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Volume 8, Issue 1 Using Research to Establish ROI
Using Research to Establish ROI Author Bill McBride is president/CEO of Harvey Research, Inc., a provider of research services to magazines since 1953. McBride has been with Harvey Research for 10 years and prior to that served in various executive capacities with the advertising agencies of Leo Burnett and Ogilvy & Mather. One of the first questions advertising salespeople get asked is, "How are you going to measure my return on investment?" Indeed, over the past several years, there’s been increasing pressure on magazines to demonstrate how effective they are in generating ROI for their advertisers, leading to numerous attempts both by the media and by advertisers to create a predictive model for ROI of media spending. Unfortunately, establishing a credible and reliable model has been very difficult because of the complexity of isolating one marketing variable in the medium from the total marketing mix for advertised products. One alternative is to use market research to demonstrate that getting a return on the media investment is highly probable. This does not attempt to predict a dollar ROI, but rather would provide a strong confidence level that magazine advertising will work to generate sales results. This strategy first involves identifying certain attributes and reader behaviors associated with the advertising media role that are well-recognized as having a direct impact on how effective ads are likely to be. Often measured through normal research conducted on magazines, the most widely accepted of these are • the demographic focus of the magazine’s audience, available through syndicated sources like MRI, audit surveys from ABC and BPA, and magazine-specific reader profile studies; • the purchasing power, habits or activity of the audience, often available through custom industry studies or custom studies on magazines; • the audience’s level of involvement with the magazine, which can be ascertained from a number of research sources that document such things as time spent reading the magazine, high readership of editorial, longevity of subscription and high response rate to questionnaires; and • the communications performance of ads in the magazine, which can be documented through ad readership studies. Advertisers and agencies often use various pieces of this information—when available—to anticipate performance from a specific magazine investment. A magazine that can provide an aggregate of this information, describing who its readers are and how they behave, will make it much easier for its advertisers to determine how likely they are to get a good return on their investment. This information is even more valuable when a magazine can compare its performance to an industry benchmark. For example, knowing that a certain magazine is read by its average reader for 95 minutes is particularly enlightening when you know that, industry-wide, the average magazine is read for only 37 minutes. Such a comparison provides a much better understanding of that magazine’s level of reader involvement. Harvey Research maintains an extensive database of magazine research on more than 400 publications, providing a valuable perspective on “typical” magazine reader behavior. Some of the more salient aspects of that behavior follow. Reader actions taken, as percentage of readers: • Discussed ads or articles in the issues with someone (52.3%) Average time spent reading: 37.2 minutes Average pass-along readers beyond primary reader: 1.6 Average number of reading/sitting occasions: 2.3 Percentage of subscribers who read at least X% of the entire magazine for each issue: 51.5% Percentage who recall seeing/reading average editorial feature: 42%/27% Percentage who recall seeing/reading average ad in the issue: 38%/18% Magazines have a great ROI story to tell, primarily because they deliver a very focused and captive reading audience. Widely available research on magazines can provide a credible perspective on—and proof of—this ROI performance. Force hard-disk housekeeping Every morning at 3:15, while you sleep (or while some of you work), Mac’s OS X runs a series of background scripts in order to perform some hard drive and system housekeeping such as clearing log and scratch files. These scripts differ a bit on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. The trouble is, if you turn your machine off every night, these scripts are never run! If you’d like to force them to activate in the daytime, you can easily do it via the Terminal application, which you’ll find in your Applications > Utilities folder. Run it and type in the following at the command prompt: sudo periodic daily weekly monthly. You’ll have to enter your computer’s password in order to start the process. When it finishes, type in the command exit and quit the terminal program. Speaking of hard-drive housekeeping, have you ever wondered why you haven’t seen many disk defragmentation programs for OS 10.3 “Panther”? That’s because the system automatically defragments itself; any file that is loaded that is detected to be fragmented is automatically moved to a new area on the disk. Ahh, the joys of a modern OS. Faux bold and italic in InDesign New users to InDesign will notice that there are no “B” or “I” buttons to make fonts bold and italic anymore. Believe me, this is great news for us in the printing world. However, if you’re dead set on making an italic font from a face that has no true