• by John Gaffney , October 9, 2002

ARFnotes: This year is my first trip to the Advertising Research Foundation’s conference t in NYC. I was expecting three things: numbers, numbers and numbers. The kind of thing where an agency sends the research director and said research director spends four days mired in numbers and then fires out a missive with interesting numbers for planners and buyers to digest. I’m surprised at what I found. Numbers are secondary to the ARF conference. Idea and analysis (emphasis on the first two syllables in that word) are king. The ideas presented are actually radical in their intent. Check this one out: A report presented by Kathryn A. Braun-La Tour of a company called Marketing Memories tries to figure out whether consumers are not telling us everything they know about advertising. How much of advertising is actually registered in the subconscious? Heavy stuff. Gets into “subconscious memory surfacing tests” and “reaction time tests.” Good to know R&D is alive and well in the ad business. But with all this scientific analysis, I hope the ARF and its presenters remain aware that real people and their real behavior make the world go round. The most popular ad research tactic I’ve found these days is “friend circles.” You find an core customer, tell him/her to gather five friends, get a private room at a restaurant and mine them for all they’re worth about your ideas and concepts. Like the writer John Gardner said: “Nothing is more dramatic or interesting than human beings.”

PIBnotes: If you want to, you can use the new PIB numbers to justify an argument about the ad recovery. Up nine percent is up nine percent, right? I wouldn’t use this report as a yardstick though. Let’s not forget that last September was an aberration. This year is a welcome return to sanity. Up nine percent is up nine percent.

Parting Shot: With all the things going on in the world, and everything you expect from Time Magazine, how do they come up with a cover story this week on “The New American Home?”