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3. The Naked King: Today's
Advertising Research
Yes, advertising effectiveness can be measured
in a general way: "We ran this campaign in a test market.
Sales went up 20 percent. It must have been the advertising."
What is missing is the capability to IMPROVE the advertising
by scientifically MEASURING THE EFFECTIVENESS of one single
advertising effort or impression versus another.
And by "measuring," we don't mean observing
what people say they intend to do, or suggest that
they might do, or seem to have done, or
ought to do based on their opinion of the advertising.
We mean precise measurement of their actual response
to real advertising in a real life situation.
Direct-response advertising is the secret
weapon that has enabled direct marketing to grow from
its modest beginnings, small mail-order ads in farm publications
in the nineteenth century, to the major marketing force
that it has become.
(These comments not in MaxiMarketing:
The Direct Marketing Association (DMA) recently released
its 1997 forecast and 3rd edition of Economic Impact:
U.S. Direct Marketing. Back in 1992, The DMA commissioned
the WEFA Group to develop an econometric model for
the U.S. macro economic, industry and regional economic
activity. This model breaks out data on direct marketing
expenditures, revenue and employment throughout seven
major media categories and 53 major industries. Key
WEFA Group findings, for 1999, include that Direct
Marketing, represents over 57 percent of ALL U.S.
expenditures in Marketing and Advertising. And 57
percent, of total expenditures, has been the percent
of total since 1992. The 50 percent point was surpassed
BACK IN 1989.
Many people are surprised
to learn that Direct Marketing, at almost 60 percent of
all U.S. Marketing and Advertising expenditures, is now
the PREDOMINANT FORM OF MARKETING AND ADVERTISING IN THE
WORLD.
For more information about this latest Economic
Impact Study, visit the DMRG web page address below
(DMA has currently removed these findings from the
DMA site):
Direct
Marketing Economic Impact In U.S.
Yet direct response is a weapon that is
conspicuous by its absence in almost all awareness advertising.
Instead, great reliance is placed on research methods
which the experts themselves admit (as we shall see) are
woefully inadequate.
The truth is that a great deal of advertising
and marketing research that is devoted to advertising
effectiveness is a king who, any child can see, has no
clothes on - or at least is a king with his pants down
and his knobby knees showing!
To switch metaphors, an author's prerogative,
most advertising accountability research is conducted
by an army of brilliant, knowledgeable, sophisticated,
blind people, equipped with fiendishly ingenious procedures
and technology, doing their darndest to observe and describe
an elephant they have never seen.
So the answer may come out, "Very big, tough
hide, and what appears to be two tails." And sometimes
it turns out not to have been an elephant at all, because
it laid an egg and none of the blind people had observed
the creature's internal reproductive process.
Do we exaggerate? Of course we do. Obviously
$ 1.5 billion in research yields large amounts of valuable
information. About desirable product attributes. About
brand image and positioning and ranking. About share of
market and share of mind.
About almost everything except: "How many
sales will this particular advertising produce?" Or "how
many more sales would this other advertising produce?"
Or "How does our advertising in this media source compare
with this other media source in actual effect on
the public?".
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