MEDIA & MARKETING:In this economic climate, very few groups have the nerve to invest in advertising, writes SIOBHAN O'CONNELL
CONVENTIONAL MARKETING wisdom has it that investment in advertising through a recession garners more bang for your buck. But very few companies have the nerve to make such an investment, especially when the spend is partly financed by a bank loan.
So hats off to courier company Nightline, led by John Tuohy and David Field. The company now faces into a new opportunity as the market for postal and parcel delivery is deregulated. In 2008, the postal regulator ComReg did some market research about the public profile of potential competitors to An Post. This showed Tuohy and Field that there was very little awareness of their brand so they decided to take some remedial action.
This has taken the form of a €1 million marketing spend over the past year, financed by a combination of cash reserves and a loan from Bank of Scotland Ireland. To manage the project, Nightline turned to marketing consultant Howard Kent of Anchora, who conducted a marketing review and brand audit. That brought together a roster of agencies to create a new corporate identity and plan the advertising spend. Dynamo Design Studio handled the rebrand, Adept Advertising developed the creative, Mediaedge:CIA bought the media space and David Curtin PR handled the publicity offensive.
Not having tackled marketing in a serious way before, Tuohy admits his company had no idea where to start. “But once we looked at the issue, we realised how much work we had to do.”
One of the first issues was whether to ditch the company name. However, with a trading record going back to 1992, Tuohy and Field decided to stick with the Nightline brand, even if it doesn’t clearly explain the business. They agreed to a new look for the logo, and Nightline became Nightline Delivers. The advertising also incorporates a graphic of a running man with a parcel in his hand. The new look necessitated major spend on the company’s fleet of 300 vehicles. The cost of rebranding vans was €1,100 each while new artwork for the heavy goods vehicles cost €3,000 each.
To reach Nightline’s target audience of business decision makers, Mediaedge:CIA used a combination of advertising in Sunday newspapers, trade magazines, radio and online. The more novel advertising decisions included taking space in the match programme for an Ireland rugby game in Twickenham and sponsoring the Rugby Fantasy League competition on the Irish Times website.
According to Tuohy, the marketing investment is paying off. Turnover has increased by 10 per cent in the past year and Nightline has taken on 50 new staff.
“Prior to the campaign we were getting about 10 new business enquiries to our website each month. Now we are getting 10 enquiries a day.”
When Nightline was set up, Tuohy paid an art student €100 to design the company logo. Now he uses the services of five marketing agencies and he has no regrets.
“In the current economic environment, companies really have to spend more money on marketing and advertising their services because business is no longer going to come to your door. You have to go and find it. If you do nothing, your customer base will be whittled away.”
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Results for 2009 from Ireland’s two media plcs give some indication of what’s happening in the advertising market. UTV Media reports that advertising revenue in its Irish radio stations, which include FM104 and Q102, declined by 16 per cent last year. After cost reductions, the company limited the year-on-year profit decline in the stations from £8 million to £7 million. However, UTV says television advertising revenue sourced from Dublin fell 33 per cent in 2009.
At Independent News & Media, advertising revenues at its Irish titles fell by 35 per cent in 2009, reflecting what the group calls “the most difficult advertising market ever seen in Ireland”. Both companies report some improvement in the advertising market so far this year.
