Super Searchers on Madison Avenue: Top Advertising and Marketing Professionals Share Their Online Research Strategies

Citation

Holland, M. (2004), "Super Searchers on Madison Avenue: Top Advertising and Marketing Professionals Share Their Online Research Strategies", Online Information Review, Vol. 28 No. 1, pp. 85-86. https://doi.org/10.1108/14684520410522556

“Super searchers” is now an established brand. Books in this series have a simple format – an enthusiast in a given area of activity interviews ten or more information professionals or researchers. Each interview is a chapter with a final bulleted summary under the heading of “Super searcher power tips”. Grace Villamora, author of this book, also appears as an interviewee in an earlier book, Super Searchers Do Business. At the end is an appendix listing all the sites interviewees refer to, which is also available on the Web.

What do we learn from the Super Searchers? Reassuringly, we learn that they are not that much different from, if there can be such a term, Normal Searchers. They appear to have exceptional communication skills and to be able to identify consistently the right answer, angle or approach. Although they use Google a lot, they do not as the title suggests rely solely on the Internet but make extensive use of personal and professional networks. Super Searchers have an extensive knowledge of sources but are not afraid to think “outside the box” to get to the right answer. They have a clear sense of the mission of their organisations and constantly refer to it in their own answers and examples. Super Searchers make regular use of basic information skills, clarifying questions with users, anticipating requests by gathering information from work and personal experience.

Does Super Searchers on Madison Avenue have an international audience? John Silvey (Head of the BBC’s Audience Research) describes a dinner at Claridges (an exclusive London hotel) hosted by Art Nielsen at which he attempted to sell an American audience measurement service to the young independent television industry in the UK. The dinner went well but was ruined in the view of the audience by a 50‐minute presentation using cards with single words in large type printed on them to emphasise key points. The intended message of rationality and efficiency did not cross the cultural divide. In the Super Searcher interviews rationality and efficiency are replaced by a relentless enthusiasm with plenty of emphasis on progress and success, which you might expect from very successful people, but none of the trials and tribulations that must come from working in corporate America.

The text of Super Searchers is punctuated by the questions asked using a large bold type. Some of these are quite lengthy, taking up a sixth or so of the page. As a reader, I would have hoped for a more edited, perhaps journalistic style. I found myself screening out the questions as my eye moved through the text and having to go back and re‐read them to get a sense of what was being said.

This reviewer created an advertising library to support one of the premier advertising degree programmes in the UK at Bournemouth University, and it was reassuring to see that professionals in the industry use the same sources, or their American equivalents, as are available to students in the UK. Ultimately the value of these books might not be the sources they reveal but what they reveal about working in a competitive commercial environment. Super Searchers on Madison Avenue will be instructive reading for students of advertising and the information profession to learn from the experts. It is also reassuring and challenging for seasoned professionals to hear colleagues tell their own stories, and in the true tradition of personal narratives, it is quite compelling.