This month’s Measurement Maven award goes to Beth Baldwin, Vice President of Global Marketing, Terra Lycos, Burlington, Massachusetts. Even if she hadn’t graduated from the University of New Hampshires’ Whittemore School of Business, we still would have named Beth our Maven of the Month. Beth has consistently used her expertise in research and measurement to catapult her career from a lowly research assistant at UNH, to Campbell’s Soup, to advertising giant Ogilvy, to Terra Lycos. In her current job she oversees worldwide marketing for one of the world’s most visited Web sites. She has developed ways to almost instantly test what works and what doesn’t work on their site, and has been testing customer behavior against a variety of promotional activities. She is a frequent speaker on measurement and research for the Advertising Research Foundation and the American Marketing Association.
And the monthly Menace Award goes to Gail Pohl, APR, University of Iowa. Ms. Pohl's paper on “The New Calculus” puts forth a simplistic version of ad value equivalency. It was given recently at The PRSA Educators’ Academy 5th Annual International, Interdisciplinary Public Relations Research Conference, Miami, Florida, March 8-10, 2002. It’s got an enticing title, but lacks credible content. The arbitrary ratings and formulaic approach are misleading and potentially damaging to our industry as a whole. In the search for a quick fix for the measurement problem, this is a dead end.
This month’s Measurement Maven award goes to Beth Baldwin, Vice President of Global Marketing, Terra Lycos, Burlington, Massachusetts. Even if she hadn’t graduated from the University of New Hampshires’ Whittemore School of Business, we still would have named Beth our Maven of the Month. Beth has consistently used her expertise in research and measurement to catapult her career from a lowly research assistant at UNH, to Campbell’s Soup, to advertising giant Ogilvy, to Terra Lycos. In her current job she oversees worldwide marketing for one of the world’s most visited Web sites. She has developed ways to almost instantly test what works and what doesn’t work on their site, and has been testing customer behavior against a variety of promotional activities. She is a frequent speaker on measurement and research for the Advertising Research Foundation and the American Marketing Association.
And the monthly Menace Award goes to Gail Pohl, APR, University of Iowa. Ms. Pohl's paper on “The New Calculus” puts forth a simplistic version of ad value equivalency. It was given recently at The PRSA Educators’ Academy 5th Annual International, Interdisciplinary Public Relations Research Conference, Miami, Florida, March 8-10, 2002. It’s got an enticing title, but lacks credible content. The arbitrary ratings and formulaic approach are misleading and potentially damaging to our industry as a whole. In the search for a quick fix for the measurement problem, this is a dead end.