News & Research

Samples generate interest, motivate customers to try products and are among the top reasons for making purchases

Whether it’s trying out fragrances, shampoos or make-up, integrating product samples into magazine ads makes the advertisement more effective and encourages customers to make a purchase. That is the conclusion of a new joint study about ad specials* by Burda distributor BCN and Burda’s central research department, Market Media Insights (MMI). For example, fragrance samples increase consumer interest in an advert by 63 %. And that’s not all: For 64 % of those surveyed, samples are also the reason why they finally went on to buy a given cosmetics product.

Advertising works. Especially in this particular case. When Monika Gruber, cabaret artiste and brand ambassador for Goldsteig cheese, accepted BCN’s invitation to visit the Burda Bar in Munich, the place was packed.

CEO Burkhard Graßmann describes the new BCN website, which just went live, as a ‘one-stop service point’. The new website is more than just a digital business card for the multichannel marketer. Customers can use the cross-media platform topic preview tool to better plan their brand communication in Burda media.

To complement ‘best for planning’, the GIK releases ‘best for planning trends’ every two months, which contains important information about the latest trends in media use, new products and consumer behaviour. This enables faster identification of the latest developments and allows capabilities to be more quickly realised and utilised. The data is collected via an online questionnaire six to ten times per year. Many of the results appear in the b4p main study.

best for tracking combines two approaches – creative tracking and brand tracking – to produce an informative study. This study enables you to analyse the effectiveness of the campaign itself and quantify the contribution of a range of media platforms to your campaign’s success.

As the first market media study, best for planning makes it possible to plan ahead for media convergence. Since 2013, b4p has been providing comprehensive analysis of media usage and consumer behaviour. It also serves as a valuable source of data for all brand managers. The study consolidates all important performance data and key indicators, thereby helping to improve the efficiency of media investments.