The reality show is a horror of production and lousy advertising. A decision works out well.
“You’ve got problems. I have 204 microphones to install, and nobody seems to know how we record it all.”
“Ha bloody ha. I have to get a shot of the fridges every time someone opens them.”
“You guys don’t have to worry about makeup. There’s a woman in number 29 who needs a complete reupholstering. We’re not even sure what species the guy in 27 is.”
“Have you ever tried lighting setups in a block of flats?”
“Life’s tough, isn’t it? You bastards have got it easy. You ought to try the electrical side of things. One mains board, or an external supply.”
“We’ll have to have an editing schedule…….”
“What about the naughty bits?”
“What bloody naughty bits? Have you seen those people? If any of them know how to reproduce, it’s only with a photocopier.”
“No wonder it’s a new concept. Nobody could have been that bloody stupid before.”
Joe, who’d had the network rep pointed out to him, noticed that this individual was looking very thoughtful. Carla noticed that nobody was talking to Harry at all. They scuttled out and reported to Al.
Felicity had put herself at a degree of remove from the marketing psychologist at an adjoining table. He was sitting surrounded by all the people from Ad Astra other than Harry, holding forth on the need for sex. Apparently psychology and sex do have something in common. Felicity, trying to imagine any context in which the degenerate looking psychologist could possibly be referring to anything legal, was more than slightly put off. The Ad Astra people lapped it up.
“Even a glimpse of thigh is enough,” said the sage, looking sternly at the assembled cadavers. It’s association. People automatically associate any bare skin with sex.”
“What, even faces? Like mine?” asked some slightly overdone female for whom makeup had done that which death would never dare.
“Oh yes.”
There was a general laugh, which was enough for Felicity. She departed from the table. The Great Man noticed the movement, and smiled at her, which literally made her feel sick. She got out with noticeable speed. She gathered soon enough that there’d been a change of heart. She provided her information.
“We agreed? No deal?” asked Al.
“Amen,” said Bill, as the others nodded and muttered agreement.
Arthur discovered them.
“Loitering? What do you think, good deal?”
“Ah……sorry, Arthur, it’s a bit out of our league; too much production for us.”
Arthur was genuinely stunned.
Bill weighed in quickly.
“We can’t do the sort of flat by flat, person by person, sponsor by sponsor, coordination of all those products ……there’s only five of us, you know…and the time frames are always going to be tight…
The network rep materialized.
“Arthur, the crews are telling me…….Oh, excuse me….can I borrow Arthur from you?”
“If you bring him back intact,” said Felicity, smiling charmingly, which threw the man completely.
“Oh, Syd; these are the HA Advertising people I told you about.”
“Pleased to meet you….again…..what did you think?”
“We think we’re out of our depth in volumes of production. We can’t do it, I’m afraid,” said Al, sounding far more American than usual. “Too much ad content. We’d have to bring in a lot of people to do it efficiently. It’s a huge amount of product coverage, and too many sponsors. I’m a little surprised they’re trying to pack all in to the show like that. It’s not just exposure, it’s over exposure and under exposure. See the same thing often enough and you lose impact.”
“Hm,” said Syd. “The crews say there’s more work than product. They say it’s not worth the contract. Would you agree with that assessment?”
“Entirely. Particularly if you’re talking value for money. This can’t be cheap. They’d have to devote all their time and resources to this one thing, and miss any other jobs to do it. ”
“It definitely isn’t cheap. Harry seems to have great faith in the idea, on the basis that because it sold over there, so it’ll sell over here. Network isn’t so sure about that. Some of these shows have died deaths that others could only dream about.”
“A bit of unasked-for advice; there’s no such thing as a certain sale. I’ve been in the business for decades. The other golden rule; the more costly the kite, the greater the chance of an almighty crash when it tries to fly.”
“That’s exactly what’s bothering me. That marketing psychologist is a bit on the nose, too. He talks about nothing but sex. We’ll be paying him to do that, if we take up the show…. You look horrified, Arthur.”
“If?” asked Arthur, trying not to squeak.
“We’re looking at returns. If the sponsors pay for it all, it’s OK; that’s the theory in this sort of big budget thing. If they get browned off, it’s not OK. It’ll be our fault. At the moment it looks to me like they’ll get about half of what they think they’re paying for, and we’ll have to go looking for money if we want to do anything else this year. We might not be able to on-sell this thing, either, if it doesn’t rate. You don’t do many reruns of reality shows. The novelty value is a lot lower than ordinary shows. This could make a lot of people very uncomfortable if it screws up. I just don’t like it. Too risky, and too little to show for that much money…..I’m too old to be unemployed in this business.”
“Tell you what; I’ll talk to your sponsors for you, see what their expectations are,” said Al. “…As a consultant, of course……”
“Purely attending to the clients’ needs……” agreed Syd.
They figured out a future payback for this extracurricular market survey. Al did interview each sponsor, and it took him a week, non-stop, in nine hour days, to do it. He interviewed them on the basis that the network wanted to be sure that its clients were happy with the commitment they were making to the new show before proceeding. After talking to Al for an hour or so about exposure, they weren’t. Every single one of them admitted in varying degrees that they’d jumped on the bandwagon on principle. No, their customers weren’t likely to stop buying their products and start buying the competitors if they didn’t support the show. No, they weren’t anticipating any great increase in the demand for kitchens, fridges, soaps….so why had they?
Because, Al explained, the belief is always there in any sort of promotion that something will sell. The greatest single misconception in any industry except entertainment and fashion is that demand is based on promotion. Even cars sell on buyer interest. It matters in entertainment and fashion, because promotion is effectively part of the product. Who’s wearing what with whom is pure hard sell. It doesn’t necessarily matter in detergents or mould removers. The overall budget for this show was huge, because of the sheer size of the production. So they’d be throwing very large amounts of money at something which wasn’t even product specific. More money, in fact, than they’d put into major campaigns. (Al always knew how much anyone spent on a campaign.)
Maybe the pizza people sold more pizzas, because people have been known to eat pizzas while watching TV. That isn’t the same thing as buying a new kitchen. There’s the added element of familiarity with a product, which de facto means that you don’t want to be forced to look at the product for any length of time. It builds in sales resistance. The exact opposite of the intention.
There was a further meeting at the Eight Network head office which Al and Bill attended. Syd had made his point with the network hierarchy, and thanked a bewildered Arthur for introducing him to Al. Bill was astonished at the turnaround by the sponsors. Now, nobody wanted to know about the new show:
“They’d never even know it was one of our kitchens if we didn’t script it.”
“Our fridges weren’t even going to be center screen shots; most of them are in corners.”
“Our lounge suites always had people all over them. You could hardly see the one under that guy from Number 3.”
“Most of them don’t even drink beer,” said an outraged voice.
That killed it as far as Eight Network was concerned. As it transpired the competitor, Network Six, took it up. The show took six months to get into production, and three days to die. Even the network staff didn’t watch it. Eight, with a budget that hadn’t been castrated by the expensive white elephant, took up nearly all the new series on the market. The marketing psychologist was arrested for sexual harassment of one of the people in the flats, and Harry was ousted as CEO of Ad Astra, which became an internet church.