Pre-testing methods - the agony of choice

A discussion of advertising pre-testing. Recall methods (in the shape of Millward Brown's Awareness Index) and `persuasion' methods (including STAS and ARS Persuasion scores) are discussed and compared.

Pre-testing methods - the agony of choice

Recall or persuasion - which is the best predictor of ad success? Tim Broadbent of Young & Rubicam looks at evidence from the drinks market

Tim Broadbent

'To generalise is to be an idiot' (William Blake)

Since the 1930s, ad researchers have pretty much divided into two sects: those who worship recall and those who consider persuasion the true religion.

Recall acolytes look back to George Gallup, who in the 1920s was a professor of advertising and journalism at Northwestern. He had the idea of conducting large quantitative surveys to find out which...

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