Such inserts are thin on the ground today, which is one reason why pitiful response rates of 0.1 per cent are the average for this medium. Lucy Stafford, media and account services director at Tri-Direct, reveals this worrying statistic in our Think Tank on inserts (page 20).
The truth is that it's becoming harder by the day to pick out inserts that are truly innovative. Bland has become the norm. It's an overlooked fact that great inserts are the ones that quietly seduce you rather than bore or annoy you to death.
Now, more than ever, inserts need to be creative to gain standout in what has become a free-for-all marketplace. The refusal by newspaper groups and magazine publishers to police themselves by setting limits on how many inserts they carry, means inserts must pull every trick in the book to get noticed. Yet few do.
If we revisit some great inserts, we see they have distinguishing features. Two years ago the award-winning 'wallpaper' insert for the Art Fund by Partners Andrews Aldridge used an actual piece of wallpaper to convey the creative message - that art galleries without funding would be just wallpaper. Inserted into upmarket magazines, this insert attracted a four per cent response. To stimulate test drives for Land Rover, Craik Jones Watson Mitchell Voelkel created a wraparound insert in the form of an adventure book's dust jacket - perfect for its target market.
Inserts are often a great way for companies to reach their competitors and recent figures attest to their popularity. According to the DMA Insert Council, the market for inserts grew in 2004 to a spend of 拢1.17bn.
The best inserts are a fusion of great creative and proper targeting. At the same time, clients and insert media buyers need to force the larger carriers to be more responsive to their needs. But herein lies the problem. If our Think Tank panellists are right, buyers are powerless in the face of the take-it-or-leave-it attitude of some big newspaper and magazine groups.
Still, it's undoubtedly a debate worth having. As I take over at the helm of Marketing Direct, I promise that you can look forward to similar stimulating and thought-provoking discussions and articles in these pages.
noelle.mcelhatton@haynet.com.
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