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We’ve been measuring for more than a century, but remain divided on the point
1904 was one of those years. Cy Young pitched baseball’s first perfect game; the St. Louis World’s Fair introduced humanity to Dr. Pepper, peanut butter, and Puffed Wheat. At the third modern Olympics, Canada won Gold in lacrosse, football, and (wait for it…) golf.
Cary Grant was born. So was Tommy Douglas. In Figueres, Spain, Felipa Dali named her son Salvador after his father. I’d pay cash money to know what she ate during the pregnancy.
Also that year, during several late evenings on the upper floor of the Trude Building in downtown Chicago, two men laid the foundation for what most of us now regard as conventional marketing wisdom.
They were legend-to-be Albert Lasker, of Lord & Thomas, and the mysterious Canadian ex-pat, John E. Kennedy, who had only recently shown up on Lasker’s radar with his cocky three-word definition of advertising: “Salesmanship in print.” Now, these two men—Kennedy the master, and Lasker, the Padawan learner – first set out to measure the effectiveness of ad messages.
Two ads were created for the 1900 Family Ball Bearing Washer, and split-tested (as it came to be known) in separate markets; one written by Kennedy, and one not. Consumer inquiries were measured. Kennedy’s ad opened a can of wash-day whupass – generating a cost-per-inquiry response five times greater than the rival ad. Similar experiments followed, and data gathered, forming Lord & Thomas’s “Record of Results” department, which they used to train a new generation of copywriters.
Despite being a pioneer in ad measurement, Lasker had no belly for research-based creative. He didn’t like the way “rules” could pervade copywriting. (In 1938 he would fire long-time client Quaker Oats for testing Lord & Thomas copy with an outside consulting company, Townsend & Townsend, whose methods he considered too scientific.)
By the 20s, measurement was all the craze. Enough so that media pioneer David Sarnoff had trouble, at first, coaxing investors to back his venture in radio. They believed that “broad-casting” (an agricultural term) signals over hell’s half acre made it impossible to measure audience response. When a New York cosmetics company ran a radio promotion offering listeners an autographed picture of Hollywood star Marion Davies, response was through the roof, prompting Sarnoff’s doubters to change their religion.
Measurement needed a prophet, and in the early 30s it got one.
He was Dr. George Horace Gallup, a genius at both measuring response to media content, and of cashing in on his techniques. He revolutionized political polling (astounding “experts” by correctly predicting Franklin Roosevelt’s 1936 re-election), the Hollywood film industry (testing titles, stories and star appeal before productions began), and the marketing industry, during his 18 years as head of research at Young & Rubicam.
In the late 30s, he hired a former door-to-door stove salesman, David Ogilvy, to head his Audience Relations Institute in Princeton, New Jersey. His protégé would serve as a wartime intelligence officer under Britain’s William Stephenson (“Intrepid”) before building his marketing empire, crediting Gallup’s techniques for much of his success.
Yet for a century-and-change, measurement has divided the marketing world into tribes: those to whom measurement is a master (I’d include Ogilvy), and others to whom it is, at best, a servant (the legendary Bill Bernbach, for instance). Even methodologies breed debate.
For instance, the formula “RECALL = SALES.” Even today I’m in meetings where high ad recall is celebrated as a sure-fire sign that sales will increase. Is it? Even Ogilvy doubted it. Peeing on an electric fence is unforgettable too, but it won’t likely prompt anyone to buy one.
Then there’s the quasi-urban-legend of “Most Influential Words,” propagated by ad “scientists” since the Kennedy era. Lists vary, though many include “Free”, “Now”, “You”, “Save”, “Money”, “Easy”, “Results”, “Solution”, “Proven.” Nothing to it: thread a needle through the lot and you too can be a crazy-rich copywriter.
By now we’ve become pretty good at measuring things. We know the earth weighs some six septillion kilograms; that there are more chickens on earth than humans; that yellow is the colour the human eye usually notices first, and that when entering a store, left-handed people tend to turn right, while right-handed people tend to turn left.
Given enough money, most any message can be made to reach a consumer’s eyes and ears. It’s the surest passage from the eyes and ears and into the imagination that remains the most elusive prize in all of marketing; a journey which began after hours in a dimly lit Chicago office, just five generations ago.
Mike Tennant is the producer, co-creator and co-writer of The Age of Persuasion radio series and book.
