In the very first episode of Mad Men, Don Draper dismisses a Viennese market researcher by dumping her report on smoking and death wishes into the wastebasket. Her dour and heavily accented response: “I’m sure your meeting vill be a qvick vun.”
The inspiration for that character, however, had a career which was anything but quick. Dr. Herta Herzog — who died on this date in 2010 at age 99 — pioneered marketing techniques in customer behavior. One of the only women in advertising during its Golden Age, she was still investigating media and motivation into her 80s. With the start of Women’s History Month a few days away, it seems fitting to recognize the work of this professional whose ideas continue to resonate in marketing today.
After immigrating to the US in 1935, Herzog became a pioneer in radio marketing research, beginning with female soap opera audiences. She is credited with developing modern focus group methodology. As McCann Erickson's Director of Research and a Senior Vice President at J. Walter Thompson, Herzog climbed the corporate ladder during the 1950s and ‘60s, when most women in advertising had few options and little professional credibility. Think Mad Men’s Peggy and Joan…
With a dissertation surveying the then-new medium of radio, Herzog was the first to identify motivations for engaging with mass media: emotional needs, wishful thinking or a desire to learn new things. Her work helped introduce the concept of product “image” — the totality of product impressions a consumer might receive from many sources — along with a paradigm for “uses and gratifications” to investigate engagement from a social psychology perspective.
Early advertising gurus like Edward Bernays (Sigmund Freud’s nephew) and Claude Hopkins are often remembered for their large campaigns to convince the American public to eat bananas or use toothpaste. These advertising initiatives tended to be paternalistic; Bernays even referred to his as “propaganda.” But Herzog cared about consumer perception and input. She created the technique known as “focused interviewing” to listen to and analyze feedback. Malcolm Gladwell had this to say about her:
“… she wouldn’t ask about hair-color products in order to find out about you, the way a psychoanalyst might; she would ask about you in order to learn about hair-color products. … the products and the commercial messages with which we surround ourselves are as much a part of the psychological furniture of our lives as the relationships and emotions and experiences that are normally the subject of psychoanalytic inquiry.” (http://gladwell.com/true-colors/)
From early radio soaps to German viewers of the TV show Dallas, Herzog explored and quantified the motivations, the aspirations of the 20th Century. A caricature of the Teutonic ad researcher makes an entertaining foil for Draper-like inventiveness. But nothing takes the place of understanding customers and valuing their input. Working on personas today? Take a moment to remember Herta Herzog.
Check out a BBC interview with her: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p009jd1g
The inspiration for that character, however, had a career which was anything but quick. Dr. Herta Herzog — who died on this date in 2010 at age 99 — pioneered marketing techniques in customer behavior. One of the only women in advertising during its Golden Age, she was still investigating media and motivation into her 80s. With the start of Women’s History Month a few days away, it seems fitting to recognize the work of this professional whose ideas continue to resonate in marketing today.
After immigrating to the US in 1935, Herzog became a pioneer in radio marketing research, beginning with female soap opera audiences. She is credited with developing modern focus group methodology. As McCann Erickson's Director of Research and a Senior Vice President at J. Walter Thompson, Herzog climbed the corporate ladder during the 1950s and ‘60s, when most women in advertising had few options and little professional credibility. Think Mad Men’s Peggy and Joan…
With a dissertation surveying the then-new medium of radio, Herzog was the first to identify motivations for engaging with mass media: emotional needs, wishful thinking or a desire to learn new things. Her work helped introduce the concept of product “image” — the totality of product impressions a consumer might receive from many sources — along with a paradigm for “uses and gratifications” to investigate engagement from a social psychology perspective.
Early advertising gurus like Edward Bernays (Sigmund Freud’s nephew) and Claude Hopkins are often remembered for their large campaigns to convince the American public to eat bananas or use toothpaste. These advertising initiatives tended to be paternalistic; Bernays even referred to his as “propaganda.” But Herzog cared about consumer perception and input. She created the technique known as “focused interviewing” to listen to and analyze feedback. Malcolm Gladwell had this to say about her:
“… she wouldn’t ask about hair-color products in order to find out about you, the way a psychoanalyst might; she would ask about you in order to learn about hair-color products. … the products and the commercial messages with which we surround ourselves are as much a part of the psychological furniture of our lives as the relationships and emotions and experiences that are normally the subject of psychoanalytic inquiry.” (http://gladwell.com/true-colors/)
From early radio soaps to German viewers of the TV show Dallas, Herzog explored and quantified the motivations, the aspirations of the 20th Century. A caricature of the Teutonic ad researcher makes an entertaining foil for Draper-like inventiveness. But nothing takes the place of understanding customers and valuing their input. Working on personas today? Take a moment to remember Herta Herzog.
Check out a BBC interview with her: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p009jd1g
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