italic, you’ll have to use the skew command, which appears in the bottom right corner of your character palette (type Control/Command-T). Keep in mind that fake italic fonts never look as good as the real ones. To make a bold font that doesn’t really exist, you’ll want to add a stroke to the type. Select the text you want bolded, type the F10 key, and input a small value; I’d suggest .1 pt. This works best with sans serif fonts. Also keep in mind that your stroke color should match the color of your text. PC users: Try a better browser With Microsoft repeatedly releasing security updates to fix holes in Internet Explorer, and the rapid rise of frustrating pop-up ads, many might be looking for a better alternative in web browsers. Enter FireFox, a free browser from Mozilla. Not only does it provide faster, private browsing with no pop-ups, but it also allows tabbed browsing (à la Mac’s Safari) to permit opening multiple web sites in one window. The download is an unbelievably small 4.7 MB (compared to Internet Explorer 6’s Service Pack which can be close to 80 MB). Find it here. A few minutes of use and I was hooked. If you currently use Explorer, give it a shot! There’s no such thing as PDF security Those of you who have attended our seminars have heard me mention that security in PDFs can be defeated. Here’s living proof: Universe Software, a company based in Germany, offers a program that will instantly remove all passwords and restrictions from any PDF, as long as it’s not a password that’s required to open the document. Even if you never use this software, be aware that such programs exist. And of course, please don’t put security on any PDF you send to United Litho! Major software savings for non-profits If you are in a non-profit/ 501(c)(3) organization, you may acquire all kinds of computer software and hardware for next to nothing. Check out TechSoup. Although you won’t find Quark or InDesign here, I did find Macromedia Freehand for $35, Microsoft Office for $20 and a Windows XP Upgrade for $8. Education-related organizations can obtain a variety of donated products and services from Gifts in Kind; click here to obtain free Adobe software. Disable Windows warning message Have you ever gone into your Program Files or Windows folders, only to see the following message: “This folder contains files that keep your system working properly. There is no need to modify its contents. To view the contents of this folder, click: Show Files.” If you’re tired of seeing it, go to Tools and pick “Folder Options.” Then click on the “View” tab and choose “Show hidden files and folders.” Finally, navigate to those folders where you are getting this warning screen and delete the file named “Desktop.ini”. Goodbye, warning message! Elizabeth Agnew: ULI's "Den Mother" Elizabeth Agnew has stepped up to the plate in lots of ways since joining United Litho more than 32 years ago. She's manned the switchboard, entered time cards, assisted in the bindery, supported the senior management team, ordered supplies, made travel arrangements, managed client training registrations, ordered lunches, sent out Publishers' Performance Indices and negotiated with vendors. But perhaps the role that best defines her is "Mom."Not only is she devoted to her own brood—seven children, 12 grandchildren and one great-grandchild—but she takes care of all 172 employees at ULI. “She’s like a Den Mother to us,” says estimator Leslie Johns. “She cares about everyone who works here, cares about what is happening in their lives, and is the first to offer a big hug when one is needed.” It’s a theme that’s repeated often: “She’s our mother hen ... she has a true personal interest in the lives of everyone around her,” says Human Resources Vice President Ken Raker. Marketing Leader Pam Linne adds, “There are no ‘strangers’ where Elizabeth is concerned. She welcomes you into her life as if you’ve known her for a lifetime.” Operations VP Chris Azbill notes that “she’s ULI’s ‘mother figure’— a great lady with a big heart.” And ULI President Ken Garner points to her influence on the company’s culture, describing her as the “classic unofficial leader.” “She’s an outstanding hostess and ambassador for the company,” Garner says, noting that her interaction with existing and potential customers helps to ensure higher levels of customer satisfaction. Indeed, for many customers, Agnew is the public face of United Litho, whether she’s picking them up at the airport, setting out refreshments for a meeting or answering the phone with a cheery “Helloooooo, this is United Litho!” Agnew herself considers her greatest strength to be the ability to “convey to people that I am glad they’re here and make them feel comfortable. My goal is to make anyone who walks through the door—whether it is a customer, prospect, employee, job applicant, anyone—feel at home. “God gives us many gifts,” she says. “I know my gift is service and I am going to give it my best.” It’s not surprising, then, that for Agnew there’s no such thing as a typical day at ULI. “Every day is different, because I spend a portion of each day helping others with whatever the day brings. I really enjoy helping people ... and I love to investigate things! When someone says, ‘I want ...’ or “do you know ...,’ the first thing I think to myself is, ‘I’ll find it or figure it out for you!’” Convinced that “you get more out of life when everyone is your friend,” Agnew says, “I’m fascinated with what makes people tick. Everyone has a key. It’s my job to find the key and to unlock the best in people.” At 68, she says she’s still not ready to think about retirement. “Why would I want to leave something that makes me so happy?” An Extraordinary Service Experience: Sojourners In 1974, two years out of college and fresh from a stint at the Chicago Sun-Times, Ed Spivey found his calling as the art director at The Post-American. “I left the Sun-Times because I wanted my work to have more of a social impact,” he says, explaining that The Post-American began as a magazine for Christians against the Vietnam War. Founded in 1971 by a handful of students at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois, the publication focused on the connection between spiritual renewal and social justice, with an emphasis on activism. By 1975, the magazine had taken the name Sojourners and moved to Washington, D.C., where the group branched out into ministry in its low-income neighborhood. Thirty years later, Sojourners is a 52-page, four-color monthly with a readership of nearly 50,000, and its office building on 15th Street houses not only the magazine staff, but also Call to Renewal, a network of people, churches and organizations working to overcome poverty. In those 30 years, Spivey says, the magazine has undergone several redesigns, its staff has increased tenfold and he’s worked with a lot of printers. “We’ve been through a dozen printers in three decades,” he says, “and United Litho gives us the best quality, service and price by far.” Spivey says he used to assume that state-of-the-art printing was pretty straightforward—that, with the right equipment, anyone could do it. “But with our previous printer,” he explains, “there was always some sort of problem, whether it was with the product or the process.” In contrast, he says, “things have gone smoothly with ULI from the first issue. If anything arises, it’s always resolved quickly.” Account Manager Sharon Wobie believes the success of the three-year relationship has much to do with Spivey’s professionalism and that of the rest of the Sojourners staff. “They’re always very thorough, yet they’re very relaxed and confident about their job,” Wobie says. “They design a beautiful publication and are always good about keeping us in the loop on any changes. If they’re planning something out of the ordinary, they ask lots of questions beforehand to make sure that we’re getting what we need to be able to produce the end product they’re expecting.” She adds, “I feel like I’m part of their office at times, and I like that they work to make sure I’m included in all aspects of the production of the magazine. It's what allows me to do my best work for them.” A big fan of the training ULI offers, Spivey says he’s attended a number of seminars and never misses the TechTips column in PressProof. “I’m always able to apply Andrew Moore’s software tips right away,” he says. “It seems like he’s always one step ahead of us. He answers my questions before I know I have them.” He also credits Moore with Sojourner’s smooth transition from a conventional workflow to a PDF workflow. “ULI did a very thorough job helping us to convert to a PDF workflow,” Spivey says, “and Andy was always available when we had questions. I’ve found him to be a priceless asset ... it’s critical to have a desktop person with his knowledge in-house!” Although delighted with the cost savings he’s seen as a result of the move to a PDF workflow, Spivey notes that getting Sojourners’ advertisers up to speed has been a bit of a challenge. “We’ve had some issues with getting high-quality ads with all the fonts and graphics embedded, but ULI’s rasterizing magic has really improved the quality of the ads.” Account Executive Julie Williamson says Sojourners’ attention to detail has been remarkable from the beginning. “We’ve never had any quality problems,” she says. “They’re very good at listening and taking direction from ULI. The first issue they went PDF was flawless—and that doesn’t happen very often! “Ed is truly one of a kind ... I wish I had more customers like him,” Williamson adds. “It’s obvious that he takes great pride in his work, but he also knows how to enjoy life and has a great sense of humor. I never know what’s going to happen next!” As a case in point, she cites Spivey’s first visit to the ULI facility in Ashburn. “When he came for the plant tour, he said he liked the tops of the muffins best and asked if he could just have the tops. Of course I thought he was kidding, but I said sure! Then I noticed that he actually cut off all the tops, leaving the bottoms. So when I sent him the print agreement, I sent it with a dozen muffin tops.” Spivey is known for his wry sense of humor—his credits include an award-winning monthly humor column—and hasn’t forgotten Williamson’s gesture. Asked what’s missing from his relationship with ULI, he says, “I don’t think I get enough muffin tops, Whitman’s Samplers or lunches out with Julie.” Turning serious again, Spivey says he’s never been happier with a printer. “ULI does everything right,” he says. “It’s very competitive; comparatively, no one meets United’s price. And the service has always been extraordinary. “When all your needs are being met, it’s difficult to say what’s ‘best.’ ULI somehow puts it all together … quality, service and price. It’s a total package deal. After three decades and a dozen printers, we’ve finally found a home. We are 100 percent satisfied.” Except, perhaps, for those muffin tops ...
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