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Television
has been the dominate communications medium in
the United States since the 1960’s. Yet the
methods of public opinion research have not
evolved to take account of the full impact of
the visual medium -- until now. Television is
a complex medium: its impact is a function of
the totality of what the audience sees and
hears, consciously and unconsciously. And the
only research tool available to understand
this medium is the Perception Analyzer.
The
Perception Analyzer can be used
to test audience response to anything which
can be put on video tape: speeches,
commercials, interviews, TV programs, "B
rolls." The Perception Analyzer
session begins with a clear definition of who
your target audience is, a definition which
emerges from polling or from other analyses of
the population. This dictates the profile of
the participants recruited for the research,
and the selection of the location for the
research. Next, 50 people (more or less) who
match your participant profile are recruited
for the session.
Each
of the participants is given a hand-held,
wireless computer input device with a dial and
a digital display. As participants watch a
video presentation on a large screen TV, they
use the dial to record how well they like what
they are watching, typically on a scale from 1
(not at all) to 100 (completely). Our computer
polls each of these devices every second, and
records the position of every dial in the room
on a permanent data file.
What
observers see in an adjoining observation room
is the same video presentation the
participants are watching, with a trend line
superimposed on the screen. This trend line
provides an instantaneous report on how the
group is responding to the presentation. When
they like what they see, the line jumps
upward. When they don’t like what they see,
the line falls. Observers will know
immediately if the line of a speech works or
falls flat. But that’s just the beginning of
the analysis.
Before
the video gets started, participants enter
demographic data about themselves, using the
key pad on their input device. This
information allows multiple trend lines to be
shown: men and women can be shown separately,
the young and the old, professionals and
industrial workers, whatever split is relevant
to your particular situation.
But
the more important division which can be
exposed is between those whose opinions
changed as the result of the video
presentation and those whose did not. By
asking before and after the video segment
participants’ overall opinion of a company
or an issue, we can go back and redraw the
trend lines for those whose opinions improved,
to isolate the precise the instant at which
people were "grabbed" by what they
saw. It is this level of analysis which
lets us get into your audience’s mind to an
extent no other research technique can match.
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