Media Award for TNS and Northcliffe

Continuing our coverage of Marketing Magazine's Research Awards 2003, held recently at the Langham Hilton Hotel, London, the Media Research Award was won by TNS and Northcliffe Newspapers for an innovative 18-month survey involving nine newspapers.

Northcliffe selected TNS Media for a project aiming to maximise readership, increase reader satisfaction and identify ways to better engage readers. The survey involved some 12,000 readers of the nine regional evening papers.

As a result of the survey, Northcliffe's editors have made significant changes to the content and layout of its newspapers to reflect readers' interests, based on a better understanding of how different uses of headlines, photos and design can grab and hold a reader's attention.

Respondents went through their newspapers in 'real time'. For each article, respondents noted whether they had read it all, part of it or just the headline, and each one read was rated as good, average or poor. All the articles and adverts were then coded by position on the page and in the book; by size, type of article, type of headline, picture, geography and subject. The resulting interactive database contains over 21 million pieces of data.

Joanne Wilbraham, Director, TNS Media, points out that this is the division's sixth major award in recent years: 'Winning this award is an important acknowledgement of our commitment to building long-term relationships with our customers and arriving at clear action points for improving their business. Although reading and noting studies are not new, the judges were able to see the unprecedented scale of both the project itself and the beneficial impact on Northcliffe Newspapers'.

According to Mark Horton, Group Head of Marketing at Northcliffe Newspapers, 'We chose TNS Media due to our confidence in its advice and consultancy capabilities, having worked in a research partnership with them over many years'. Practical use made of findings is key to the Awards.

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas unless otherwise stated.

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