Sales Guarantees -- What’s Old is New Again

There was big news out of the magazine industry this week as the MPA announced an industry-wide guarantee that ad pages in print magazines will drive sales results for marketers. If this is not achieved, qualifying marketers will be “made whole” with free space or refunds. I read this announcement and smiled as I realized that with time and a little polishing it seems that almost any marketing strategy can feel fresh and new again.

This shiny new program from the magazine industry, designed to stem the hemorrhaging of ad pages, mirrors a program introduced by the NNN on behalf of the newspaper industry five short years ago. The NNN’s CPG Guarantee introduced in September, 2010, guaranteed participating marketers a 10% sales volume lift (controlling for outside variables) as measured by Symphony IRI; if not, the last ad in a series of three (or more) is free.

To date, the newspaper industry’s program has generated results for nine marketers including Campbell Soup, General Mills, PepsiCo and multiple brands from P&G. Sales volume increases for all but one marketer met the minimum threshold of 10% and some skyrocketed to 25%.

There is no question that print advertising in local newspapers works to drive in-store traffic and incremental sales. We are confident that newspapers play a unique role in multi-platform media consumption. With more and more purchase decisions being made at the local level there is no better, trustworthy medium available to deliver a marketer’s message and stimulate consumer actions that will lift brand sales.

We applaud the magazine industry for its support of print and for getting the word out to advertisers that print media works. With that said, study after study demonstrates that when a marketer is looking to drive sales, the immediacy of local newspapers is a huge plus.

Our CPG Guarantee is available to marketers interested in testing newspapers as part of their media mix. The requirements of our program are nominal as compared with the new magazine initiative and the results will be clear and indisputable.

In this age of accountability we encourage marketers to challenge us to demonstrate results. With delayed viewing of advertiser messages due to OTT and C7, it is incumbent that advertisers experiment and innovate. Here at the NNN we firmly believe that not every new media innovation involves new media. This is a prime example.

The opinions and points of view expressed in this commentary are exclusively the views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillage/MyersBizNet management or associated bloggers.