[Goose]

Mick, the Supreme Court or the Olympic Committee?

As I am sure you know, just because your Chair was a brilliant lawyer and company chair doesn’t mean you would give much credence to what he said regarding marketing.  I don’t know him, but I bet he appreciated that you did get under your competitor’s skin, even if the campaign had been ineffective on the targets.

Of course, Unlike most ad campaigns, you do have the chance of measuring the impact of your ad spend.  Compare the increase in business amongst that competitor in particular’s clients compared to control group of clients of a different competitor who you didn’t target.

BC

First, I really appreciate Mick actually answering the question and not dancing around the answer. I think that it is pretty clear that all advertising evaluations suffer from the fact you can't really do a controlled experiment where you hold everything else constant except the advertising campaign. It is just impossible to do. There is no placebo. Given that, it is always an expert opinion that decides what was effective and what was not. You can do lots of things to gather data on the "effect" of a particular campaign, like surveys (which now seem de rigueur these days), but no matter what one does, it will still be a judgement call as to what events were "caused" by the campaign and what events were independent of it.

As far as looking at the "targeted" vs "non-targeted" client groups, it is obvious the two groups could be different in many systematic ways. The targeted group had already self-selected by attending the meeting. If the result with the targeted group is worse than the non-targeted group, does that mean the ads were ineffective or that the groups were just "different"? Also, in the particular campaign Mick was reporting about, they "prospected" in the targeted group. How would they "prospect" the non-targeted group, as that is essentially "everybody else"?

[Goose]

Mick, the Supreme Court or the Olympic Committee?

As I am sure you know, just because your Chair was a brilliant lawyer and company chair doesn’t mean you would give much credence to what he said regarding marketing.  I don’t know him, but I bet he appreciated that you did get under your competitor’s skin, even if the campaign had been ineffective on the targets.

Of course, Unlike most ad campaigns, you do have the chance of measuring the impact of your ad spend.  Compare the increase in business amongst that competitor in particular’s clients compared to control group of clients of a different competitor who you didn’t target.

BC

First, I really appreciate Mick actually answering the question and not dancing around the answer. I think that it is pretty clear that all advertising evaluations suffer from the fact you can't really do a controlled experiment where you hold everything else constant except the advertising campaign. It is just impossible to do. There is no placebo. Given that, it is always an expert opinion that decides what was effective and what was not. You can do lots of things to gather data on the "effect" of a particular campaign, like surveys (which now seem de rigueur these days), but no matter what one does, it will still be a judgement call as to what events were "caused" by the campaign and what events were independent of it.

As far as looking at the "targeted" vs "non-targeted" client groups, it is obvious the two groups could be different in many systematic ways. The targeted group had already self-selected by attending the meeting. If the result with the targeted group is worse than the non-targeted group, does that mean the ads were ineffective or that the groups were just "different"? Also, in the particular campaign Mick was reporting about, they "prospected" in the targeted group. How would they "prospect" the non-targeted group, as that is essentially "everybody else"?