Creatures of marketing

By Harry Pegg, QMI Agency

There’s an old saying that any publicity is good publicity and a study by a Canadian media monitor agency seems to bear that out.

Ottawa-based MediaMiser took a look at how media coverage affects sales figures, using a case study of Toyota news coverage in the U.S. from January through May of 2011.

If there was a measurable facet, the folks at MediaMiser measured it. They looked at the subject of the news – recalls, production stories, the “sticking throttle” controversy, effect of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami. They considered whether the reporting was positive, negative or neutral and whether there were differences in media coverage in various regions of the U.S.

The study considered whether there is a relationship between the amount of coverage and vehicle sales and whether the tone of coverage affected sales.

MediaMiser says a random sampling of articles aboutToyota– based on four categories: production, recalls, technology and safety – was gathered from Jan. 1 to May 31.

During the study period, production and recalls were mentioned more frequently than technology and safety.

Interestingly, charts show that sales increased in February over January despite more frequent mentions of recall incidents including a government report on the accelerator investigation and a new recall by Toyota. Sales continued to increase in March as production stories took precedence with the Japanese disasters. Production-related news was also predominant in April and May where sales figures fell off, probably due to the idling of plants in Japan and North
America.

MediaMiser concludes that unit sales figures and the number of articles followed each other and that there may be a relationship between the amount of news articles and unit sales. It would seem that sales increased or declined as coverage (good or bad) increased and declined.

Research analyst Jen Hogan says the study didn’t take into account historical sales trends for Toyota.

She says they saw a correlation between the amount of coverage and sales trends.

“But our biggest surprise was the lack of correlation between the tone of coverage and sales figures.”
Firstly, it was a business thing. It doesn’t hurt for a Canadian company to capture clients south of the border, although Hogan stops short of saying that.Why did a Canadian company explore the trends for the U.S.branch of the company rather than Canada?

“We wanted to explore U.S. media results,” she says, “and we found it easier to get statistics from the U.S.”

MediaMiser, founded in 2003, has branches in B.C. and Toronto. It uses patented technology to monitor coverage by traditional and social media for a number of clients, producing daily analysis reports.

Hogan says clients are paying close attention to social media such as Twitter.

“Social media is not outweighing traditional media with clients,” she says, “but they are incorporating it into their planning.”

MediaMiser director of media intelligence, Michael Sloboda says the company has found that “Twitter and print media actually have a very complimentary relationship.

“Twitter spurs coverage while print sustains it. And, while print takes a little longer to reach its coverage peak, it has a greater sustainability and momentum.”

If you’d like more information on MediaMiser, you can go to www.mediamiser.com.

Tags: ads, marketing, MediaMiser, Toyota