Best Newsbrands Campaign

Vauxhall Retail

Summary

Vauxhall’s retail campaigns had remained unchanged for several years with a focus on consistent

half pages throughout the year to achieve awareness. Under pressure for more accountable digital

opportunities however the plans needed to evolve in order to justify their continued spend. By

creating a cross-platform case study with the Telegraph we were able to prove the worth of

newsbrands, maximising their traditional measures of success but also creating a campaign which

worked throughout the purchase funnel in driving actions and leads.

Background and Objectives

Vauxhall have long been been heavy spenders within national press with the majority of this budget

spent on their retail campaigns predominantly pushing finance offers. With a long consideration

phase which can commence at any time of year, press has traditionally been used for an awareness

role with half page formats consistently drip-fed throughout with the aim of appearing ‘always-on’

and present whenever someone starts to consider buying a new car.

This strategy however had left newsbrand activity with a very limited remit, operating only at the

top of the purchase funnel and able only to report against reach and frequency metrics. As digital

spend became more important and able to prove efficient spend accountable all the way to actual

purchase press could no longer justify large spends without expanding its role and being able to

quantifiably prove the effect our advertising was having

Insight and Strategy

We believed that by expanding from solely printed half pages to running across newsbrand’s entire

portfolio of platforms that we could:

Be more effective at our traditional KPI through gaining incremental reach

Prove the effectiveness of both traditional press activity and the cumulative effect of

running multi-platform campaigns on brand metrics through research

Expand the remit of newsbrand activity to operate throughout the purchase funnel,

delivering against KPIs at the final consideration and purchase stage

The Plan

In Q1 2013 we developed and ran a package of activity with the Telegraph to act as a case study and

testing ground for a holistic newsbrands approach.

Alongside our traditional activity with other newsbrand partners, the Telegraph activity consisted of:

Half pages in the Daily and Sunday Telegraph

MPUs and leaderboards on telegraph.co.uk behaviourally targeted to in-market car buyers

Week long HPTO of the motoring channel on telegraph.co.uk

Mobile banners spread consistently throughout the campaign

iPad tenancy for the duration of the campaign

Results

The campaign proved highly successful in all areas. Using NRS PADD data we were able to show that

we can increase reach by using multiple platforms. Our activity with the Telegraph reached 5.8m

people, up from 3.2m with the same spend the year prior.

We saw print was successful in driving positive brand metrics with a 24% uplift in positive brand

image from those who saw the campaign on one platform, but importantly we also proved that the

combination of platforms reinforces this message with a 57% uplift for those who saw the campaign

on multiple platforms.

The same research showed purchase intent increased 26% from exposure on one platform, and 49%

for cross-platform but crucially however we were able to go beyond this and look directly at actions

and lead generation. Through digital metrics newsbrands proved truly accountable for the first time.

CTRs were recorded with user actions tracked through on the Vauxhall site. Besides actions, this

also worked for lead generation, and

provided a pool of users for us to retarget with other brand and retail messages, adding to the

efficacy of other campaigns.

We achieved multiple objectives with this campaign, from proving the effectiveness of traditional

press, to showing how this was augmented by running on multiple platforms. We maximised our

performance against the traditional press KPIs at the top of the purchase funnel, but also expanded

the remit to compete with the performance and objectives of other media. In showing newsbrands

to be a holistic answer to all of the aims of Vauxhall’s retail campaigns we have used this case study

to implement the same strategy across other partners including the Guardian and Mail through the

rest of this year and to justify high levels of press investment running into 2014.

Client View

‘In evolving our press plan to mirror the way consumers are accessing newsbrand’s content we have

successfully achieved greater efficiency, reach and value within our activity’ Nicola Jenkins, Head of

Retail Marketing