The Eardley Factor and You

I never actually met Bob Goldstein, though I often wished I had.

Bob was Proctor and Gamble's V-P of Marketing for quite a while, and it is he who is responsible for the creation of 'The Eardley factor'. Not that Bob knew anything about our marketing hypothesis. It was actually something he said in a one to one interview for 'The Want Makers'. Here it is - ''Ninety percent of all new products fail within two years.''

Now if anyone would care to calculate how many billions of dollars evaporate into the ether.......

Perhaps it's better not to. It will lead to sleepless nights. However, back to Bob and his regrets over new products. - ''If we were so smart, there would be no failure,'' he added wryly.

Which is where 'The Eardley Factor' rides to the rescue. ''Suppose,'' we mused, ''just suppose it were possible to predict which ads would almost certainly fail, and which ones are destined for greatness.''

We can hear the screams of derision and accusations of fakery and worse. Ok, you feel better now. We are not kidding. We really do know and believe that we are on to something ground breaking, unique and potentially so powerful that every agency with an ounce of curiosity should wish to know more.

We are talking about saving billions here and giving your new product the optimum chance of success. Privately, we consider our method to be 'The Holy Grail' of Marketing. The odd thing is that neither one of us has worked in advertising in our past lives. Our background is in medicine and education and our combined skills and knowledge in these fields have coalesced to formulate our working hypothesis.

We recently began to read 'Advertising Age' and to read it critically. There is much to admire. However, there is much to debate and take issue with, particularly the use of language which is heavily conflictual. We hold that inappropriate emotive language is negative and leads to non-acceptance.

For example, in the June 28 edition we encounter the following negative connations right at the heart of the lead captions. 'Grey Global up for Grabs.' Sure, it grabs the attention, but for all the wrong reasons. Then' Coughlin 'hits' a glitch'. 'Arcade craze swings into the living room.' And so it goes on .It is challenging to discover a headline which does not rely on visions of conflict to attract attention. Yes, we know that this is the stuff of 'good' journalism. Whatever one does, make sure you grab the reader by the throat and once you've got him never let him go. Right? No---Wrong!!!!!!

" But surely", I can hear you complain, competition is at the heart of the 'American Way.' Isn't the will to compete and win at the core of American success in the world? Why should marketing be any different ?"

I will tell you why. What do people do when they hear a very loud noise, such as a building collapsing or a gun being fired? They look startled and recoil. They don't like it one bit and they will remember where they were and what they were doing then for years to come. Yes, just like older people always tell you what they were doing when JFK was shot and more recently everyone can relate the details of the morning of 9/11.

Advertising is like that but a great deal more complex. Many errors appear in TV ads of which the creative team is blissfully unaware. Without the specialist knowledge we possess, ads are often counter-productive. Imagine someone being paid millions to create a commercial which actually ruins your product's chances of success. Yet this is what is happening every day.

The problem is that since nobody knows what we know, failure is just put down to bad luck or perhaps it was a product for which there is no demand. Not true. By the time a product reaches the 'ad' stage it should be possible to evaluate the probability of success, given a fair wind, and of course most importantly, the' correct' marketing package, with all negative impressions removed at the pre-production stage.

The ' Eardley Factor' is designed to do just that. To 'correct' the often minute inclusions which 'startle' the customer and result in product rejection.

Next week there will be more observations concerning the marketing scene, which it is to be anticipated, will stimulate debate and discussion over the whole range of issues concerning how this great industry conducts its business.

Robert Jack Eardley, M.D.                                                              Robert Francis Eardley, Cert. Ed., B.A.
3366 Commodore Drive                                                                  e-mail: robertfrancis@eardley.org
Lexington, Kentucky 40502-3602
(859) 229-7714
For those interested e-mail
inquiry@eardleyfactor.com
or
robertjack@eardley.org