By the late seventies and early eighties the focus of advertising shifted to television. What was once a challenge to create the perfect page now became a challenge to create the perfect commercial. But the bigger problems facing the next generation of copywriters and graphic designers were that what was being sold had changed. The goods had now become products of parity. Every category there was four to five major companies producing essentially the same thing. Five detergents looked, smelled, cost and washed the same way. As Rosser Reeves said “Our problem is-a client comes into my office and throws two newly minted half dollars onto my desk and says, “Mine is the one on the left. You prove it’s better.”
From this challenge came the elaborating of “segmenting” the idea that you can’t sell to everybody. Agencies began to examine what they were promoting and asked who was really going to by this product? Then they placed the ad where the particular audience would see it. The ads were designed to look like, talk like and do things that the identified audience did.
With the need to refine the message and focus on its audience, precision drove research to new heights. Focus groups were born, brain waves were studied, copy testing was done and computers became an important device to the business landscape. What was once considered an art was quickly becoming a science. Before decisions were made based on judgment and trust, now they were made based on how they tested.
When DDB dramatically changed the surface of advertising, a lot of emulators followed. Unfortunately, part of what happened is that not everyone could do the work that DDB did. A lot of clients trusted their agency to do work like DDB, and they failed. They wanted some assurance for it, so they tested. It was a crutch that clients felt they needed.