NEW YORK — A number of regional brands are finding a surprising way to drive efficiency: a national cable buy. Just in fast food, Domino's, Dairy Queen and Sonic have all increased reach and improved sales by swapping local TV spending for national cable even if that means advertising in markets where they don't operate.
"This is a definite trend in the industry," said Dairy Queen CMO Michael Keller. "You can see in the data more and more medium-size competitors in our market have moved to national [buys] using cable as their springboard because it's national and much more affordable."
This year, Dairy Queen flipped what's been a regionally slanted TV budget, putting 60% into national cable and leaving 40% for regional markets. Mr. Keller noted that increasing media fragmentation and growing popularity of cable programming has brought cable and broadcast to near parity in viewership, but cable is generally much cheaper. For Dairy Queen, which has a high concentration of locations in the most-expensive markets, like New York (mostly in New Jersey) and Los Angeles, a cable buy made sense.
The strategy shift seems to be industry wide. According to Kantar Media, measured network cable TV spending by fast-food marketers has increased nearly 50% over the past four years to $738 million in 2009 from $506 million in 2006. Spot TV buys declined 16% over the same period to $739 million, from $882 million. Network TV spending also fell 13%, to $831 million.
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