Newspapers highly effective with timely Covid messaging

NEW research has shown that newspapers play a highly effective role in delivering timely and complex Covid-19 public awareness messages to the public.

Since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic in March, the government have been communicating Covid-19 public health and information messages via full-page advertisements in Ireland’s national and local newspapers.

Independent research conducted by international research company, Research and Analysis of Media (RAM), has shown that these advertisements outperformed all other similar ads in achieving above average recall, recognition, engagement, and action.

The online survey was completed by an independent panel of 750 respondents.

A total of 77% of readers recalled the full-page public health advertisements.

This particular campaign outperformed other public awareness campaigns in the UK & Ireland, which would normally expect a recall figure of around 49%.

According to Dianne Newman, CEO RAM (UK & Ireland) this research clearly demonstrated the power and effectiveness of Irish newsbrands in delivering complex messages, that can be challenging to portray through other media channels.

‘It was effective, not only in terms of creating strong memory traces amongst the Irish population, but also encouraging them to respond and take action,’ Dianne said.

The Southern Star’s managing director Sean Mahon agreed.

‘This is positive research showing the effectiveness of newspapers in delivering vital Covid-19 public information via government full page advertising,’ he said.

‘The Southern Star carried these adverts for several weeks and this illustrates how effective we can be for all organisations and businesses, whether local, national, SME, corporate or government who want to get a message out to a wide audience, especially when we combine our newspaper with our digital reach too. Crucially, we know our readers have ‘trust’ in our brand and our media and that’s very important for all advertisers these days.’