I asked expert friend about the conventional wisdom in B School about the efficacy of advertising. I specifically did not impose on her for research or citations. She has a PhD in marketing from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern (one of the top B-schools in the country), a former B-School prof, and now a consultant to (among others) Steve Jobs. She is author or coauthor of several standard texts and widely cited articles on e-marketing. (I believe that is what they are about.) She is an extremely liberal Democrat who likes Clinton, and she of the very smartest people I know, which is going some. She likes Kerry, predicts a Kerry/Clark ticket.
She says:
The first bit of conventional wisdom that pops out of my head is something [that a professor of mine from Kellogg) frequently says in his talks: The easiest way to ruin someone's career is to give them a bad product and a huge advertising budget. That I will agree with. . . . If you spend a lot of money on advertising, lots of people will go examine/sample your product......but if they then decide it's not any good, you'll have managed to prevent them from ever considering it again, thereby rendering it obsolete. (That does sound rather like what happened to Howard Dean, don't you think?)
* * *
So, for what's it's worth, that what she says, Sounds like common sense. . . . Don't kinow if there is research to back it up, but she like is likely to know more than we do about this stuff. It's her field and her job, and I trust her brains and instincts. Her prognostication record in my experience is scarily accurate.
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Finance: Get your refund fast by filing online. http://taxes.yahoo.com/filing.html