Obituary: Meg Henderson Blair

Margaret (Meg) Henderson Blair, founding President of marketing and advertising research services business The ARS Group, died unexpectedly on March 8th at the age of 75.

Born in Youngstown, Ohio in 1943, Henderson Blair (pictured) attended the New School for Social Research in New York and was later awarded an honorary Doctor of Science Degree from the University of Southern Indiana, where she helped establish the Blair Chair for Business Science.

She began her career in marketing at New York City-based Schwerin Research, whose founder Horace Schwerin focused on marketing research through the development of several pre-airing methods for assessing television advertising impact. Henderson Blair took on the role of a 'human computer'; tabulating test results by hand and later using a Resulta 7 mechanical calculator imported from Berlin. During this period, she became known as the 'Numbers Girl', a nickname she often referenced in later years as a badge of honor.

In the late 1960s, Schwerin sold his firm and Henderson Blair remained, working with the new owners to ensure the firm's measures would achieve greater adoption through a new entity called The Advertising Research System (ARS) Group (much later sold to comScore and then to MSW). At that time, marketers used on-air day after recall scores as the test of advertising success, but Henderson Blair developed an off-air related recall solution to predict these scores and P&G adopted this approach, leading to it becoming an industry standard. Her research also led to the discovery that an ad's effectiveness 'wears out' as media weight is placed behind it and this finding became a component of what is now known as market mix modeling. In 2000, the Editorial Review Board of the Journal of Advertising Research selected eighteen methodologies to merit the title of 'classic', and Henderson Blair's 1987 study on advertising 'wearout' is among them.

During her 30 years with The ARS Group, Henderson Blair's findings were regularly published in industry journals. In addition, she was awarded two patents: the first for the collection of behavioral brand preference data online, and the second for empirically based ad planning - both are still under license and in active use. Later in her career, she received the Distinguished Practitioner Award from the Academy of Marketing Science and the Advertising Research Foundation (ARF) Lifetime Achievement Award.

In 2007, the Marketing Accountability Standards Board (MASB) was set up to improve marketing by setting measurement and performance standards. As founding President and CEO, Henderson Blair led MASB through its first decade, helping establish the first of many projects, including Brand Investment & Valuation, Improving Financial Reporting, and the Common Language Marketing Dictionary. She stepped down from this role a year ago, although she continued to serve as Foundation Chair.

David Stewart, MASB Chair and President's Professor of Marketing and Business Law at Loyola Marymount University, comments: 'I came to know Meg in the early 1980's while I was an assistant professor at Vanderbilt. She was a friend and mentor. Meg was one of a handful of industry leaders who understood the importance of measurement and who advanced best practices associated with the development and use of reliable and valid measures. Her contributions will live on'.

Away from work, Henderson Blair was active in her church and the Red Cross, and she was the first female member of the Evansville Rotary. At her summer home on Nantucket, Massachusetts, she served on the Board of the local AIDS Network; and at her winter home in Islamorada, Florida, she served on the Board of the Art District and chaired the Red Cross development team. Her passion for fishing won her prizes in several categories in Florida tournaments, and her love of the water also included a lifetime of sailing and blue water cruising.

Henderson Blair is survived by her spouse of 22 years, Lori Headley Blair, two children, and a grandson, as well as a sister and two brothers. A celebration of her life will be held at the Coral Isles Church in Islamorada, Florida, on April 7th at 3 pm. Memorial donations can be made to Coral Isles Church, 90001 Overseas Hwy, Tavernier FL 33070, or The Good Health Clinic, 91555 Overseas Hwy, Tavernier FL 33070.

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.