The sports section of newspapers is traditionally under-used by advertisers, according to Phil Hayden, head of media strategy at The Media Palace. ÒThe rule used to be to get in on the earliest pages of the newspaper. Fifteen years ago people may have started reading the paper at the front and worked their way through, but that is atypical now, with sections that have grown as brands in their own right,Ó says Hayden. The Media Palace recommended launching the Pepsi-Cola drink, All Sport, by spending the entire budget on colour ads in the sports sections of newspapers. This strategy ended up achieving a 49% awareness for the brand among the target of men aged 16 to 29 who love sport, which is a majority of the demographic segment. Sales volumes increased seven times over the period of the campaign, which was the peak period of October to December, according to Millward Brown. While sales were expected to grow over these spring and summer months, share of category increased by four times over the same period. The drink had been on retail shelves for four months before the campaign began, so the sales rise can be attributed to the spike provided by the first advertising for the brand. Mick Duffy, brand manager of All Sport at Pepsi-Cola Bottlers, explains how the strategy worked. ÒWe positioned ourselves as being in tune with AustraliansÕ love for sport, not for the elite, but for those with a passion for sport. We did that by commenting on topical events in sport, and we believe we were successful in connecting with people.Ó Each ad was created to comment on that dayÕs sports news, running in the following dayÕs paper, on a Monday or a Friday. The media buyer, Eighty Ks, also spent a lot of time haggling with the newspapers over the placement of the ads, with the result that 70% appeared immediately adjacent to the story they were satirising. This required up to seven phone calls for each ad, and was achieved despite the problem of colour being unavailable on many pages of the section. Pepsi knew it would by difficult to launch All Sport in June 1999, as the brand was the seventh drink to launch in the $162m category of sports drinks. ÒThe challenge could not be greater,Ó says Hayden. ÒIt had no discernible point of difference in its product formulation and would be backed with an advertising spend of only $500,000 where the established power brands of Gatorade and Powerade, which dominate the category, spend about $3m each year.Ó The strategy was to take a different approach to everything that existed in the category. ÒThis would be reflected in its brand positioning, use of media and in turn creative execution,Ó says Hayden. Gatorade and Powerade were anchored to Òsuccess and achievementÓ in sport, Hayden says, with a reliance on TV campaigns showing sweaty bodies and the Òdrinking shotsÓ of finely-tuned athletes using the drinks to rehydrate. By contrast, The Media Palace recommended that All Sport staked out the ÒattitudeÓ of having a passion for sport, with the brand Òfuelling AustraliansÕ love of sportÓ. Without a direct connection to elite athletes, the brand could avoid the expensive TV campaigns of its rivals yet still celebrate a love or passion for sport. The sports sections of newspapers were chosen because it was the one place that satiated the love of sport in its audience, giving full analysis and behind-the-scenes details of sporting events. While the target could also hear sports results on the Triple M network, radio news was seen as too shallow to join the brand with an authoritative source of sports news. Qualitative research by The Media Palace found that while sport-oriented young men are not heavy readers of newspapers, they consider a few minutes reading the sports section as essential. Competitors had missed this opportunity, with few ads for sports drinks ever placed in the sports sections of newspapers. Young men make up a smaller part of newspaper readership, but sport was almost twice as likely to the reason that men aged 16 to 24 read their newspaper, according to Panorama research. The eight week campaign achieved a reach of 65% of its target audience.
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