This classic paper raises the main problem with below-the-line expenditure: its long-term effects. Most evaluations cover a year at longest. People concerned with the saleability of a brand, with the values added by its marketing effort, with all the factors which add up to long-term profit, may feel a year is not long enough. The activities under-the-line may, as the title graphically puts it, undermine the structure which has been laboriously built up: they may drive consumers to shop by price alone, reducing a branded market to a commodity one, they may damage the ability of the brand to command a premium price and through high margins to invest in product improvement. The debate on this complex issue is not over. But this paper clarifies the issues..
This whole topic of the approach to researching advertising for an international brand is too complicated to do more than hint at the framework within which it is necessary to work. I hope that some of the more salient points will come alive by looking at visual examples. Just as there are many occasions when an international approach should not be attempted, the main situation which will lead to building an international brand is a strong centralised organisation rather than many separate points responsible for advertising and marketing policy. Such an organisation will constantly build standards for research, based upon the best local talent and continually checking that the commercial objectives are being met so that the brand does not become rigid.
In this paper we are presenting a view of what is for us so far the best approach to research in the creative process. We are doing this because we believe there may be many others who work in the same way as we do, more or less by instinct. It may be helpful to them to see our explanation of what we think we are trying to do, and our attempt to puzzle out why we are doing it
It would seem that traditional methods of advertising research have hardly yet tried to evaluate this problem. Either companies have judged communication needs from market research. A typical source has been cross-country surveys like that of the Reader's Digest. Or they have used pieces of advertising research which have tended to emphasise cultural difficulties to be overcome. In fact research has probably served more to accentuate the differences than to build upon common features. It is hard to quote a campaign which has been built in a truly international way by finding common factors and using them. Possibly this is because the planning starts in one country, often the U.S.A. , and tries to involve others.
There was considerable comment from Group IV arising from discussion with the speakers. But most of it can be condensed under these three headings: 1. Trade; 2. The operational question; 3. Consumer models.
This seminar revealed the gulf between the passionate non-verbalists who believe structured verbal response is inadequate to describe meaning (for them the Black Box, the Group Discussion, the indirect inference) and those who seem to believe that thoughts can be put into words and measured, and that the resultant words lead to ideas. So, though we would never have guessed it, we turn out to be not just market researchers, but two schools of philosophers.
This classic paper raises the main problem with below-the-line expenditure: its long-term effects. Most evaluations cover a year at longest. People concerned with the saleability of a brand, with the values added by its marketing effort, with all the factors which add up to long-term profit, may feel a year is not long enough. The activities under-the-line may, as the title graphically puts it, undermine the structure which has been laboriously built up: they may drive consumers to shop by price alone, reducing a branded market to a commodity one, they may damage the ability of the brand to command a premium price and through high margins to invest in product improvement. The debate on this complex issue is not over. But this paper clarifies the issues..