New media group aims to take the 'junk' out of mail

By Helen Vause

There's a newcomer to the ranks of official bodies in the advertising industry. It is the Letterbox Media Association.

The people who put all those circulars and brochures in the nation's mailboxes have taken steps to be heard, seen and be accountable for the role they play in advertising and marketing.

The volume of circulars and brochures has steadily been increasing and spills forth from letterboxes in even greater masses with assorted offerings for Christmas shopping. Whether we call it junk mail or unaddressed advertising, no one until now has really had a close look at how well this advertising channel works.

The Letterbox Media Association decided it needed to lift its image and come up with the weaponry to be taken a lot more seriously in the marketing mix. The newly formed association commissioned a well-overdue first formal evaluation of an advertising channel that has been in use for more than 40 years.

ACNielsen designed research to measure effectiveness and to position the letterbox alongside other media. It came up with surprising results that give letterbox advertising a glowing endorsement as an effective advertising channel for the appropriate users.

Some of the key findings of the research were that 94 per cent of people over 15 years read circulars and brochures. Seventy four per cent of people over 15 years are medium to heavy users of circulars and brochures - that is, they read from 11 or more identified advertising categories. Thirty-three per cent look forward to and actively use circulars and brochures and a further 24 per cent typically respond to offers for specials or bargains. A further 22 per cent use brochures to gather information and ideas for shopping.

The researchers also estimate that letterbox advertising totals $500 million and delivers about one billion items a year.

"The results are surprising," says ACNielsen's Harry Papafioratos, who designed the research. "Until now, any comparison with other media was so general as to be useless. Worldwide, this advertising channel has not really been seriously evaluated and in that sense this research is pioneering.

"There are some unique features about it. Unlike other media, the letterbox is a neutral channel. For widespread sampling it provides the opportunity to address the senses, including taste and smell.

"It fits into the lives of consumers in its own distinctive way in that people anticipate the regular arrival of advertising material and then they use it. An individual advertiser's campaign readership will be determined by factors such as the category, brand familiarity, creativity and the offer.

Those who advertise through the letterbox include retailers, not-for-profit organisations, council bodies, restaurants, entertainment facilities, service providers and event promoters. The Warehouse, for example, drops brochures to households twice a week.

The research results, combined with the relative cost of achieving a high level of breakthrough, make unaddressed letterbox advertising an extremely attractive proposition alongside other advertising channels, says the Letterbox Media Association.

Its founding members are the three big players in the business - Kiwimail Group, CD Marketing Communications and Deltarg Distribution Systems. They say the new figures have been very well received by users and by the advertising industry at presentations this week.

"The need for hard data to dispel the myths about 'junk' mail has been there for a long time," says the general manager of CD Marketing Communications, Grant Rawlinson.

"We needed to lift the profile and produce research to put the case for evaluating this channel alongside other media. Typically, with this channel, the planning for the medium has been left with the clients."

Retailers have driven the growth of letterbox advertising and recent refinements of the tool have led to more sophisticated use, says Mr Rawlinson. New software for pinpointing market segments has been in use in the New Zealand business for the last three years. Instead of putting out over a million brochures, retailers are now better able to target the people most likely to shop in their stores.

Though the letterbox may be a neutral channel, the creativity that goes into the printed communication is the key component in making a letterbox campaign work well.

Both Mr Rawlinson and Phil Clemas at Deltarg Distribution agree that creativity in this area has plenty of room for improvement.

"To some extent it's easy to see where the 'junk' mail image has come from," says Mr Clemas.

"A lot of material hasn't been of a high standard in the past and plenty of it still isn't. With impressive new research in front of them, it's to be expected users will identify new opportunities and see the benefits of higher creative standards."

The ACNielsen research also produced some positive information on perceived behaviour: most of us respond to letterbox advertising at least occasionally, 22 per cent of New Zealanders over 15 years keep everything that comes through their mailbox to look at, 67 per cent sort through and keep some of it and about 20 per cent of us respond actively by talking about an item, saving the item or visiting a store to purchase.

The conclusion the Letterbox Media Association hopes to set into conventional marketing wisdom is that the medium is a mainstream advertising channel and one of the most effective ways of getting a message in front of people.

Stand by for a run on jumbo-sized mailboxes.