What Zapped the Ad-Zapper Can Zap You Too

Readers who use discarded newspapers to wrap up items for storage will be familiar with my recent experience involving the unpacking of an heirloom tea-set.  Whilst the aesthetics of the tea-set were questionable, the marketing interest of an eight-year old NZ Herald was indisputable.

On August 31^st 1999 the newspaper reported Prime Minister Jenny Shipley’s confirmation of a November election, the looming lockout of Ansett pilots, and an “ad-zapping device” touted as “the answer to a couch-potato’s dream”.  The inventors of this device were so confident of its ability to ruin the effectiveness of television advertising that they first offered it to the television networks, anticipating that the networks would pay to have the product kept off the market.

Developed by a pair of Auckland electronic engineering Ph.D students, the remote control-like device was intended to operate on a subscription basis, using signals from a central location to know when to mute television advertisements and even pause VCRs so that advertisements weren’t recorded.  The inventors cited market research figures that said 34% of people would buy the device, and claimed strong interest from a Mitsubishi subsidiary.

Readers won’t have to be told that the product hasn’t exactly taken off in New Zealand, so I contacted the Ad-Zapper inventor Dr Bruce Maunder, and his reasons for the product’s lack of presence will sound all too familiar to backyard inventors:

“Fundamentally we underestimated the non-technical aspects of getting such a product to market.  It is one thing having an idea and producing a prototype, but even with a product like the Ad-Zapper (that has a lot of consumer "pre-interest") there is a huge amount of project management required, along with enormous  investments of time and money.”

These sentiments are undoubtedly true, but they also miss two other lessons that marketers should heed when launching new products.  The first lies with the underlying nature of the complaints that people may make, and which a product may seek to solve – what people say is a problem may not actually be the issue that irks them.

For example, years in market research has taught me that many people do enjoy, or at least happily tolerate, television advertising.  This point was highlighted in 1999 by both the obviously self-interested director of the Advertising Association (now CAANZ), who said that consumers found TVCs to be “informative, interesting and funny”, and also by a more independent Auckland University marketing specialist who stated that ad-break channel surfing was more interruptive than the advertisements themselves.

In fact, consumers’ complaints with television advertising usually concern the networks, not the advertisements.  It is the networks who air too many ads, too often, to the detriment of their own programming, the audience, and the paying advertisers whose investment returns are diluted by overly long and frequent advertising breaks.  So whilst people do complain about advertisements, paying to have them automatically silenced was drawing a long bow.

This raises the second lesson, which concerns the market research cited by Dr Maunder – some 34% being “likely to buy”.  Without being privy to the research technique, it sounds like a classic case of pre-launch market research over-estimating product uptake – an all too common story.  The technique that marketers need to use in countering this problem is to ensure that their product feasibility research accounts for consumers’ commitment to their current, competing behaviours; their favourability towards the new product or service being proposed; their personal interest in the category itself;; the ease of switching and key price points. Without understanding these interlocking factors, research into potential product uptake will be flawed.

And what lessons were learnt by Dr Maunder?  In his words, “the realization that technical developers need to partner with companies that can fill the gaps that are missing”.  His company Celsius IT appears to have been successful in helping technicians bring products to market – but it seems that the Ad-Zapper has been quietly laid to rest.

Jonathan Dodd