Omnicom Unit To Challenge Q Scores With New Celebrity Index

Amid a “push by marketers for more-detailed research on the effectiveness of advertising,” Omnicom’s Davie-Brown entertainment marketing unit plans to challenge Marketing Evaluations’ Q Scores with a “service offering what it says will be a more finely tuned measure of the value of individual celebrities to marketers,” according to Brian Steinberg of the WALL STREET JOURNAL. The service will “attempt to measure how much a celebrity could influence consumers’ decisions to buy a particular product.” The service, known as the Davie-Brown Index, is “based on regular surveys of people drawn from a 1.5 million-member research panel provided by” Dallas-based online market-research firm i.think. A list of more than 1,500 celebrities is presented to respondents four times a year. Those who are “aware of a certain celebrity are asked questions about whether that famous person is viewed as a trendsetter, is considered trustworthy and is influential, among other attributes.” Respondents are also asked whether the celebrity’s endorsement of a product “would be believable.” But Marketing Evaluations President Steven Levitt “dismisses the competitive threat posed by Davie-Brown,” saying that advertisers “mainly want to know whether a celebrity has recognition and is likable.” He added that everything else “is ancillary” (WALL STREET JOURNAL, 2/13).