As no one but he could, Erwin Ephron dramatically captured how Bill Harvey burst on the scene of the marketing industry 60 years ago: “In the six days of creation, when chaos was ordered into heaven and earth, there was no TV, so God did not create the ADI. That task was left to Bill Harvey, the newly hired marketing director of the American Research Bureau. The year was 1966. Harvey was 24 years old.”

Today, we mourn his loss. Bill Harvey has passed away.

Bill Harvey was, without question, one of the most impactful figures in the history of advertising and marketing research, and he was also one the of the kindest, most unique and absolute smartest people that I have ever had the privilege to work with.

He was a futurist like we have never seen before and may never see again.

Not only did Bill change the way marketers saw geography with the ADI (Area of Dominant Influence) -- which eventually led to the copycat DMA -- Bill was writing about addressable advertising on television in the 1970’s and basically invented the addressable TV ad both at his consultancy Next Century Media and his data-driven, audience-based advertising company TRA.

Most recently, Harvey was focused on psychographically targeted advertising, mapping motivational genomes of TV programming in his newest company RMT.

Incredibly, he never stopping innovating.

Just four years ago, Bill won a Technology & Engineering Emmy award for his work in building privacy-protected TV set-top-box data.

In his 80's, Bill was still literally at the top of his game.

I will miss the lunches Bill and I had every couple of months or so.

They say that it is hard to prove a negative, but not with Bill Harvey. If I ever wondered whether something had ever been tried before in the world of advertising and media research, I would ask Bill.

He knew everything -- absolutely everything -- that had ever happened in our industry.

If Bill Harvey didn’t know about it, it hadn’t happened. it was that simple, and that certain.

How lucky we were that Bill Harvey chose to make our industry his life's work. He could have just as easily made his mark launching spaceships, writing movie scripts, or designing computers.

Thankfully, Bill chose to make the world of advertising and marketing better. And he did -- and he made all of us a bit better in the process.