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Advertising Association Seminar: Learning More About Ad Effects, by Neil Coburn, Director, TRBI In September 2000, the Advertising Association convened a meeting to allow all those concerned with advertising effectiveness - clients, ad agencies, media owners and researchers - to discuss whether there is interest in and commitment to a pan industry forum on ad effectiveness. The committee would review existing work on ad effectiveness, and might commission new research, with the ultimate aim being to provide hard evidence that advertising works, and in doing so, how it works. Around forty attended the session, and after an introduction by Winston Fletcher, three experts spoke of different methods which might be used to crack the problem once and for all, while Paul Feldwick raised the very real practical concern that clients will be unwilling to part with the data needed to make an effectiveness study work. The alternative to asking clients for data involves big-budget primary research, to be funded by&. clients perhaps? So what were the views of the massed ranks of account planners who attended the meeting? Err& difficult to tell - they weren't there. Only four people currently working in planning functions in ad agencies were at the meeting, and these four have long since been elevated from day-to-day account work to be their respective agency's thinker. This was a shame, because it meant that many of those present were looking for a new ad effects committee to find a general theory of how ads affect brands. This was very different from what clients wanted - as Andrew Marsden of Britvic pointed out, clients are interested in understanding how their particular campaign works, how much they need to spend on it to get the effect they want, and in which media they should spend it? These are obviously big, important questions, but there were plenty of voices pointing out how little emphasis there is on establishing effectiveness goals in advance of a campaign being produced, and that in most cases the way a campaign works is a post-rationalised argument based on what actually happens in real life. And pre-testing certainly was not seen to be the answer: many, across different interest groups, were cynical about whether pre-testing can predict real life effectiveness, though individual researchers of course claimed that they have the tools to evaluate the effects of specific campaigns. Some were deeply sceptical about whether more data will ever help understanding about effectiveness, and made pleas for real learnings and insights, rather than simply information. Hard to disagree with that sentiment. The final consensus, voiced by Winston Fletcher in summing up the meeting, was that there should indeed be a joint industry committee (JIC); it should represent all four parties of agencies, clients, media owners and researchers, and should be practical, not academic. To achieve this sensible aim, however, it will need to embrace the views and experience of hands-on account planners and ad researchers, and not just the great and the good, and if it doesn't, it will end up an academic exercise, far detached from contemporary planning practice. (c) Account Planning Group 1995-2002
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