What do we know about how Advertising works?

One of a series of historical JWT London papers published by WARC, this paper by Timothy Joyce on how advertising works was read to a seminar on advertising research by ESOMAR in 1967 and published in Advertising Age.

What do we know about how Advertising works?

Dr. Timothy Joyce British Market Research Bureau Limited

INTRODUCTION

The question “how does advertising work?” seems to be raised more and more often in connection with research into advertising. There is increasing awareness that a number of advertising research methods in common use imply very different assumptions about the way advertising works. Rarely-if ever-is evidence presented that the assumptions made are correct. Also, discussions of difficulties of communication which are experienced between creative and research people often seem to point to different assumptions about the functions of advertising made by the...

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