Television Advertising that Works: An Analysis of Commercials fro ...

Chapter 1

Introduction

We find that advertising works the way the grass grows. You can never see it, but every week you have to mow the lawn.

—Andy Tarshis, A. C. Nielsen

The business of the U.S. media accounts for 5% of the country’s gross domestic product, reaches hundreds of millions of consumers daily, and has tremendous global influence (Schasky, 2006). Within this media framework, individual companies spend millions on what they hope will be effective advertising for their organizations. However, evaluating the true dimensions of effective advertising has proven difficult (Frandin, Sheehan, & Patti, 1992; Moriarty, 1996). Academic literature defines models of advertising effects but tends to measure it by various individual dimensions of effectiveness. Likewise, effectiveness measures often depend on the goals of a communication campaign and differ across campaigns (Frandin et al., 1992; Moriarty, 1996).