Advertising in magazines is a very powerful tool for the marketer. The style of advertising is uniquely different to any other advertising medium... Magazines deliver a cost-effective return on monies invested.

When advertising is created for magazines it becomes a powerful advocate for the brand. Frequency is the most important media planning consideration, ahead of reach and size. Frequency is interpreted as frequent exposures to the brand with many different creative treatments (artistic work) to position the brand.

Magazines build brand equity and create awareness. At its first exposure, a magazine ad typically performs 40% better than a television commercial in terms of creating awareness.

An advert works or it doesn't and if it works, it does the first time you see it. If it doesn't work, hammering at it over and over again isn't going to make any difference. No amount of repeated exposure will make it work. To avoid wear-out and over-exposure, magazine campaigns should be conceived in the form of several complementary creative treatments.

With regard to print pre-testing, most print advertising declines in impact with repeat exposure, a magazine campaign needs to be made up of a family of advertisements. The effectiveness seems to support the fact that, as time is under the control of the reader, more than one creative treatment of the same brand positioning is powerfully more effective in building advertising and brand awareness than multiple exposures of the same ad.

Highly successful companies have learned to harness the power of magazines, they have all used more than just a single creative treatment to keep the advertising fresh and new. Magazine advertising has got to provide a reason to stop, look and read - again and again. This is the way to make magazine advertising work.

copyright extracts from Fine Papers Printing Handbook