Fast food ads benefit from newspaper, radio

"This media combination seems to work for media planners and their fast food clients," said Karen Dyke, strategy and insights specialist at Ads24. The research aimed to understand the role different media formats play in the consumers' path to purchase.

"We saw, from the period August 2011 to July 2012, that there was a 3.19% increase in fast food, restaurants and bar advertising spend. Of particular interest to us was the change in media strategy, with the highest spend increases in direct mail, internet and out of home media formats." The total spend in the stipulated category was R917,274,734.

The research model focuses specifically on the consumers' path to purchase, which comprises six stages: Introduction, Entertainment, Education, Information, Comparison and Persuasion. "So our research assists media planners in directing advertising spend based on how and when consumers make a choice to purchase something.

Synergy to the fast food media mix

"The research determined that TV and newspapers bring synergy to the fast food media mix and both channels play clearly differentiated roles in the consumers' mind. For planners, money is thus not wasted."

The fast food category formed part of Wave 2 of the Path to Persuasion (2011) and comprised of a sample of 203 respondents: males (56%) and females (44%) across all ethnic groups and representative of the makeup of the economically active South African population. Respondents had an average household income of R7 860 and personal income of R2 049.

As with the consumer path to purchase, "the media path to persuasion" is affected by different factors such as the target market, nature of the product being advertised, media weights, etc. Ultimately, the goal of the media planner should be to use a media mix where each channel in the mix enhances its role in the media path to persuasion.