A consumer is most likely to be persuaded to buy a fast food brand if it has been advertised in both newspapers and on television.
“This media combination seems to work for media planners and their fast food clients,” said Karen Dyke, strategy and insights specialist at Ads24, the national advertising sales and marketing division of Media24 newspapers and their branded digital properties.
Ads24’s media neutral research survey, Path to Persuasion, revealed that newspapers are an effective media advertising format for the fast food category, alongside television, and at a lower cost. The research aimed to understand the role different media formats play in the consumers’ path to purchase.
“We saw, from the period August 2011 to July 2012, that there was a 3.19% increase in fast food, restaurants and bar advertising spend. Of particular interest to us was the change in media strategy, with the highest spend increases in direct mail, internet and out of home media formats,” noted Dyke. The total spend in the stipulated category was R917 274 734.
The Path to Persuasion model focuses specifically on the consumers’ path to purchase, which comprises six stages: Introduction, Entertainment, Education, Information, Comparison and Persuasion. “So our research assists media planners in directing advertising spend based on how and when consumers make a choice to purchase something,” added Dyke.
“The research determined that TV and newspapers bring synergy to the fast food media mix and both channels play clearly differentiated roles in the consumers’ mind. For planners, money is thus not wasted.”
The fast food category formed part of Wave 2 of the Path to Persuasion (2011) and – comprised of a sample of 203 respondents: males (56%) and females (44%) across all ethnic groups and representative of the makeup of the economically active South African population. Respondents had an average household income of R7 860 and personal income of R2 049.
