RESEARCH
"There is no such thing as a good or bad ad in isolation. What is good at one moment is bad at another. Research can trap you into the past."
William Bernbach, quoted in Bill Bernbach said . . . (1989), DDB Needham Worldwide.
"Asked about the power of advertising in research surveys, most agree that it works, but not on them."
Eric Clark, The Want Makers: Inside the World of Advertising, 1988, New York: Penguin Books, p. 13.
"The most important word in the vocabulary of advertising is TEST. If you pretest your product with consumers, and pretest your advertising, you will do well in the marketplace."
David Ogilvy (1963), quoted in Stephen Donadio, The New York Public Library: Book of Twentieth-Century American Quotations, 1992, New York: Stonesong Press, p. 70.
"Advertising people who ignore research are as dangerous as generals who ignore decodes of enemy signals."
David Ogilvy, Ogilvy on Advertising, 1983, New York: Crown Publishers, p. 158.
"I notice increasing reluctance on the part of marketing executives to use judgment; they are coming to rely too much on research, and they use it as a drunkard uses a lamp post for support, rather than for illumination."
David Ogilvy, Confessions of an Advertising Man, 1971, New York: Ballantine Books, p. 87.
"At one of the largest advertising agencies in America psychologists on the staff are probing sample humans in an attempt to find how to identify, and beam messages to, people of high anxiety, body consciousness, hostility, passiveness, and so on."
Vance Packard, The Hidden Persuaders, 1957, New York: Pocket Books, p. 2 - 3.
"Market research can establish beyond the shadow of a doubt that the egg is a sad and sorry product and that it obviously will not continue to sell. Because after all, eggs won't stand up by themselves, they roll too easily, are too easily broken, require special packaging, look alike, are difficult to open, won't stack on the shelf."
Robert Pliskin (1963), quoted in Stephen Donadio, The New York Public Library: Book of Twentieth-Century American Quotations, 1992, New York: Stonesong Press, p. 70-71.
"Advertising research is one-half frustration, one-half exclamation point, and one-half question-mark. If this adds up to more than 100 percent, it proves that mathematics and research sometimes gives confusing results."
Michael P. Ryan, of Allied Chemical Corporation, quoted in Samm Sinclair Baker, The Permissible Lie: The Inside Truth About Advertising, 1968, Cleveland, OH: World Publishing Company, p. 144.