Persuasive Advertising - J. Scott Armstrong [6]
Casual observation
If you believe that you can only learn from experience, how can you learn that you can’t?
Anonymous
Casual everyday observation can only provide useful evidence in simple situations when feedback is clear and frequent. Unfortunately, there are few situations like this in advertising. Let me state that another way: Given the complexity of advertising and the difficulty on getting good feedback, experience provides a poor way to learn how to persuade people through advertising. However, we all believe that this rule does not apply to us.
Typical practice is based primarily on casual observation by advertisers. I refer to this type of evidence as “received wisdom,” and draw upon it in the book when empirical evidence is lacking, the situation is simple, or the principle is obvious. Received wisdom is useful for such situations.
I relied on many sources related to typical advertising practices. These six books were especially useful: Presbrey (1929), The History and Development of Advertising; Mayer (1958), Madison Avenue USA; Pope (1983), The Making of Modern Advertising; Goodrum and Dalrymple (1990), Advertising in America; Mayer (1991), Whatever Happened to Madison Avenue; and Fox (1997), The Mirror Makers.
Casual observation falls short when advertisers do not have or use accurate, timely, well-summarized feedback about the outcomes of their procedures relative to alternatives. Additionally, knowledge based on typical practice is ineffective when many conditions are involved. It becomes too difficult to determine how each condition relates to the effectiveness of an advertisement.
Finally, typical practice can suffer when short-term success conflicts with long-term results. For example, advertisers might learn that a specific practice in a given campaign is effective in increasing short-term sales. However, determining whether that practice improves long-term profits and customer relationships is more difficult.
Experts draw upon their experience. In addition they may learn from experimental evidence published in journals or in-house studies. I found expert advice to be useful in formulating the principles. These nine books were particularly valuable: Scott (1912), The Theory and Practice of Advertising; Starch (1914), Advertising; Hopkins (1923), Scientific Advertising; Reeves (1961), Reality in Advertising; Ogilvy (1983), Ogilvy on Advertising; Antin (1983), Great Print Advertising; Franzen (1994), Advertising Effectiveness; Roman, Maas and Nisenholtz (2003), How to Advertise; and Sutherland and Sylvester (2000), Advertising and the Mind of the Consumer.
Beware that experience tends to reinforce beliefs even when the beliefs are wrong. This applies to experts in many fields. For example, in one experiment, clinical psychologists were asked to examine information about individuals to identify which were homosexual and which were heterosexual. Data were contrived so that there were no relationships among the variables. Nevertheless, the experts saw the data as supporting the relationships they expected to see. When the clinicians were presented later with valid information about the relationships, they did not use it because it conflicted with their beliefs (Chapman and Chapman 1969). Advertising experts are also prone to this problem. If they think that an advertising technique will work, their experience is likely to confirm this belief.
Using one’s judgment to develop principles in situations that involve several conditional factors is also difficult. For example, some experts have concluded that humor harms persuasion, while others have concluded the opposite. As it turns out, research has shown that the effectiveness of humor depends on the conditions—under some conditions it helps and under others it harms.
Another problem with relying