Welcome to Holland Partners Home Page

Holland Partners is one of the world's more respected research companies in terms of advanced technologies.

In this case, we have given you an Innernette Webbed Site Log or "Blog." In this digital newsletter, we will update you on the great work that we at Holland Partners do, including...

• Pre-testing. We boil down your advertisement into a single, easy-to-remember number. If that number is over 42%, you can run your ad with confidence.
• Tracking studies. Numbers up? Numbers down? It's interesting.
• Segmentation studies. Some products are enjoyed more by men, some more by women. We will tell you which gender likes you more.
• Qualitative. A nice chance to get out of the house and eat some candy.

Please bookmark our web place, as I think the Google gives us some money if you do.

And don't be like those foolish agency planners that end up at http://www.hall-and-partners.com/ by mistake. That company us run by a bunch of brand-loving hispters that couldn't put together a 300 page research Omnibus if their life depended on it.

Til next time.
Garry Holland, Jr.
Acting CEO,Holland Partners, Ltd.

Our philosophy on advertising

Holland Partners feels that advertising is universal. The same ad should be equally effective to teenagers as it is to my grandma (and I should add that Dottie is quite hip for her age).

For example, everyone likes soft drinks, right? So if the TV plays a simple ad of an 18-49 female drinking a carbonated cola, everyone will want this drink: young and old! It’s that easy. (I’d use a specific example of a cola brand here, but no specific brand comes to mind.)

Ads too often complicate what makes their product great. Things in advertisements like “stories,” “editing,” and “fancy lighting” often complicate the message. Just show people the product and let it do the work. Don’t overthink it!

And while people talk about the fads of “the Internets” and “Integrated Major Commericials (IMC)” we know they are just buzzwords. Nothing draws in enormous crowds like a 30 second TV spot on a beloved show such as “M*A*S*H” or the “Texaco Star Theater.”

The bottom line: the key to effective advertising is clear placement of your product in the exact center of the screen. Often with a logo somewhere.

Therefore we at Holland Partners get to the heart of the matter with such probing questions as…

• Where was the bottle of cola?
• Was it in the center of the screen?
• So it was a little to the left? Did that bother you?
• Was the lighting too fancy?
• That logo is nice, right?
• Would this ad seem like a good fit with M*A*S*H?

Qualitative Research

Qualitative research is perhaps the easiest type of research to field. All you need is 4-6 people and you are ready to go. (“Quantitative surveys” on the other hand require almost 50 people. And frankly, it’s hard to fit all those folks in one room.)

Qualitative is great, because you see people’s reactions right away. When we ask people “who liked this ad? Raise your hand!” you see the reaction instantly. And believe us, having four-out-of-six like you is much better than three-out-of-six.

We like to bond with our respondents throughout the sessions, as it gets people to be more “real.” So our moderators do tricks like starting to cry if the group doesn’t like the ad. It gets people thinking “why don’t I like the ad? Is the ad bad, or am I bad?”

Another key is feeding respondents constantly through the session with big dinners (steaks, pork chops, lamb chops, etc.) People love food as a general rule. And when people’s mouths are full, it gives them more time to really think about what we are telling them.

We also have techniques to keep respondents engaged throughout our 4-5 hour sessions. One of our moderators is a former high school gym teacher. He had great success by pretending to punch sleepy respondents, then say “made you flinch” when they flinch, then punch then anyway (cause they flinched).

Plus, a lot of places have these mirrors where we can see through one side, but they can’t see us. So when the time is right, you can totally flip these people “the bird.” (As a joke of course... we love our customers).

Ad tracking

Once your ad has hit the market, then it’s time to understand how it is working. Is the ad really wonderful or only just terrific?

Since not everyone sees all advertising (some people, for example, play field hockey on Thursday nights even though their team is not very good).

Therefore it is imperative to collect large samples of people. We accomplish this by not limiting ourselves to a single methodology. No one can collect the 120 people needed for ad tracking all in one place. So once we get the 30 maximum allowed number of people from the Internets, we get creative. We start calling people on the telephone, grabbing them in the street, and barging in on them unexpectedly within their own homes. You’ll be surprised on how effective it is to yell “Nobody move!” as an invite to a research study.

We firmly believe that advertising effectiveness is best gauged by isolating those with an “opportunity to see” your commercial. We get at that through a probing battery of questions.

• Were you watching TV on Monday night?
• Were you paying attention closely?
• Really? Be honest.
• Seriously, be honest.
• OK, since you were paying attention closely, you probably saw an ad about soup, right?
• Sing me a bit of that soup jingle, to show you were really paying attention.
• No, that’s not it.

We repeat this for every night of the week (except for Thursday nights, where our line of questioning is largely about the very popular sport of field hockey.)

Usually your ad does very well with this technique, so there is nothing to worry about.

Copy Testing

This is the bread and butter of our business at Holland Partners. 100% of our work is copy testing as we have yet to actually conduct a tracking study or focus group.

We have a very simple direct methodology that lets you know with a single number if that ad should run on both VHF and UHF TV stations, or just the UHF ones.

Here is the flow…

Step 1: Show the ad to the respondent with his eyes shut and his ears covered. We ask the person to describe the ad to us. If he says anything at this point, we know he is a liar.

Step 2: Show 1 second of the ad and make the respondent describe what he wants to see next. This sets up the “ideal ad” in the consumer’s mind on which all future work will be judged. If you ad agencies can’t give the consumer what they want, then why are you even in this business?

Step 3: Show the full ad on a continuous loop, whilst the respondent tries to drink a gallon of milk. We all know the milk challenge can’t be done, so we only let this go on for 15 minutes or so. Drinking a lot of milk simulates “media clutter,” while the continuous loop represents the “burn in” effect that all ads strive for.

Step 4: Sleep deprivation stage. The continuous loop is still playing.

Step 5: We ask respondents “what is the ad making you do?” A classic question. If the respondent cannot answer this question to our satisfaction at Step 5, they go back to Step 3.

Step 6: Respondents go home with a case of the client’s product. As our “thank you.”

Step 7: We call the respondent back the next day and ask them what brand was advertised. This gets at the “brand linkage rating.”

If that number is above 42%, run the ad on your local VHF stations!

(Note: due to some legal implications of this technique, all Holland Partners fieldwork is done on a ship 3.5 miles off the Mexican coastline.)