Veksner: I am actually warming to Millward Brown
October 28 2013, 9:19 am | | 5 Comments
Like many creatives, I have always considered Millward Brown to be the anti-christ.
Everything I had heard from them seemed to be a guide to how to make ads worse. Often much worse.
And since nearly every ad on TV has ‘passed’ Millward Brown, but nearly every ad on TV is shit, I just assumed they were charlatans or fools.
But recently, I was sent a copy of one of MB’s ‘Knowledge Point’ reports… and it’s f***ing great. READ ON…
5 Comments
Wash your mouth out, Simon.
Until these guys stop pushing the absolute sham that is link-testing of animatics, they can write all the reports in the world but they’ll still be responsible for the mass genocide of good ads.
They’re no fools though. They make a killing off killing good work.
Millward Brown are still long behind the game. Their foray into science/neuroscience methodology falls well short of world’s best practice. Emsense, their first attempt, is no longer and Affectiva is no more than a facial recognition tool that claims to measure emotions – but, it doesn’t – it measures facial expressions and then makes the astronomically giant leap to claim the expressions tells you exactly how people are thinking and what emotions they are feeling – it can’t, it doesn’t and wouldn’t pass any serious scientific review.
Follow up to 10:34.The purpose of Emsense and Affectiva isn’t to replace Link-Testing, it’s to support it.Try and do a MB study without them recommending Link-Testing groups. But, it gets better [for MB]. First do Link-Testing to recommend a campaign. Then do the campaign. Then test the campaign again [with Affectiva], before suggesting more Link-testing groups to test the ‘findings’ of Affectiva! Then more groups to test the efficacy of the changes driven by Link-testing/Affectiva. It’s a gold mine – of virtual zero value to the marketer – but $quillions to MB. The client can claim its been tested, re-tested and ‘scientifically’ tested – all under-pinned by Link-Testing. I’m not opposed to market research. In fact, I value it greatly. But anyone who believes this Link-testing, Affectiva route serves anyone but MB is kidding themselves.
I’ve sat and watched these groups (as a creative). The responses that come back entirely depend on the interviewer and how (generally she) plants suggestions in their minds. A ‘I don’t mind it it could be ok’ followed by a question turns into a ‘no I don’t love it, but…’
I’ve even seen campaigns come back with the recommendation not to proceed when 70% of the room were positive, thankfully the client was there and saw that too.
Clients that rely on research need to change their payment method. If MB or any other research group were paid per campaign rather than per idea or per session, much more honest results would come back. A lot of research is a sham, they kill ideas to make money and recommend no end of changes to the campaign the client likes and re-research them again.
And if I look at the most successful campaigns I’ve done, awards wise and sales wise, I can safely conclude research is for fucking idiots who don’t know what they’re doing.
Research is a given, regardless of what you, me, or anyone else thinks.
The question is which research methodology works best. I claim that MB’s methodology is flawed and that Affectiva is even more flawed.