shipperx | Tales from Market Research (Reply)

From EW.com:

Office fans are smug. Dancing With the Stars fans are compliant. Gleeks see themselves as experimental, and Mad Men fans are liberals. Oh market research, is there nothing you can’t categorize?

One research firm recently polled 25,000 viewers about 70 TV shows and broke down their tastes by personality traits, according to Ad Age. Some shows, like House and Bones appealed across a lot of demographics, but others had more specific viewers. Such as…

Mad Men, which is beloved by creative people and liberals. Creative folk are “41 percent more likely to watch…than less creative people,” and the liberal-minded are “124 percent more likely to watch…than other people.” All the information gathered in the survey is self-reported, so part of me wonders if creative people are drawn to Mad Men — or if watching Mad Men makes you more likely to describe yourself as creative.

Family Guy fans, on the other hand, tend to be “rule breakers or rebels,” who “won’t hesitate to make their feeling[s] known with anger or sarcasm.” Again, a chicken and a sarcastic cartoon egg: Which came first, collegiate broseph? Glee fans “may even feel happiness or sadness more intensely than others,” which is a hilarious echo of how the show operates, and also how pretty much every teenager would describe him or herself. Predictably, Dancing With the Stars attracts “traditionalists” and “get-alongs” who connect with brands like Fiber One. Seriously, that’s what the story says. Just say “old people,” Ad Age! Biggest Loser falls into similar categories, including realists, who are 20 percent more likely to watch than, uh, surrealists? I guess?

Fans of The Office sound like total tools in this survey: “folks who consider themselves superior to others are 47 percent more likely to watch this show.” Yikes! And yet… truth. “These alpha dogs believe they are extraordinary and happily brag about their accomplishments,” the story says, which again, yikes.

Finally, in what’s probably the most amazing part of the whole survey, fans of The Real Housewives of Orange County are interested in Botox. You don’t say.

I feel like Don after Dr. Miller completely psychoanalyzes everyone in the room: turned on Get out of my mind, insidious brand research people! Because you are hitting too close to home. At the same time, there’s a sort of duh factor at play here: You’re telling me Family Guy appeals to sarcastic dudes? People who like Mad Men are interested in Apple products? Glee fans don’t care about pick-up trucks? Uh, how much did this study cost?

Heh.