King Kaufman's Sports Daily
Studying the hardcore fan: The design firm that went deep with some young dudes to help plan NBC's new football show. Plus: NFL Week 16.
Read more: Sports, Marketing, TV, Design, Football, NFL, King Kaufman, Sports Daily
Dec. 22, 2006 | When NBC got back into the pro football business this year, turning Sunday night into the NFL's marquee prime-time show, the network went looking for help in making sure the show appealed to hardcore football fans.
"They said, 'OK, so we've got football, it's been like nine years since we had it, the world has gone through a lot, especially entertainment, and we're not even sure we know what the core fan wants these days," says Clynton Taylor of Jump Associates, the San Mateo, Calif., design strategy firm NBC hired to consult on what became "Football Night in America."
"You've got so many guys in their 20s playing video games, and just, with the amount of stimulation and interaction that they have there and other shows and certainly online, what are they going to want from a telecast?" Taylor says. "That was kind of the general question."
The answer, arrived at through what Taylor calls "a research-based, product-definition approach," was that the young men who are the hardest-core fans and the most-sought-after demographic want the show to be about them.
Jump Associates is one of those high-concept firms that advises car companies about what's going to come after SUVs or cookie companies on what to do with their product line in light of recent findings about trans fats, Taylor says. He says the company specializes in studying the lives of a few customers in depth.
It's field study. Like sitting in trees with gorillas.
"It's more than just focus groups and it's more than just surveys," he says. "It's 'What are these people's lives like?'"
Taylor says the volunteer subjects often have no idea what product the researchers are interested in. "That's purposeful because we don't want to narrow in too much and have our assumptions make us avoid some really interesting insights into what's meaningful for these folks," he says.
The Jump team, using an agency, found representative young men and had them invite friends over to watch NBA playoff games. The researchers, plus some NBC executives who didn't initially identify themselves to the subjects, observed, interviewed the men, had them play custom card games that gave clues about what choices they'd make when choosing which sports event to watch.
Taylor says Jump takes its findings, combines them with research into the state of the art and current trends in the industry in question, and turns it all into what Taylor calls imperatives, or guidelines. From there, it makes specific suggestions about products and services that the company should be offering.