• by March 26, 2004

RE: THINK, WE THOUGHT IT COULD HAVE BEEN THUNK UP A BIT SOONER - What's up with the ARF? Normally, we hear of interesting things, and occasionally of innovative things, coming from the ad research foundation every few months or so, but lately it seems like it's operating under a dome of silence. We know there are some smart people who are still involved and they no doubt are thinking up some brilliant things about the current and future states of advertising, but for some reason, we're just not hearing about them. We were especially startled to receive a copy of the agenda for the ARF's 2004 convention this week, just a month before the April 26-28 trade show which will take place at New York's Marriott Marquis hotel. To tell you the truth, we almost forgot to think about it, even though this will be the show's 50th anniversary, and even though the ARF team has put together what looks to be a pretty smart event. We love the positioning: "Re: think!" And in case you didn't get it, the brochure features a rendering of Rodin's The Thinker on its cover, except this Thinker has an MRI-like (that's magnetic resonance imaging, not Mediamark Research Inc.) graphic delineation of a brain. Heh, it tickled our frontal lobe.

As for the agenda itself, it looks pretty interesting, even if it does contain many of the obligatory modeling and "Holy Grail" panel descriptions and the ample dose of research product shilling that we've come to expect of ARF shows past. Among the things we definitely don't want to miss is the "Media Options - Not Just TV Anymore" panel, if only to see Media Kitchen's Paul Woolmington and InsightExpress' Lee Smith tell us about "losing control" and how that will impact the media decision-making process. And who can afford to miss the "surprising cross-media ROI conclusions" Ford truck marketing guru Tom Green will unleash on unwary marketing and media researchers, not to mention NBC research czar Alan Wurtzel's challenge to "forget everything you think you know about television programming." Is it just us, or do others find it ironic that Wurtzel has chosen to speak on that particular topic around the same time that two of NBC's biggest hits - "Friends" and "Frasier" - will air their final episodes?

In fact, the event appears to be so chock full of other interesting stuff - like integrated marketing communications piper Don Schultz' plea to get integrated marketing "unstuck" - that frankly we're not sure how we will squeeze it all in.

But there is one conference feature we find a little ironic, and possibly even telling: the show's wrap-up keynote address by Interpublic honcho David Bell. Bell's address, "Getting It and Acting On It. What's Next?" comes one year after Interpublic effectively bailed out of the ad research business, dumping its NFO WorldGroup assets. If that's an example of what Bell has in store for us, we may have to re:think what's next for advertising research.