Abstract:

To strengthen its advertising market position, VNU - the largest Dutch magazine publisher - has designed an innovative magazine marketing strategy based on the concept of state-of-mind. State of mind refers to a set of personality characteristics involving lifestyle as well as activities & interests and applies to both readers, magazine titles and consumer products on a brand level. A person’s state-of-mind at any given period determines: * her choice of magazine titles to buy and read; and * her selection of consumer products and brands to purchase and use. Magazines are particularly suited to exploit such state-of-mind impact. The theoretical approach identifies temporary individual-moments in a person's state of mind. Temporary individual-moments supplement the more permanent, stable personality characteristics which underly traditional segmentation. They relate directly to emotional, instrumental and expressive components of reader-magazine involvement. Focus is on the convergence between the state-of-mind of a magazine and of a consumer brand to select eligible titles across which to subsequently perform quantitative media planning optimization.