• Print Page
• eMail Page

Search website for :

Home→The Westburn Dictionary of Marketing→C→Colley, Russell H

Colley, Russell H

Definition:
An American management consultant, noted for his formulation, in 1961, of one of the HIERARCHY-OF-EFFECTS descriptions of how advertising works. This is universally known by the acronym DAGMAR, actually derived from the title of the paper in which the hierarchical explanation was first proposed: Defining Advertising Goals for Measured Advertising Results. It is ironic that Colley should be remembered for a conceptually flawed model of advertising effect instead of for the very important point made in the title of the paper and developed at much more length than the description of the model. The point is that testing ADVERTISING EFFECTIVENESS is legitimate exercise only if specific criteria of effectiveness have been derived from explicit and measurable ADVERTISING OBJECTIVES. Despite the re-publication of his paper as an article in the Harvard Business Review in 1962 and its subsequent dissemination in several books of readings, this vital lesson seems to have been depressingly widely ignored throughout the three decades since.

Cross-References:
[advertising effectiveness] [DAGMAR] [hierarchy-of-effects] [advertising objectives]

Links:

Figures:

© Westburn Publishers Ltd 2002, The Westburn Dictionary of Marketing edited by Michael J Baker, ISBN 978-0-946433-01-8. www.themarketingdictionary.com. Entry: [Keith Crosier], [1998].