Combination of Earned & Paid Media out-performs Brand Advertising alone.

Synaptic Digital and WPP’s Kantar Video announced the results of Scaling PR: The impact of Earned, Paid, and Brand Content, a comprehensive attitudinal study that discovered that consumer-buying trends are significantly impacted when newsworthy earned and paid messages are combined. Earned media is typically classified as editorial coverage resulting from media relations’ efforts whereas paid media broadly includes advertising and brand campaigns. The study was conducted using video assets supplied by a major automotive maker and over 1,800 men and women participated.

The findings revealed that consumers have a more positive response to earned media that is packaged together with paid content. In addition, when men and women are in the market to purchase an automobile, women synthesize messages delivered over different formats resulting in a much higher lift in brand awareness than if the messages were delivered via a single platform. Men, however, saw no multichannel lift over earned PR, their highest scoring format.

“By a substantial margin the highest-performing formats with in-market consumers were the earned PR and its paid companion, narrative marketing,” said Andrew Latzman, Senior Vice President, Research, Kantar Video.

Brand messages packaged as news, whether delivered as earned or paid media, generated strong brand perceptions, message building and awareness. The combination of earned PR placements with narrative marketing segments, which are information-rich branded content placed via targeted paid media, generated the greatest brand scores. Used in concert, they delivered significantly more impact than a Brand messaging strategy alone.

Jim Lonergan, CEO and President, Synaptic Digital said, “When consumers are in the market to purchase, their appetite for facts to help make an informed buying decision is best served by the information made available through the Earned and Paid message formats.”

Men versus Women

Another interesting insight from the research suggests a difference in how men and women receive and process messages across multiple media channels. Women were able to synthesize messages delivered over different formats resulting in a much higher lift in brand awareness than if the messages were delivered via a single platform. Men, however, saw no multichannel lift over earned PR, their highest scoring format.

Other Findings:

– The combination of Synaptic Digital’s Paid executions and Synaptic Digital’s Earned exposures generated the greatest brand scores. Used in concert, they can deliver significantly more impact than a Brand messaging strategy alone

– Messages packaged as news, whether delivered as Paid or Earned, generated strong brand perceptions, message building and awareness

– Among the targets, both the Paid and the Earned formats performed very well on their own, with Earned significantly increasing awareness metrics and Paid increasing persuasion metrics

– Paid narrative marketing performed particularly well with a self-selected in-market audience by providing valuable facts required for informed decision making

– Female respondents demonstrated a significant lift in baseline metrics over men when exposed to Paid, Earned and Brand executions

– When looking to understand what order was best for audiences to view execution types, optimal sequence of exposure was “Paid > Brand > Earned”, generating, on average a 28 point delta.

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For more information at http://www.synapticdigital.com