Is advertising an art or a science? It's both, often simultaneously.

BY JOE OSTROW

I'm quite pleased to be given an opportunity to start a conversation about advertising within the pages of Cable World. Bill Gloede was nice enough to ask whether I was interested in doing this, and I thought it sounded like an interesting and worthwhile undertaking.

As some of you may know, I spent many years at Young & Rubicam in research and media, eventually becoming their worldwide media director. I was, for a short time, also president of their direct marketing companies. I then went to Foote, Cone & Belding as worldwide media director with a few add-on responsibilities as well. My most recent stint has been as president of the Cabletelevision Advertising Bureau during some of the medium's most dramatic growth. It has been quite gratifying.

As I start writing this monthly column, I am reminded of a whole bunch of clichés that I will probably be using from time to time, and for that I apologize in advance. One of these is that ?there is nothing new under the sun.? To make the point, let me talk about optimizers for a moment.

Their ?discovery? a few years back is, for me, like déj vu. In the 1960s there were several competitive advertising agencies and agency groups that worked with planning models. They were cumbersome and clunky, but in some ways more sophisticated than the optimizers that we have today. They had at their root the establishment of marketing premises and consumer bases. The groupings of consumers were dynamic and non-static. Y&R's High Assay Media Model (HAMM) identified consumers or prospects as ?in-drifters? (coming into a brand's franchise) and ?out-drifters? (leaving the brand's franchise), users, nonusers, etc.

The problem with this model was the length of time that was required to assemble the data; it was often longer than the time one had available to prepare the related media plan. Nevertheless, things like the High Assay Media Model and multiagency models like COMPASS are well known to people of my generation. They were frequently useful, even though they required an incredible amount of background data in order to make them run.

As I set the stage for my monthly columns, let me start with one basic philosophical statement about advertising. To some, the work undertaken by the practitioners of advertising, whether they be in advertising agencies, independent contractor specialty groups or in the client's in-house groups, are subject to the question, ?Are they working in and among the arts or in the sciences?? When one deals with the message itself, the likelihood is that the vast majority of people will agree that it's more art than science. It is pertinent to point out, however, that there are recall scores, norms and persuasion factors that represent the hurdle rate that a new campaign must meet or beat in order to get into the media.

Nevertheless, the creative work is indeed largely considered to be art. On the other hand, the media area, whether it's planning or buying, tends to be categorized as science. It is demographic profile matching, cost per thousands, reach and frequencies and other media math characteristics.

Herein lies a potential problem that has plagued media departments for years. If these media math statistics dominate so heavily, then why would one use anything other than the most efficient and lowest CPMs, which is likely to be skywriting or matchbook covers? Now I know that today we face an emerging cadre of advertiser auditors who believe media to be a commodity no different than sugar or wheat, and statistical comparisons are consequently essential. This situation is most studiously to be avoided or at least put into a multifaceted perspective whenever possible.

I have been through many occasions when going through CPM performance with a client all but put that person to sleep. However, when a new idea emerged dealing with a new way to use media that wasn't statistically supported or cost-efficiency directed, his or her eyes began to sparkle with discovery and innovative zeal.

I'm not saying let's discard the media math measures. But let's also add a quantity of judgmental artistry to the selection and usage of the media. Media are not commodities. They serve different purposes and have different ways to both attract their audience and express their advertising messages. We should not lose sight of this, nor should we automatically categorize the creation of the message as art and the creation and execution of the media plan as science. They each are a little of both.

I look forward to communicating with you each and every month and also to any communications that you have for me, which you can address to Cable World. Thanks for reading.