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today, i saw a fascinating item in the new york times about claire nouvian’s research of life forms at the bottom of the sea. the photographs are truly wondrous, revealing other-worldly translucent beings that we could never imagine. yet, as william j. broad’s article notes, once these creatures are brought to the surface they are stripped of their form and beauty, becoming “unattractive jello-like mass.”

this passage struck me as analogous to consumer research. once you pluck people out of their real lives and stick them in a sterile room with a bunch of strangers, they are bound to become vastly less interesting than they would be in their natural environments.

whether you think my analogy is a stretch or not, you should really check out those pictures. they’re incredible.

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it’s a rare and beautiful thing when a hollywood movie really gets it right. years ago, i was watching paddy chayefsky and sidney lumet’s network, the superb film that launched the phrase “i’m mad as hell and i’m not going to take this anymore!”

although the “mad as hell” scene makes an indelible impression, another scene i will always remember features anchor man howard beale announcing his intention to commit suicide on the air. but despite the fact that the star of the show has just dropped a massive bombshell, all is calm in the control room. apparently, no one noticed the remark. after a few moments someone, presumably the audio technician, says “did he just say he’s going to kill himself?”

while the average movie-goer must have found the crew’s obliviousness hard to swallow, i remember being impressed — amazed, actually — that chayefsy, lumet and company had captured a television news crew so accurately.

at the time, i was an intern at a local news program, and part of a relatively small crew of six people. we were all narrowly focused on our own special part of the production, be it changing camera angles (technical director), adjusting the “headroom” above the talent (camera operator), queuing up the commercials for the next break (master control), and so forth. as the audio technician, i didn’t find the network scenario implausible, because i sometimes found myself completely missing a news story, choosing instead to focus on the fluctuating volume level of the reporter, among other details. meanwhile, the director encouraged jocular discussions of pro football, milli vanilli, or whatever random topic popped into the brain of anyone wearing a head set, which made the crew all the more oblivious to the content of the program.

this detached and distracted atmosphere is no longer the exclusive province of television news crews. these days, it’s as if we are all ensconced in darkened control rooms. we get lost in our own specialties, trading nuggets of information with our own internal loop of commentators, and completely missing crucial facets of what consumers — otherwise known as real human beings — are doing or saying.

there is an amazing array of distractions out there. with the multiple and simultaneous communicative tools available to us from cell phones to websites to chat and beyond, it’s tempting to become lost in a parade of observations and opinions from our cohorts and contemporaries and forget to listen to our consumers with an open ear and mind.

but whatever we can do to create time and space to explore what is actually happening with real consumers, to clear our heads of narrow pre-occupations and push away distractions, is well worth the effort. of course, the messages we hear won’t always be as stark as “i’m mad as hell and i’m not going to take this anymore!”, but if we are listening closely enough, we’ll find plenty worthy of our attention.

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