The company you keep: Revealing the hidden power of media context
David Penn and Judy HarmanConquest and Newsworks
Summary
Newsworks' (the marketing body for national newspapers) hypothesis is that when people view advertised brands within a familiar or loved media context, the positive implicit values evoked create positive impressions of the advertised brand. Moreover, the deeper the relationship, the greater the effect.
Validation is not straightforward because the effects of context are mostly unknown to the reader. Focus groups or questions that ask 'How suitable is this (title) as a place to advertise Brand X?' don't work. So Conquest...