Great Singapore Sale print ads had overall poor utilization: Survey

Many ads had low visibility.

Ipsos Singapore has released results of its survey on how print advertisers fared during the latest Great Singapore Sale, revealing that the visibility of ads in certain categores fared far better than others.

Airlines saw more than half or 56% of its ads seen, followed by Banking & Finance at 45%. Shopping malls though was only at 25% visibility.

Across all ads evaluated, consumers noticed only 3 out of 10 ads on an average.

Ipsos said ads with poor visibility resulted from poor branded impressions, and vice versa. Instances occured when brand identifying elements of 2 brands within the same business category were not easily distinguishable from each other, or there was not enough consistent branding elements to link the ad to the brand.

"While advertising is only one aspect contributing to a brand's success at the Great Singapore Sale, the study proved that a significant amount of spend on print advertising this Great Singapore Sale period was not properly utilized. A bigger bang for buck can be achieved with good brand linkage. Without clear branding you could actually end up benefitting your competitor."

Still, the ads seem to have proven quite effective once they were actually seen by shoppers. Among those who made a purchase during the sale, 84% looked at Great Singapore Sale specific advertisement prior to their purchase.

"This indicates that ads did play an essential role in informing shoppers about GSS offers. But some ads did better than others."

The survey also found that 2 out of 3 Singaporeans made a purchase during the sale to avail special discounts. Most of them purchased their regular products that were on discount such as apparel (69%), personal care products (57%), footwear (38%) and cosmetics & fragrance (34%), according to the Ipsos survey.

The survey was conducted near the tail-end of the Great Singapore Sale among 1,053 Singaporeans and PRs aged 15-65, with 30 print ads across the industries included in the survey.

In terms of which ads were most memorable, regular advertisers such as Standard Chartered Bank (64%), Tiger Airways (56%), Nikon (51%), Enfagrow (50%) and CIMB (50%) dominated.

However Ipsos found that only 1 out of 10 ads were effective in terms of real or effective reach where respondents were able to recall the ad and link the brand accurately to it.