Confessions of the Admen

In all walks of life and throughout history, people have projected their own worldview onto their surroundings to help better understand it: we also tend to use mental shortcuts (heuristics) to help us make decisions, but these can often be misinformed and ill-judged. People working at advertising, creative and media agencies are responsible for making multimillion pound decisions about where money should be invested. They tend to be younger, more urban and more digitally savvy than the population as a whole. They think about media and behave differently from the rest of the population. The question is: do media planners and buyers see the world as others do, and does it affect the decisions they make? This paper separates myth from reality by investigating the ‘perils of perception’ and analysing surveys to find out whether or not these decision-makers are in line with the people they’re advertising to. (Spoiler alert: they’re generally not.)

For more information please contact: Andrew Green.