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Grazia x OOH

When editorial authority meets the scale of Out of Home

Can trusted editorial brands make Out of Home more effective?

For decades, premium brands have benefited from appearing alongside trusted editorial content. But what happens when that trust leaves the page?

Together, Bauer Media Publishing and Bauer Media Outdoor set out to answer a simple question: can the editorial authority of our trusted magazine titles strengthen how people perceive brands in Digital Out of Home? We chose Grazia to find out. The results were compelling.

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Trust changes brand perception

Trust and brand equity isn't built overnight. As the UK’s first women’s weekly glossy magazine, Grazia has spent more than twenty years doing exactly that, earning its place as one of the UK's most influential voices in fashion and beauty.

Out of Home is public. It's shared. It's always on. That visibility provides the perfect stage for trusted editorial influence to travel, while also delivering the scale, reach and fame-building power brands need.

So what happens when you combine one of the country's most trusted editorial brands with one of its most powerful advertising channels? Could consumers transfer the trust and positive brand associations they already have in Grazia to the brands they see advertised in Out of Home? There’s always been a natural synergy between the two mediums, but little proof of how the two can work together.

That was the question. And the reason we created this study.

How we tested it

Does Grazia make Out of Home more effective? To find out, we stripped everything back.

  • No famous fragrance.
  • No existing brand perceptions.
  • No creative differences.

Just one fictional fragrance, shown in two identical Digital Out of Home adverts.

One carried an "As Seen in Grazia" endorsement. The other didn't.

Everything else stayed exactly the same. If perceptions changed, we'd know why.

2,000+

UK fragrance buyers

Weighted to females

A/B

Controlled monadic online test

Half of respondents see high street DOOH creative with Grazia branding, the other half see identical version without Grazia branding

Fictional female fragrance brand

Removing existing brand bias

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One difference

The Grazia endorsement

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Fieldwork conducted via Toluna Lifestyle, December 2025

Grazia transfers brand equity

The research highlighted that Grazia has a clear and well-defined brand equity profile​. Here are the top 5 traits Grazia readers associate with the Grazia media brand, our research found those same brand qualities became significantly stronger for the advertised fragrance when the "As Seen in Grazia" endorsement was added.

Grazia can lend its established brand equity to brands​. Adding the Grazia endorsement changed the way people thought about the advertised brand. Not just a little, but across every attribute we measured. The biggest gains came where premium brands care most…

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See the full results
+33%
more likely to describe the brand as 'Expert-backed'
+16%
average uplift across key brand attributes of 'Premium', 'Trent-leading' and 'for people like me'
+20%
more likely to be described as 'a brand I'd be proud to use'

The badge effect extends beyond Grazia readers

Adding an “As seen in Grazia” badge act like a quality and trust cue. Naturally, the strongest impact came from people who already know Grazia.

But that wasn't the whole story. Even among consumers with little or no familiarity with the brand, many said the endorsement improved their impression of the product

See the full results
% of respondents reporting a positive influence on their impression of the advertised product:
96%
uplift for Regular Grazia readers
54%
uplift for those with no awareness of Grazia
2.1x
uplift for premium associations among 'gift buyers'

Why it matters for advertisers

Great advertising does more than build visibility. It shapes how people perceive a brand. Our research shows trusted editorial brands can add borrowed credibility to Digital Out of Home campaigns.

“As seen in Grazia” co-branding creates a short-cut to Grazia’s brand equity, helping advertised brands be stored in memory with richer, more credible meaning.

For advertisers, that's a new way to build stronger brand perceptions without changing the creative itself. For Bauer Media, it's proof that our brands become even more valuable when they work together.

FAQ's

Behind the research

A few of the questions we've been asked most since sharing the findings.

Using a fictional brand removed any existing perceptions or biases respondents may have had. This allowed the research to isolate the effect of the "As Seen in Grazia" endorsement and measure its impact alone.

Fragrance is a category where trust, expertise and premium perception play an important role in purchase decisions, making it an ideal environment to test whether editorial authority can influence brand perceptions.

This study focused on fragrance, but the principle is broader. It demonstrates how trusted editorial brands can transfer positive brand associations to advertised products. The same research framework could be applied across other Bauer media brands and advertising categories.

The study was carried out by Toluna using a nationally representative sample of more than 2,000 UK fragrance buyers. Respondents took part in a controlled A/B experiment, viewing either a DOOH advert featuring an "As Seen in Grazia" endorsement or an identical advert without it.

Brand equity refers to the value consumers associate with a brand - qualities such as trust, expertise, premium perception and style. This study explored whether those positive associations could transfer from Grazia to an advertised product through co-branded Digital Out of Home.

This study found that pairing a brand with a trusted editorial endorsement strengthened key brand equity measures, including trust, expertise and premium perception. It demonstrates how media context can enhance the impact of advertising.

Grazia co-branding offers brands a new way to combine trusted editorial authority with the scale and impact of Digital Out of Home. Speak to our team to explore how it could work for your next campaign.

Explore the full study

See the complete methodology.

Dive into the data.

Discover what it means for your brand.

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