2006 SAPPI PRINT MEDIA EFFICIENCY AWARD FOCUSES ON THE ENVIRONMENT

Sappi, the leading global producer of coated fine paper, has awarded its 2006 Sappi Print Media Efficiency Award to car manufacturer Toyota for its integrated pan-European communications campaign: 'Aim: Zero Emissions'. The environmental campaign, which ran from September to December 2005, was created by UK advertising agency, Coast.

Sappi presented the award in Brussels during the European Association of Communications Agencies' (EACA) Euro-Effie Awards Gala, which recognises effective European cross-border communications. The campaign for Toyota, a pioneer in automotive environmental care, also won a bronze Euro-Effie in the Corporate category.

"With the Sappi Print Media Efficiency Award and our support of the Euro-Effies we aim to further stimulate thinking about the efficiency of integrated communications campaigns that include print media," says Marco Eikelenboom, Sales and Marketing Director, Graphic Papers, at Sappi in Europe. "This year's award honours the Toyota campaign as it not only helped the company to establish itself clearly as the leading car manufacturer in Europe in terms of caring for the environment, but it achieved this by using print as the principal communication platform."

Toyota's total budget was just under EUR 5 million, so Coast used an innovative combination of print media, which accounted for more than 80% of the media spend, and sponsored TV programming. This maximized the campaign's return on investment and enabled it to compete with much larger competitive automotive environmental campaigns.

A selection of leading pan-European and local print titles provided 70% coverage of the European opinion-leader target market, as well as a high advertisement frequency. It also enabled media upweights in the five key markets - UK, Germany, France, Spain and Italy - and local language variants of the advertising.

To ensure creative consistency, Coast developed a print treatment that could be mirrored in the TV sponsorship bumpers. This consisted of a highly memorable image of a child sleeping peacefully in a bird's nest - representing man working in harmony with nature - underscored by the bold headline 'Aim: Zero Emissions'.

Rather than focusing on cost efficiencies alone, the agency made use of the European Opinion Leader Survey to assess key pan-European titles such as Time, Newsweek, The Economist, National Geographic Europe and the Financial Times not only for their coverage of the target market, but also for their ability to convey 'trust' and 'credibility' in creating recognition of Toyota's environmental credentials.

The novel approach drove campaign recall up dramatically, with 69% of those interviewed ranking Toyota first in terms of caring for the environment, versus 14% for Volkswagen and 7% for Honda. In terms of ROI, the campaign generated a return of EUR 2.58 for every EUR 1 spent.

"As communications campaigns become more integrated, we are seeing an increasing percentage of budgets allocated to print media," Marco Eikelenboom adds. "We believe that paper is one of the most tactile, tangible and portable communication mediums and offers more value for money than many other media. We hope more and more agencies and their clients will enter their work for the award,"

Last year's Sappi Print Media Efficiency Award was won by German low cost airline Hapag-Lloyd Express (HLX.com) for its 'Fly for the price of a taxi' campaign.

For further information, contact:

Sue Griffin
Marketing Communications Manager
Sappi Fine Paper Europe, Brussels
T: +32 2 676 9761
F: +32 2 676 9665
E:
W: www.sappi.com
W: www.eaca.be

About Sappi
Sappi is the world's leading producer of coated fine paper for the advertising and promotions industry. Its brands include Magno, HannoArt, Presto, Royal and Next Generation which are specified by customers in more than 100 countries for high quality books, reports, brochures, magazines, posters and other promotional material.