When advertising is spread out over a selling season or
several seasons, part of the measurement job is keeping records. Your aim is
comparing records of ads and sales for extended time.
An easy way to set up a file is by marking the date of the
run on tear sheets of newspaper ads (many radio stations now provide
"radio tear sheets", too), log reports of radio and television ads,
and copies of direct mail ads. The file may be broken down into monthly
quarterly, or semiannual blocks. By recording the sales of the advertised items
on each ad or log, you can make comparisons.
In attitude (or image-building) advertising, the individual ads are building blocks, so
to speak, which make up your advertising over a selling season. The problem is
trying to measure each ad and the effects of all of the ads taken together.
One approach is making your comparisons on a weekly basis.
If you run an ad, for example, each week, at the end of the first week after
the ad appears or is broadcast, compare that week's sales with sales for the
same week a year ago. At the end of the second week, compare your sales with those of the end of the first week as
week as year-ago figures.
At the end of the third week, 1 month, 3 months, 6 month,
and 12 months from the running of the ad, repeat the process even though
additional ads may have appeared or been aired in the meantime. For each of
these ads, you will also make the same type of comparisons. You will, of
course, be measuring the "momentum" of all your ads as well as the
results of a single ad.
After a time, you probably will be able to estimate how much
of the results are due to the individual ad and how much to the momentum of all
your advertising. You may then make changes in specific details of the ad to
increase response.
When comparing sales increases over some preceding period,
allowances must be made for situations that are not normal. For example, your
experience may be than rain on the day an ad appears cuts its pulling power by
50 percent. Similarly, advertising response will be affected by the fact that
your customers work in a factory that is out on strike.
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