|
|
|
|
The first ad that BRC ran in 1977 can be seen by clicking the button at the left. It said recall was not the best way to test commercials. At the time 71% of the major advertisers were still using day-after-recall. A good way of evaluating a research firm is to look for evidence of their being a leader or a follower. This ad is our evidence. Meeting the Need for Something Better than Recall There was a fair amount of debate about recall down thru the years, but it wasn't until the 1990s that the industry started to get definitive answers. First, the Advertising Research Foundation completed its eight year study of the procedures used to measure the effectiveness of advertising. It showed the standard measures of related recall were not substantially better than flipping a coin in predicting which commercial would perform best. Then IRI confirmed these findings in a second industry-wide study. Major advertisers pooled the results of actual recall tests they had conducted. The tests were for commercials where the actual impact on sales was known from split cable tests. The results also showed there was no relationship between recall and sales. A lucky coincidence? Some skepticism over a single favorable development in our history is reasonable, so also consider our involvement in the development of this next measure BRC's Role in Developing the Likability Measure The ARF surprised everybody when they released the results of the eight year study cited above, and it showed the best of all measures in predicting which commercial would sell the most was - likability. There was panic in the streets of Manhattan! None of the major ad testing firms in the East were using it. Who knew anything about likability? The search led to that Camelot of the advertising research world that David Ogilvy set up in San Francisco, the Ogilvy Center for Research and Development, headed by the inimitable Alex Biel. He was ready to release the research on likability we had conducted for him years earlier, research that convinced us likability should always be a standard part of BRC tests. So it was Alex Biel who proceeded to tell the world what likability really meant, and what made a commercial likable. He did it using our data, and our standard set of diagnostic measures. All those other ad testing firms who didn't think it was worthy of use in their testing - until the ARF found it was the best of all measures - have now joined us in asking if people like the advertising. Can BRC Help Check the Competition? This is another area BRC pioneered, the testing of competitors' commercials. It's not that BRC was the first to do it. We were the first to do it so publicly that we ended up in court. We got to fight the test case that determined if you could test a competitor's copyrighted commercial without getting their permission. There was a marketing story of some note behind that lawsuit, one that we did not fully appreciate until years later. At the time, BRC was a fledgling start-up company testing a cross-section of prime time network commercials to build up its norms. Miller Beer, which had recently been taken over by Philip Morris, had its attorneys write to say very emphatically: "You can’t test our commercials!" It was a legal issue that had to be decided or we couldn’t stay in business, so we let it go to court. It turned out the legal counsel we had sought in advance was correct. Using copies of copyrighted works for purposes of research and criticism are specifically mentioned as being permitted under the "fair use" provisions of the copyright law. Copyright protects you against thieves, not critics - or researchers. Bruzzone vs. Miller is now the test case you will find listed in most books on copyright law. Why was Miller the one company that reacted so strongly? They were in the midst of what is now recognized as one of the most successful spin-outs of a repositioning strategy in the history of marketing. Philip Morris had capitalized on growing public concern about the safety of smoking by taking a weak female oriented brand of filter cigarettes and showing it being used by that rugged cowboy with a tattoo, the legendary Marlboro Man. This was so profitable, Philip Morris looked around for similar opportunities in other product categories. They noticed the trend toward lighter beer and saw there was a relatively minor "sissy" brand referred to as "The Champagne of Bottled Beer". So they bought it. They started to see if they could work the same magic with the "It’s Miller Time" campaign, showing Miller as the reward for rugged men after a hard day’s work, or a hard fought game. It worked, and Miller was well on its way to becoming the number two brand when we started researching their commercials and offering to sell the results to anyone who wanted them. Apparently they were concerned the world would learn too much about their marketing magic.
|
