Wait Marketing and Contextual Advertising

In two years, TomTom has become the leader of GPS navigation in Europe, with 60% market share, and is already #2 in the US. Alexander Ribbink, COO of TomTom, and brand management guru reveals the key factor of success of advertising campaigns.

First of all, let's review the 4 questions companies need to answer before they start a campaign:

1. Extensive or intensive?
The objective of an extensive campaign is to reach as many consumers as possible. An intensive campaign's aim is more to be memorized by consumers, thanks to repetition.

2. Continuous or one-shot?
A campaign can be permanent to encourage re-purchase or one-shot to support a promotion or a seasonal product.
In the case of consumer goods, advertising will be continuous.

3. Multimedia or monomedia?
A campaign can be multimedia in order to reach all the targets or focused on a single media if the target is a niche (for specialised products for example).

4. Launch or reinforcement?
Is the objective to make consumers aware of a new product or to remind them of the existence of a product?

Let's take the example of the launch of the GPS Navigation device TomTom GO:
1. Extensive: as the product benefits are obvious and the message easy to remember, the campaign was extensive.
2. One-shot: Due to the seasonality of consumer purchase, campaign was driven in a "one-shot" mode
3. Multimedia: « multimedia communication is the key factor of success for reaching all the consumers», confirms Alexander Ribbink. And as the penetration of GPS Navigation was low at the moment of the launch but the need of navigation is quite universal all the consumers were potentially in the target.
4. Launch: Investment was important but adapted to the launch of a product.

Thank you Alexander Ribbink for having revealed the key factor of success of TomTom's campaigns.

The good news with Wait Marketing is that communicating at the right moment increases consumers memorization of the message so that companies can focus on the number of consumers reached only!
TomTom's campaign in gas station is the perfect Wait Marketing example: consumers are all in the target (they have a car!) and they are receptive to the ad (they are waiting while filling up) :)

Diana Derval
Wait Marketing guru

Sources: Interview with Alexander Ribbink, COO of TomTom, January 20, 2006 / LAMBIN, Jean-Jacques, Le marketing stratégique, Ediscience International, Paris, 1998.