Times Newspapers mocks rivals with ‘gloating’ poster campaign

Times Newspapers has embarked on a trade campaign celebrating its success in the British Business Survey (BBS), which includes “giving the finger” to The Guardian and mocking the Telegraph Group.

Times Newspapers-branded vans were taken outside rival newspaper group offices. Outside the Telegraph Group headquarters in Canary Wharf, an ad on the van reads “For Impact Go Compact”, a send-up of the broadsheet Daily Telegraph’s “Impact not Compact” slogan.

Outside the Financial Times office, the ad reads “No FT, No Problem” and boasts of “95 per cent more business readers than the FT”. Outside the Guardian office, the ad reads “A message to the Guardian following our BBS results”, followed by a graph of results made to look like a hand “flipping a finger”. The advertising has been created by Rainey Kelley Campbell Roalfe/Y&R and media was bought by Carat.

The biennial independent BBS survey assessing the readership habits of business people with management influence showed Times Newspapers to be the only UK newspaper group to show period-on-period growth over the past ten years.

Times Newspapers’ campaign, breaking this week, boasts that The Times, The Sunday Times and Times Online now reach 42 per cent of businessmen and women in the UK and 48 per cent of expenditure budget holders.

Times Newspapers advertising director Ian Clark says: “With our outstanding results we couldn’t resist gloating.”

But Telegraph Group marketing director Katie Vanneck says: “The BBS is a retrospective survey whose information is two years old. The day before the results were released we launched the market’s first standalone business section which has been very well received.”