How many times have you seen (or heard) an ad and immediately responded to it?
Be honest.
Once? Five times? Maybe 10? If you give me a higher number I will assume you are either a liar or did not understand the question.
Fact is, you almost never immediately respond in any meaningful way to an ad. You might enjoy the ad. You might even have some vaguely positive feelings about the product being advertised. But it’s doubtful you actually do anything about it at that moment.
The impact of most advertising happens over …

I’m going to ask you, the hard core advertising professional, to do something out of character.
Get up from your desk, walk to the elevator and go down to the lobby of your building.
Step out of the elevator, walk out of the building and find someone who fits the description of your target audience.
Now just watch them for a little while. No, not the kind of watching that could get you arrested. Just notice them. See what they look like. Listen to how they sound. See who they’re with. See if …

I was sitting through a few focus groups last week, getting feedback on some proposed campaigns. The groups went well. They liked what we wanted them to. They responded right on cue.
The day after the groups, I was discussing the results with some fellow creatives and they began telling me how unfortunate it was that my clients subject my work to such unprofessional, uninformed scrutiny. I’ve heard this plenty of times before. I probably even espoused the same point of view at one point in my career. But I have …

I never understood the idea of making research groups to test ads.
Ok, it’s part of our jobs and I respect that. But isn’t it strange?
I was wondering how this idea came out.
Maybe somebody just raised his hand in a meeting room and said:
“I know how to choose the next campaign. First, we put some strangers in a room with a window mirror, just like in the police interrogatories. Then, we show them some poor animated cartoons with the ideas. Next, we make this people talk about something they don’t understand: …