OPINION17 October 2011
Morgan Spurlock’s latest film has a unique premise: it’s a film about product placement, funded completely by product placement. It’s called The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, or to give it its full title, Pom Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold.
It’s what you might call a meta-movie: a ‘making of’ documentary about itself. And it might never have been made without market research.
After pitching his idea to lots of friendly marketing people, none of whom called him back, Spurlock decided he needed to pin down his ‘brand personality’ in order to identify possible backers and sell his idea to them. So he approached Olson Zaltman Associates in the US, who tackled the problem using their ZMET methodology, in which respondents collect images to reflect their thoughts and feelings and discuss them with a researcher (jump to 12:14 in the video of his TED talk above for that part).
In Spurlock’s own words, “There was a whole lot of crazy going on in there.” Lindsay Zaltman offers a slightly more nuanced analysis, concluding that Spurlock’s brand personality is a rare combination of ‘mindful’ and ‘playful’ – a bit like Apple, Wii and Mini. Armed with this insight Spurlock managed to get enough brands on board to get the film made.
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2 Comments
Richard Smith
14 years ago
In our experience 'a whole lot of crazy' is a fairly typical comment. My last ZMET respondent said it felt a bit like a therapy session, but one where she was doing the therapy on herself. I was asked by a highly experienced client last week to explain the difference between ZMET and focus groups. It's a tough question, but in my view it's a bit like comparing your landline with an iphone in that the additional data you receive is of a completely different order and type. But, If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you always got!
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Paul Hutchings
14 years ago
Not sure about the greatest movie ever researched but I love his message that organisations need to take risks and embrace transparency. This has such resonance among people, and among many of the people working in the organisations, but not in the organisations that employ them.
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