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Three Market Research Lessons From Hacks

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Last Thursday’s episode of the Max series Hacks, starring the incredible Jean Smart as comedian Deborah Vance and Hannah Einbinder as her writer/sidekick/frenemy Ava Daniels, hit different for me. After decades of toiling in Las Vegas and not getting the widespread love and recognition she deserves, Deborah Vance is named the first female host of her own late night talk show. The show gets off to a great start as viewers check out Late Night With Deborah Vance, with the first two episodes in the honeymoon period of initial sampling.

Hacks Hannah Einbinder and Jean Smart

Hannah Einbinder and Jean Smart from the Max series Hacks (Photo credit: Michael Mattes / Shutterstock.com)

An in-person focus group is quickly conducted, which is encouraging until two women mention they don’t like Deborah’s hair up. Then the network research guy comes to the staff meeting to let the team know the show is overperforming with men, as well as “middle-aged Black business owners, gay dads under 50, college-educated Singaporeans, and retired divorcees in the Great Lakes region.”

The bad news? 25- to 45-year-old women don’t like Deborah. The show has already fallen to fourth place, and this demo that’s highly appealing to the network is necessary for its advertising goals.

Ava’s response is to tell Deborah that data should be used as a tool, not their guiding principle. Deborah’s initial response is to change the show completely. Instead of a show built on the sarcastic, snarky, hilarious observations Deborah is known for, it morphs into one that shows her adding long hair extensions, a cooking segment (Deborah may not have personally cooked a meal in her life), and an attempt to get Kristen Bell on as a guest (who is very popular with the 25-45 Female target).

In Hacks, Kristen Bell tests well with 25- to 45-year-old women. (Photo credit: Tinseltown / Shutterstock.com)

Ultimately, at the end of the episode, the interpretation of research lands somewhere closer to the middle, where it should be. Ava was right in that research is a tool and should not have been used to fundamentally change Deborah. Deborah Vance doesn’t look any more in place hosting a cooking segment than Howard Stern looked in place hosting a Country show at WWWW/Detroit in 1981 as “Hopalong Howie.”

Kayla, one of Deborah and Ava’s talent agents, has a different interpretation of the research. She shows her partner, Jimmy, a viral TikTok video of “Dance Mom” who the show initially passes on featuring. At the end of the episode, Deborah brings on “Dance Mom,” who gets Deborah to dance with her, looks like she’s having a blast, and the audience goes crazy. The content is clearly appealing to the demo they seek, but it doesn’t feel like Deborah (who was seen dancing at a gay bar earlier in the episode) is off brand.

Can the show evolve? Will it work? We’ll see.

This fictional episode, with touches of my reality, is an important reminder that research without proper interpretation and insight is just numbers in a spreadsheet. Truly valuable and actionable research considers a wide spectrum of factors, from brand and talent to execution.

If truly conducted properly, the head of research would have explained what the research means and offered ideas. No changes would have been made until Deborah and Ava agreed on a clear, outlined strategy with specific steps.

But sometimes, in reality as in fiction, it’s easier said than done.

Here are three market research takeaways from Hacks:

  1. You can conduct research too soon. Go back and watch the first episodes of Seinfeld and you might be shocked it turned into one of the greatest shows in history. Like many shows, the characters and story needed time to develop.
  2. Great brands are a combination of art and science. My favorite baseball team, the San Francisco Giants, went overboard on analytics a few years ago and few players got consistent playing time, constantly rotating them in based on statistics. That’s not fun for the players, the fans, or brand building. Trust the data, but also trust yourself to bring it to life. Smart brand managers also trust their gut. You can do both if it’s strategic.
  3. Be authentic. Our research shows the strongest personalities have clear brands that resonate with their audiences. Data can guide your strategy, but it should never change who you are.
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The Game Changer

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Tuesdays With Coleman

When Howard Stern announced he would move to Sirius Satellite Radio sixteen years ago, it was a game changer. Not just for Sirius, which had 600,000 subscribers at the time (it merged with XM Satellite Radio in 2008 and today has over 35 million). It was also a game changer for all the radio stations that carried Howard Stern, forcing them to find replacements for the most dominant personality in the business and/or an attempt to reinvent their brands.

The examples of game changers is long.

Netflix to Blockbuster.

Digital photography to Kodak.

Facebook to MySpace.

Amazon to Borders. And Sears. And Macy’s. And….

There are game changers happening everywhere in the content business. A big one happened when HBO announced it would release the new Wonder Woman film on its HBO Max platform on Christmas Day at no extra cost to subscribers.

Last year, Jon Coleman wrote in Tuesdays With Coleman’s “Can HBO and Radio Have it All?” that HBO found itself at a crossroads. Its signature series Game of Thrones was ending, and the network was planning to expand premier content beyond its traditional Sunday night benchmark, where it had trained viewers the best shows would be for decades. The risk was that great content is now available everywhere, and HBO Sunday Night was a differentiator for the network.

Then, earlier this year, HBO introduced us to HBO Max, their new streaming service. Between Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, CBS All Access, NBC’s Peacock, Disney+, Apple TV (not to mention OTT offerings from Starz and Showtime), and now HBO Max, you could $7.95-$12.95 yourself into debt. They all produce award-winning original content. So how do you differentiate as a streaming network?

HBO Max launched in May with content that included reruns of big sitcoms like Friends and Big Bang Theory, movies from TCM (whose streaming service went dark after two years in 2018), Sesame Workshop, Crunchyroll, and access to HBO. One could argue that HBO’s shift from HBO Now (the network’s standalone streaming service) to a content-rich platform that went beyond HBO was a game changer. But it may be sea changes nudged to fruition by the pandemic that end up really changing the game.

The upcoming installment in the Wonder Woman franchise, WW84, has had its release date pushed back multiple times due to circumstances surrounding COVID-19. WarnerMedia, which owns HBO and Warner Bros. (the division releasing WW84,) is able to use the film as a vehicle to attract new eyeballs to HBO Max.

Despite the fact that consumers can still go to a theater to watch WW84 (in markets where the pandemic isn’t currently keeping them shuttered,) the fact that the follow-up to an $800 million plus blockbuster will be accessible for free on HBO Max is a big deal.

And not just for HBO Max, which will turn a large number of new subscribers into regular subscribers. It’s a game changer for other streaming services and a tornado for movie theatres, which could always count on being the place you saw new releases first. How much of a long-term game changer this is won’t really be known until the pandemic is over and theatres completely re-open. It seems likely we’ll see more future big cinematic releases continue to focus on streaming (as Netflix did with The Irishman last year or Amazon did with Borat Subsequent Moviefilm a few weeks ago).

It’s a reminder that status-quo and tweaks don’t move the needle, and often go unnoticed by the consumer. One way to truly get the consumer to notice your brand and alter perception and behavior is to introduce a game changer. That game changer has to be conducive to the positive perception of your brand, and they are few and far between—you can’t just make a game changer fall from the sky.

But sometimes, potential game changers come along (we’re looking at you, Blockbuster) and you miss them because you’re stuck in the status quo or you think the audience will care about your tweaks.

Sometimes you’ve got to change the game.