The Advertising and Promotion Challenge: Vaguely Right or Precisely Wrong?

Too many business executives, argues Leonard Lodish, have no idea how effective their advertising and promotion efforts really are. In this book, he examines a variety of ways such efforts can be tested and arrives at some surprising conclusions that will challenge conventional notions about the way advertising dollars should be spent. Lodish contends that companies too often make judgment on the basis of meeting targeted sales goals--without sufficient analysis to determine whether the advertising money spent to meet those goals will contribute to, or detract from, their profitability. Sales figures are easy to measure, Lodish contends, but they say too little about the real effectiveness of advertising. The things that are harder to measure--whether an ad campaign generated new customers or incremental sales, for example--tend to be neglected. Citing numerous examples from actual campaigns, Lodish looks at different kinds of advertising and promotion--including institutional and product advertising--and how each is used. He discusses product positioning, product mix, setting advertising objectives, budgeting, decisions on copy, decisions on media, and choosing the right way to obtain advertising services. It is more important, he argues, for businesses to look for the usually imprecise measures of advertising effectiveness than at reams of statistical data that hide the real truth. Thus it is better to be "vaguely right" than "precisely wrong."