Last week my post about research metrics and pre-testing drew Jacob Wright, senior strategist at Mother in London, into the debate. Kudos to Jacob for putting his viewpoint forward, even if I cannot agree with some of his assertions. But the real question is, why is he so convinced that pretesting is bad for creativity?

Thinking about the debate, it seems to me that Jacob’s commentary reflects a longstanding friction between researchers and advertisers that is as much due to mindset as methodology. It is one that I am familiar with from my time living and working in the UK. But now I wonder how many people still share Jacob’s viewpoint. Could it be that this antipathy to pretesting is uniquely British and perhaps outdated?

I just read an article in AdAge by Patrick Sarkissian with the provocative title, “Why Metrics Are Killing Creativity in Advertising.”  The basic point of the article was summed up in the subtitle: “When Marketing Decisions Are Based on Numbers, We Lose the Desire to Be Creative.” The author seems to assume that creativity applies only to ideas and not to numbers. If I’m reading him correctly, I believe he is wrong and that his clients are missing out.

Last week found me back in Johannesburg listening to the inimitable Charles Foster, CEO of Millward Brown South Africa, as he reviewed the last 25 years of advertising in that country. The combination of 25 great TV commercials and Charles’s enthusiasm for his subject made for a very enjoyable experience, and also highlighted a point that has been emphasized recently in two of our Points of View: Sometimes ads that resonate well with a local audience simply do not make sense to people from other countries and cultures.

Last week I published a post titled “Big is Beautiful for Social Media.” What I did not say in that post  was that the same principle - the advantage of being big - applies to viral video as well.  If you want to hit critical mass with a video (generally considered to be 1 million views or more) you need both great creative and wide dissemination.

I also posted on this topic back in 2007 (click here to read), but since then we have uncovered a lot more evidence that mass marketing is necessary for viral success.

Yesterday I put my car in a ditch. The weather forecast, my own natural optimism, and my confidence in my car’s 4-wheel drive allowed me to venture out into a blizzard when I should have stayed home. Luckily a guy with a truck stopped to haul my car out. Since then I have considered what advertisers might learn from my experience.