SMG sell Primesight - are posters the only mass market advertising?
Posted on Friday, August 31st, 2007 at 1:53pm. #
‘Poster’, Dublin, by Jaqian. Used under licence.
Given that I used to work for SMG, I’ve been following the fortunes of my ex-company with some interest.
While we await a buyer for SMG’s Virgin Radio business, and we’ve been waiting for a buyer for Pa pah pa pah pa Pearl & Dean since the dawn of time, they’ve finally managed to offshoot outdoor advertising business Primesight for £62m, according to Media Guardian.
A friend has just mailed me with a clipping of the story, and the comment “£62m!!! For a few bits of hardboard on streets… madness, madness…”.
I’m not sure I agree.
Advertisers find it harder to reach the mass-market than they ever have. There’s been a tremendous growth in television and radio channels fuelled by digital broadcasting (DAB, Freeview and Sky). There’s been a decline in newspaper consumption, too. Gone are the days when you could catch over half the population by one well-placed ad in Coronation Street.
It gets more difficult when you look at the real power of advertising - that of repetition. Ads work on an ‘opportunities to see/hear’ basis - the thought is that you need to hit people at least three times in their buying cycle. An eminent but un-Googlable advertising man said that advertising works by people thinking “What is it?” on the first view; “What of it?” on the second view, and “Let’s do it!” on the third view. I’m not sure I buy that; but clearly, as Dave ‘Giff’ Gifford says, “the only thing that works in advertising today is ‘what you say’ times ‘how many times you say it’.”
Radio is especially good at frequency-building; but for sheer mass-market frequency-building, poster advertising is up there as one of the best. I see the same ads every morning and every evening in the tube; I see the same poster ads on the trip on the BBC ’special bus’ over to White City and back; day, after day, after day.
For me, poster advertising has a clear, mass-market future. The vogue is currently away from “hitting as many people as possible with your message”, but for many brands, that’s important to deliver.
So “£62m for a few bits of hardboard on streets” (in fact, Primesight are cleverer than that) seems a pretty good deal to me.
