DAGMAR (Russell Colley, 1961)

Defining Advertising Goals for Measured Advertising Results. Its funnel is ACCA — Awareness, Comprehension, Conviction, Action — but the real contribution is the demand that each rung carry a specific, quantified, time-bound objective. Advertising's job is a communication effect, not a sale, so you must set and measure that effect per stage.

Where superseded. Performance marketing and direct sales attribution reject the communication-only goal, tying spend to revenue instead. But the measurable-objective-per-stage discipline survives all of it — it is what attribution operationalizes.

Transfer. The hardest-transferring rung is Comprehension as a distinct, testable stage. Content can be seen (Awareness) yet convey nothing (Comprehension failure) — that is slop-is-a-context-deficit made measurable. For agent content, define per-piece what movement it must produce: not vague "engagement," but a target like one claim understood or a save/share signal. DAGMAR forbids the agent's favorite dodge — shipping volume and calling reach a result — by insisting each piece name the measurable communication effect it is accountable for.

Kin: aida, hierarchy-of-effects, slop-is-a-context-deficit, models