AdQA replicates and articulates how your customers see or hear your communications for the first time;
the customer's experience of your communications

… from initial awareness (advertising, exhibitions, etc)
… to asking detailed buying questions (websites, brochures, selling)

AdQA is a totally unique set of Buying Questions and Communications Quality Assurance Questions, Tests, and Prompts that mimics the customers’ experience of any communication they see or hear.

A single sign, instruction, slogan, advertisement or website; an exhibition stand and selling; a sales presentation; even a lengthy brochure or report or intranet.

You could, but you couldn’t be sure it would work. You (and your agency) know too much about your communication. You know what you are selling or telling. You could still miss an ‘obvious’ and costly mistake. Obvious, that is, in hindsight.

From seeing literally thousands of these 'obvious' communications errors we've devised a 'law' about Communications Quality Assurance - Barrett's Law of Subjectivity, which states:

     Nobody can quality-assure their own communications.
     They’re too involved to be truly objective.                         

♦  has had no involvement with that communication. Involvement = Subjectivity

♦  has never seen or heard it before - just like your customers

♦  is trained in Communications Analysis (ie analysing effectiveness)

♦  has experience in Sales & Marketing, Purchasing, and Quality Assurance
    ... three very different perspectives; very different ‘ways of thinking’ (Thinking Styles)

Are key Buying Questions all customers ask (mainly subconsciously) when they encounter any new communication. For example “What’s being sold/told?”  “What’s interesting about this?”  "Why is there a need for this?”  “Why should I buy it?”  

Buying Questions that range from the customers' initial awareness stages (eg "What's being sold/told?"), through the influencing stages (eg "How do I trust what you are saying?) to the final buying stages (eg "How do I buy it?").

But AdQA also includes message-delivery Quality Assurance Questions, eg “Why should customers notice that?”  “Why do you think they will understand that?”  “How is this message/picture clear?”

Over 75 individual Effective-Communication tests applied to every word, phrase, sentence, paragraph, or image in the communication. For example: “Meaning?”, “Readability”, “Benefit?”, “Active v Passive”, “Picture – Words Synergy”, “Verbal Tic”, “Words-Flow”, … and the killer “So-What?” test.

Verbal Tic record? Caroline Kennedy said “You know” 235 times in 41 minutes. Few people can recall what else she said in her Senator speech (apart from “um”).

A six-word slogan killed off an FT100 company brand. One AdQA Test would have spotted the error in 10 minutes.

Generic suggestions that stimulate effective ‘answers’ to Customers' Buying Questions. For example, tips that prompt answers to customers’ unspoken questions such as “What’s interesting about …?” and “How is this Value for Money?”

Prompts are used to resolve problems that the Questions or Tests unearth, and to create ideas for solutions or improvements. For example: one of the most ‘interesting’ things in the world is … a mirror! Many people find a mirror irresistible.