 This week’s egtabite features Radiocentre’s newly launched research project, which demonstrates radio’s distinctive and effective role within the marketing mix. Indeed, the research indicates that radio can improve the cost effectiveness of brand campaigns by 20%.
Radio: The Brand Multiplier, conducted by independent research agency Differentology, reviewed radio’s effect on six FMCG brands among a sample of 3,600 respondents, and it provides compelling evidence of radio’s ability to drive strategic brand growth. This is a relatively unexplored area, because radio’s flexibility is generally used for tactical messages.
 The Brand Multiplier builds on the framework established by the work of Australian academic Professor Byron Sharp in How Brands Grow (part 1 published in 2010, part 2 in 2015) and includes practical tips for advertisers looking to boost brand growth by using radio alongside TV.
According to Professor Sharp, who based his theory on decades of research, brands that spring easily to mind largely determine what we buy. He measures their strength using the concept CEPs (Category Entry Points) – the extent to which a brand is relevant to the consumer’s needs and desires in purchasing situations. Radiocentre’s research reveals how radio advertising expands a brand’s network of mental associations and increases share of mind for a brand, significantly increasing the effect of brand communication over TV alone.
Within this, the brand that performed best had the most distinctive audio brand asset – recognisable audio which was strongly associated with the brand.
Overview of the study
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Implications for advertisers
Radiocentre identified a number of ways that the findings of its research relate to advertisers considering using radio and television together:
» Use radio to increase the reach of brand activity
» Use distinctive audio brand assets to improve the brand’s presence
» Create multiple radio executions to associate the brand with more Category Entry Points
» Use radio to enhance cost-effectiveness of brand activity
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For the research to be relevantly broad, Radiocentre selected three FMCG categories with two brands in each. After identifying and ratifying the corresponding CEPs, with the help of mobile diaries and agency planners, audio ads were created for usage in the last stage – the lab test.
The lab test used a cloaked-exposure method to measure the extent to which people’s attitudes were changed after exposure to two sets of advertising – audio-visual alone and audio-visual with audio.
This study shows that exposure to both audio-visual and audio advertising significantly affects people’s perceptions of brands.
As measured by Network Size (average number of CEPs associated with a brand), after two exposures to audio-visual advertising (2x AV), Network Size increased by 23%. But when two audio advertising exposures replaced one of the audio-visual exposures in the mix (1x AV + 2x A) Network Size rose further to 29%.
These uplifts were seen not just in Network Size, but also in Mental Penetration (number of people associating the brand with at least one CEP) and Share of Mind (a brand’s share of all CEP associations across the category).
On average, radio airtime is about a third of the price of TV. On this basis, it’s clear that beyond just extending reach, including audio in the mix can also significantly improve the overall cost-effectiveness of brand-building campaigns by over 20%.
Why this matters for egta members?
These results highlight the value that can be accrued by including radio as part of the brand-building media mix and give a clear indication of how advertisers can harness these effects optimally for their brands.
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