Britannia

The Britannia Building Society has been around since 1856 when it was known as the Leek and Moorlands Building Society. Since then, a series of agreed mergers has evolved it into the Britannia we know today: with over 2 million members it is the second largest building society in the UK.

The challenge

Following an extensive TV advertising campaign during 2000 and 2001, Britannia asked CACI to provide a basic market share analysis so it could understand the direct results of its advertising spend.

The solution

Using CACI’s Mortgage Market Database, the UK was split down into its 12 non-overlapping TV regions based upon definitions by the Incorporated Society of British Advertisers (ISBA). Britannia had advertised in three regions and so these were aggregated and the market share in these regions was compared to the regions in which no television advertising had been carried out.

These were then indexed to the market share as at January 2000 to show a comparison based on an equal starting point, which removed the effect of differing market shares between regions.

Britannia also provided CACI with ‘Share of Voice’ (SOV) data to analyse how its market share related to its SOV within Mortgage and General Banking advertising - for thesame time period within each TV region. This would showwhether there was a pattern between SOV and newbusiness market share growth.

The results and benefits

The analysis showed that throughout 2000 to mid 2001, market share within the advertised and non-advertised regions grew steadily and significantly, and peaked in 2001. The three regions in which Britannia advertised did significantly better than the non-advertised regions, however the performance within these three regions had always been higher historically, and followed the same seasonal patterns and new business peaks as the nonadvertised regions.

The peak in television advertising coincided with a peak in completions of new business. However, the trend between advertised regions and non-advertised regions was very similar, which would imply that it was not TV advertising alone influencing market share. For instance, peaks in market share could have been caused by market leading products appearing in 'Best Buy' tables. Also, the advertised regions' market share could have been above the non-advertised regions' share because the TV regions in which Britannia advertised were considered it’s 'heartland' and people within these regions may be more predisposed to respond to a local brand.

Sharon Ray, Marketing Information Manager at Britannia comments

“CACI market data enabled us to effectively measure our business performance by TV region. CACI data shows actual market share data, which is not available from any other source. Without this we could not have created such a precise basis for our analysis.”