Abstract:

Early in 1974 Albemarle Market Research were asked by John Player & Sons to conduct a review of TV advertising pre-testing methods and to devise an optimum research solution. The theme of this conference is Research that works for today’s marketing problems. Player’s brief to us was exactly that. Having tried various methods of advertising pre-testing they were still looking for one which worked in terms of providing reliable and actionable results for marketing management. We were also required to produce a solution which could begin to work right away, with a minimum of time for experimentation, so by definition we needed to work with fairly well-tried, established research techniques, and to avoid technical innovations. Our approach was first to consider the problem from the marketing manager’s point of view, and try to establish what he required from advertising pre-testing; and secondly to consider what research approach would meet those requirements best.