
Select a big rating spot, then ask yourself what is the next spot
that gets you the largest number of ‘new brains’.
• Reach is how many category buyers/audience are exposed to marketing
activity at least once (in a time period)
• Frequency is how often those reached, see the marketing activities
• There is a myth in media that 3+ planning is needed, whereby the
audience has three opportunities to see the ad.
• However the evidence from Single source data is that once is enough,
only one exposure is needed to generate sales effects.
• But not every ad works: creative, branding and message quality can be
poor, but if this is the case more frequency will not fix the problem.
• Competitor advertising intensity can also interfere between ad exposure
and sales outcomes.
• The overall media planning objective: to reach every category buyer, just
before every purchase opportunity

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