Team

Although I have worked for more than 20 years in marketing research, one factor has become very clear to me in the past three years: Advertisers are thirsting not just for data on advertising performance, but on the bigger picture — on why advertising does or does not work. No matter how thorough the ad research, one truth continues to assert itself in the work that I have done: very often people don’t really know what it is specifically about an ad that excites or dissuades their interest.

My advantage in that regard, I think, is that I have been fortunate enough to have run the gamut from the first advertising research firm in the world, Starch Communications, to (currently) the state-of-the-art firm in neuroscience consumer research, Innerscope Research. What has been most fascinating is to see where the two approaches (survey research and biometric) both intersect and diverge.

My primary goal in my work is to employ and honor the research — but to move beyond the data to help my clients understand the extraordinary (and often unconscious) dynamics that generate interest and engagement with advertising. And the work that Innerscope Research has been doing, has catapulted our understanding of what works and does not in advertising.