Tom H. C. Anderson - Next Gen Market Research

Marketing News or Market Research Ads?

This morning I got the new copy of American Marketing Associations (AMA) Marketing News magazine in the mail. The cover once again was about the 2008 Honomichl 50. Damn, I thought, again? I’ve read about this list so many times already. Each time it seems to be split a different way. This month it’s the “Global Top 25″, Last time it was the 50 US firms I believe. Anyway, I get Inside Research too (which is valuable by the way and I did just renew my subscription with them), but why do I need to read about it in 2 publications?

Anyway, I quickly flipped through Marketing News looking for the Ad I thought our company had placed in this issue. Couldn’t find it. Last year we were in every issue, but couldn’t point our finger at any specific ROI so we’ve only advertised in a couple of issues this year.

So then a couple of things struck me. This magazine is all market research advertising! I mean all of it! I decided to count the pages. There were 84 pages total including the cover page and index. First I looked for content, and I was very generous in what I considered content, 10.25 pages (12% of the magazine). Then I counted the section devoted to Honomichl 25, about 19 pages (23%). Then pure ads, 52.75 pages (64.5%). Since Honomichl content seems to read just like short ads for those companies I think it’s safe to ad advertising with Honomichl which gives you 81.75% advertising!

Wow is all I can say. I get a lot of MR publications, and all of them have better content than this one. The Ads are all market research related, I thought this magazine was for marketers overall? Perhaps there is a different magazine for other marketers? In any case, I will seriously consider whether or not to re-up my AMA membership next time around. I think I’ve been a member for a decade now, and during this time they have seriously underperformed as far as I’m concerned.

Anyone else agree or disagree?