Abstract:

Advertising as a means of action on human behaviour is quite typical of our age; however, the assumptions we make, the theories we develop in that field, the research we are currently conducting to test the impact of advertising are still deeply affected by attitudes and concepts which have been bequeathed to us by the last century. This discrepancy, I believe, tends to decrease the effectiveness of advertising and to impede communications between the creative people and the research people. We are now working at COFREMCA on the realisation of periodic quantitative surveys which appear to us both as a valuable tool for readjusting advertising strategies and a progressive means of adapting more closely our approaches and our theories to the advertising realities. In the first part of this expose I shall recall in outline what makes the originality of our age in the field of affecting man's actions. In a second part I shall try to point out in what way our concepts relative to advertising action are still marked by those of the 19th century. Finally, I will evoke one type of quantitative periodic surveys which should facilitate a further development of these concepts.