Buyology - Martin Lindstrom [72]
HENLIKE AND ACID-TONGUED, Kim and Aggie, a pair of middle-aged British busybodies and self-described Cleaning Queens, entered the row house in a New York City borough. Their expressions were eloquent. “We are totally and utterly disgusted,” one of them remarked, eyeing the squalor before them.
Janet and Kathy, college-aged sisters, lived alone. Earlier, they’d announced that their vocations in life were “clubbing” and “shopping.” Like, no kidding. Clothing and shoes were strewn everywhere, from the living room to the bedroom. You could barely make out the vague outlines of furniture. The kitchen with its rancid refrigerator and grease-clogged stove-top burners was hardly an improvement. In the bathroom, the ceiling above the shower was peeling and streaked with so much black-purple mold it looked like a starless winter sky. One of the Cleaning Queens even began to itch.
“But we don’t know how to clean,” one of the sisters whined.
Two smart, grossed-out Brits versus two pampered, slovenly sisters. Amid somewhat scripted-sounding sisterly bickering (“That’s her stuff!” “No, it’s her stuff!”), out came the industrial-sized garbage bags and Swiffer cleaning cloths and in came a team of professional air consultants, who, after finding that colonies of aspergillus and penicillium molds had made the bathroom ceiling their home, recommended the entire shower stall be retiled.
Soon, a sisterly pigsty had been transformed into a palace—Zenlike in appearance, dotted here and there with flickering white pillar candles. Makeover complete. Followed by hugs, disbelief, and lots of OhmyGod! OhmyGodthankyousosososomuch!
Our question: Would viewers prefer this show over Quizmania? And how would it fare against The Swan?
Professor Silberstein called a week later with the results.
“PLEASE TICK THE box that best describes how you feel about the program you saw.”
I would never miss an episode.
I would watch it in preference to other programs if I’m at home.
I would watch it if there was nothing better on.
I would watch it only if I was with my partner or a friend who wanted to watch it.
I would never watch it.
This was the questionnaire that our two hundred respondents were handed following our study. First, we asked this question about our two benchmark test shows, The Swan and How Clean Is Your House? As I suspected, the pencil-and-paper responses didn’t quite reflect the success or failure status of each show that we knew to be true—more evidence that how we say we feel about something and how we actually behave rarely match up. In fact, despite the fact that How Clean Is Your House? had been a huge hit and The Swan a flop, they were just about neck and neck in terms of how likely our volunteers claimed they would be to watch. Yet their SST results said otherwise; the results showed that our subjects were far more emotionally engaged when watching How Clean Is Your House? than when watching The Swan; in other words, their brains’ responses were consistent with how those two shows had actually done, even though their questionnaire responses were not.
So what was the verdict on Quizmania? On their questionnaires, viewers rated Fremantle’s pilot program as the one they were least likely to watch—far less likely than the other two programs. Based on their written responses, it seemed our study subjects hated Quizmania. Loathed it even. The pencil-and-paper results were almost unanimous. Our viewers said they would rather watch anything but.
Next, we looked at the SST results. And the brains of these same two hundred men and women told a different story entirely. While watching How Clean Is Your House? viewer engagement (measured in the frontal part of the brain) was shown to be “consistently high,” while viewer engagement while watching The Swan was deemed “low to moderate.” No surprises there. The subjects’ brains had merely confirmed what we already knew: How Clean Is Your House? was a proven ratings winner, while The Swan,