This issue of The USIM Gazette® includes a bio on one of advertising’s living legends. His name is John Vrba, Senior Vice President, Client Services (Newport Beach), who reached his 90th birthday on March 29, 2009, and celebrated the milestone in the company of friends and colleagues from the advertising industry at the Newport Beach Ritz Restaurant on April 1, 2009. The man of the hour has always been in demand, on that day and on many others throughout his memorable career. Needless to say, the birthday cake was fabulous and there was plenty to go around, just like John’s vast repository of knowledge.
John has been involved in the media industry for over 60 years, and knows advertising like the back of his hand. Consequently, many Orange County companies, executives, colleagues, art galleries and city agencies to name just a few, seek him out for his expertise. John helps them with everything from maximizing ROI on their Internet campaigns to the subtleties of mobile phone advertising. He spends hours staying abreast of the latest trends transforming advertising, and this self-professed “info-guru” appreciates the symbiosis between the two. John seeks every opportunity to help young advertising pros understand the nuances of the fascinating, and influential, advertising business.
John Maher (Executive Vice President, Director of Planning) has written an incisive piece that probes into the art and science of usability testing and consumer recall, specifically as they relate to recent (though maybe not cutting edge) research conducted by Condé Nast and CBS Vision, who attempted to study the effectiveness of ads on television, in magazines and on the Internet. There are four pillars to usability testing’s feature set: (1) Effectiveness–how easily could the consumer execute the steps involved; (2) Accuracy–errors made or confusion caused by the task; (3) Recall–how much did the consumer remember or grasp; and (4) Emotional response–how did the consumer feel about the message, medium, presentation, etc. Usability testing has been in use for nearly 30 years, in activities from software testing to educational technology to marketing.
As John Maher observes, there are problems regarding the sample size used, n=? That information is not provided. Knowing sample size is critical since sample sizes that are excessive waste time and resources and sample sizes that are insufficient engender erroneous outcomes. There are to my mind some larger issues the study fails to address. For example, do banner ads maintain top-of-mind presence, or is it that consumers recall full-page multimedia images better than the often sidelined, miniscule banner? Furthermore, the article does not specify any effect on marketing metrics, such as ROI and conversions. The research focuses on impressions, but does not address clickthrough advertising which so dominates social media marketing pages. How effective are banner/display ads as a vector, versus text ads? The research leaves far more questions unanswered than it manages to answer.
You will also find enjoyable reads in the book review on Scientific Advertising—the book is an oldie but a goodie. The book laid the foundation for using metrics to verify and validate advertising strategies, and showed how valuable solid research and statistics are in implementing effective advertising campaigns. The author, Claude Hopkins, was the first to discuss in a public, published forum such advertising artifacts as coupons, sales letters, copywriting, test marketing, sampling technology and preemptive advertising. Scientific Advertising elucidates the metrics that quantify and measure a promotion’s impact, and today advertising/marketing experts swear by the effectiveness of such industry standards as ROI, recall, impressions, conversions and KPI’s, techniques which can be traced back to Hopkins’ magnum opus.
This edition of the Gazette also contains an update on the efforts to mandate that all U.S. broadcast signals be digitized. Several articles examine the impact social media marketing (also known as social networking, user-generated content or consumer generated media) has made in retailing and amongst various demographics. Over the last 5 years new models of advertising for B2B and B2C have emerged, necessitating the formation of novel online relationships with current and future customers. As a result, advertising has changed, and advertisers now must focus more on co-branding and brand engagement with the new social media companies including Facebook, MySpace, etc.
Upcoming articles will focus on the websphere—the Internet, websites, content management, etc.—media technology, printcasting, crowdsourcing and open sourcing, plus many other exciting topics. Readers have suggested that we add a section on product reviews, and the next issue of your The USIM Gazette® will review the latest and hippest media-related gadgets. Your The USIM Gazette® will continue to bring you the informative, well-written content you want. Continue to forward your articles and article ideas to us. For submission guidelines, see the article titled, “How to Submit Articles to The USIM Gazette®—Updated,” in the February 2009 issue.
Darrell Woody
Editor-Digital Communications