Gut Reaction and the B.S. Monitor
With a two year old daughter, my wife and I do not get to go to the movies anymore. When we did, like most people, we enjoyed the previews of upcoming films. Looking around a bit, one could see people all over the theater giving the preview an immediate thumbs up or down. Not surprisingly, given my wife’s genius, her gut-level reactions were usually right on. Those trailers she deemed bad equalled a bad movie 100 percent of the time.
Over the years I have seen this same thing work with a variety of people across any number of media channels. Sitting with friends, a commercial for a new TV series is given judge and jury immediately. Shortly thereafter, the series is cancelled.
I do not think that my wife or people I know have any special insight into modern popular culture. Rather, everyone has developed such a finely tuned b.s. monitor. The pace (and chaos) of life causes us to dial out anything that stinks. Bad movies bomb, horrible TV shows disappear, and garbage music ends up in the garbage.
Given this phenomenon, though, a lot of crap still gets through. I wonder about this all the time. Even though everyone and their brother knew Kevin Federline’s CD would bomb, he still got to make it. Lindsay Lohan is a horrible actress and obviously supremely messed up in real life, but studios still hire her. Certain NASCAR drivers have no chance of winning each week and serve as little more than moving obstacles, yet they get to show up each week.
This is a perplexing situation. We know what is no good, but cannot seem to really escape what is being pushed at us. I wonder if there is a correlation with the way companies use marketing and public relations? Is there a way to flip the two-way communication model so that we on the communicatins side tap into the consumer b.s. monitor before spending time/money/effort on doomed campaigns?
Current attempts, such as focus groups and online surveys, are not the answer, we all know that. But, is there another means to getting at this crucial information? I think this is an area in which corporate communicators and academics could examine together, if willing to share resources and information.
What do you think?
September 19th, 2007 at 21:25
When I read this post it struck a chord with me for two reasons. To begin with, I laughed at the “b.s. monitor” suggestion. I know I have had the same reactions with my friends, as I’m sure most people have.
The second reason I started thinking was due to a discussion that came up in a recent class. Stuffed into one of our readings was the point or suggestion that we tend to put more money (whether through public relations, advertising, marketing or some combination of the three) behind higher quality products. The idea is that no amount of money and promotion is going to sell “b.s.” or help a product survive because at some point the product/service will be seen for what it really is. That doesn’t mean that we may not put promotional efforts towards a product or service that fails against our expectations, but to me the intent of the point seemed logical.
Even so, I see the example such as Kevin Federline and I wonder how much of his “success” is based on strategic promotions or maybe on society’s desire to indulge in “b.s.” Maybe it’s a combination of the two? A similar example that comes to mind is William Hung of American Idol fame. As far as I know there was hardly any promotional effort placed behind the release of his original CD — but there was enough that it was still produced, released and then amazingly sold 200,000 copies. Obviously he’s a rare case, but the reason I think of him as an example is because he and Federline are almost building blocks.
As practitioners can we argue that we can see that a product/service can still move off the shelves when there is an obvious lack of quality present? Does that mean that we can (or should) progress to the thought that if something that bad can sell, maybe anything can sell? It may not be worth spending a lot, but maybe it’s worth spending a little… so to me, the question almost becomes how are audiences inadvertently sending messages about what they actually want? While the idea that putting more money behind a quality product seemed logical at one point, I’m almost beginning to feel that we should question/research why we’re moving towards put money/promotions behind fast-moving, flash-in-the-pan trends and if that’s a result of the “new” nature of how audiences are consuming products/services. Instead of long-term quality, in many cases we’re consuming for short-term pleasure… and maybe that’s where the “b.s.” comes from and survives.