The Newspaper's Story - about GDAs
Lindsay Farrar, Ad Planning Manager, Mirror Group
For generations
the Daily Mirror
has been associated
with reporting and
campaigning on issues
which matter to society,
successfully connecting with
millions of readers every day.
With 85% of readers[1] being in the
C1/C2/D/E social groups, the paper can
rightly lay claim to being able to take
the public's pulse on issues that really
matter to them.
Through its own reader surveys over half[2] of readers
stated that they wanted to eat more healthily this year.
Consequently, the Mirror entered into a commercial
partnership with the Food and Drink Federation in
educating readers to make sensible, practical and
relevant choices.
To engage Mirror readers, the GDA team built an
integrated campaign in print and online following the
format of our established Your Life section in the
Mirror.
The campaign under the banner 'Your Food' provided
concentrated, engaging, useful and inspiring articles,
features and advertisements over a 13-week period.
Using what they knew to be our readers' favourite
meals and major health concerns they were able to
focus the creative message to best effect and weave in
relevant GDA facts.
Alison Phillips, Associate Editor of the Daily Mirror said
"Trying to give their families a balanced, healthy diet
on a realistic budget is a massive issue for Daily Mirror
readers. What we wanted to achieve with Your Food
was to give our readers the tools to make sensible,
practical – and most of all personal – choices about
how they can live more healthily."
This approach generated some of the best
campaign results Mirror Group has seen. 95% of
readers were aware of the GDA labelling scheme
and 83% understood how to use them – a shift
of 15%.
|
Before |
After |
+/- |
| Awareness of term GDA |
76% |
83% |
+9% |
| Understanding of term GDA |
72% |
83% |
+15% |
| Awareness of GDA label |
91% |
95% |
+4% |
| Use of GDA label |
55% |
74% |
+35% |
| Quite/very easy to understand |
84% |
92% |
+10% |
Quite/very useful information on
the label |
79% |
83% |
+5% |
Can get the information quite/very
quickly |
82% |
88% |
+7% |
Would like to see labels on more
products |
84% |
88% |
+5% |
The Daily Mirror Nutritionist, Angela Dowden (writer of
'Your Food') said “People need to know they can eat
some of the foods they enjoy but still have a balanced
diet: clear labelling helps them do that more easily.”
The results of this campaign go some way to proving
that food labelling is now mass-market news. The team
that worked on this project hopes that this editorial
platform can continue to provide the right environment
for other food clients.
About Lindsay:
Lindsay Farrar is the Ad Planning
manager at Mirror Group and has responsibility for all
advertiser-facing research projects. Lindsay also runs the
5000-strong reader panel.
Before joining the Mirror in
2006, she was at CBS Outdoor (formerly Viacom).
Mirror Group's reader panel is used for campaign
evaluation and to generate insight into readers' views
on a range of subjects.
More information
References
- 85% C1/C2/D/E Source: Mirror Big Question Survey 2008
- 54% plan to eat more healthily. Source: Mirror Big Question Survey 2008
Last reviewed: 28 May 2009