Mike Colling & Company wins Silver
at DMA Awards December 2009

What’s this all about?
The following campaign won a Silver Award in the Best Results of 2009 category at the DMA Awards on Wednesday 9 December.

Our Challenge
Which? is a very successful marketing led organisation.  They are the envy of many other media owners in that they manage to charge consumers for subscription not just to their magazine but also to their web site.  They use a range of media channels, including DRTV, press, inserts, search, online partnerships and display advertising to recruit new subscribers.

Traditionally, Which? has acted like many direct marketers, and optimised the results for subscriber recruitment on a channel by channel basis. This was reflected in their own internal structure with separate marketing teams for on and offline media.

At the end of 2007, Which? challenged us to improve already award winning results by rethinking the planning of their subscriber recruitment activity, and giving us carte blanche to integrate all media channels.

The Insight
At the end of 2007 each media channel was optimised for response, return on investment and for monthly cover against a core target audience.

Our initial insight was that consumers did not use each medium in isolation – rather, that they journeyed from one to another.  For example, TV might trigger an initial consideration of the need for Which?, Press would provide more information, and Search would be used for the ultimate product purchase.

Armed with this understanding of consumer behaviour we set out to discover how many of our core audience saw all of our media channels in any month … and we found it to be disappointingly small.

Our Solution

• We changed the way we planned media, from solely vertically by channel to encompass a horizontal cross-channel selection

• We set up a series of regional tests were we reallocated budget by medium, and varied the ways we allocated spend within each medium

• We spent a little more money, and increased the weight of advertising by 10% with our test area

The Results
We saw a dramatic impact!
Weight of advertising only increased by 10%, and total schedule 1 + cover by just 2%, however..

• Response increased by 42%

• ROI by a massive 51%

• Net cash increased by 62%!