Marketers: before you submit the new financial year’s marketing budgets for approval, it might be wise to reconsider your magazine advertising spend, if there is any at all.

Despite the popular saying that print is dead, research by ACP Magazine and Neuro-Insight Research, a neuroscience research agency has revealed that amongst all forms of media, magazine boast the highest levels of consumer engagement.

By measuring brain activity during a magazine reading process, the research found that compared to television, internet, radio and out-of-home, magazines receive the most intense level of engagement and material consumed often gets stored into readers’ long term memory.

Phil Scott, ACP magazines’ managing director says: “[The research] confirms what we already know: consumers love magazines. They involve, inspire, engage, evoke emotions, resonate, motivate and inform.”

Advertising featured in magazines is also highly effective, as the research reveals that brand salience increases significantly with consumers after reading a magazine, with an average rise of 7.3 per cent.

Brand salience is the measure of the degree to which a brand is thought about or noticed when a customer is in a buying situation, and whether or not the advertisement enters the reader’s long-term memory.

More importantly, brand salience with brands that have previously advertised in earlier issues of a magazine measure 15 per cent higher than the global average, showing significant in-built emotional brand equity that consumers already developed from previous magazine exposures.

Brand salience for competitor brands that do not advertise in a particular issue also drops by an average of 8.2 per cent, further cementing the effectiveness of appearing in a magazine.

“Quite simply,” says Scott, “magazines work for consumers and for advertisers”.

Hence, the lesson to take away today is: placing an ad in a magazine not only helps consumers gain brand retention and positive brand salience for your brand, but from a competitive point of view, it also helps break away your competitor’s influence on your target audience.

And as a final plug, Marketing magazine is closing July’s issue and there are limited print advertising spaces remaining. To give your brand that extra boost in brand salience, call us at 03-9948 4989 or email [email protected]