2 Cents on 2 Bucks

Once Upon A Time:
As a kid I was fas­ci­nated by Nielsen, you know the TV rat­ings peo­ple.  I yearned to have my house­hold cho­sen to be a Nielsen fam­ily.  I imag­ined how cool it would be to have one of those mys­te­ri­ous rat­ings boxes I heard so much about, but never actu­ally saw, sit­ting atop the tele­vi­sion.  This was back in the days of lim­ited chan­nels, no inter­net, and not many options with regard to elec­tronic enter­tain­ment, so in my mind it was a big deal.  “If they just knew what I was watch­ing every night, then maybe my favorite shows would have a chance of stay­ing on tele­vi­sion.”  Damn you Nielsen, why didn’t you ever pick me?  We could have saved The A Team for one more sea­son.  We could have killed off Mur­der She Wrote before it started.  We could have been so great together.  But alas, it was never meant to be.

Show Me The Money:
Last week I opened my mail­box to dis­cover a pack­age from… Nielsen.  Was it the mys­te­ri­ous “black box” of tv rat­ings?  No, too flat.  What could it be?
It was a sur­vey.  The good peo­ple of Nielsen were seek­ing infor­ma­tion about me and my house­hold.  10 short ques­tions.  They stated that my feed­back was very impor­tant.  Because of my child­hood fas­ci­na­tion with the com­pany, the sim­ple request would prob­a­bly have been enough to seal the deal, but they went a step fur­ther to demon­strate their seri­ous­ness.  They gave me two bucks.  Two crispy one dol­lar bills, thank­ing me in advance for help­ing.  Why?  Because this com­pany that has tracked human behav­ior for decades truly under­stands peo­ple and how they think.

Rec­i­p­ro­ca­tion:
We com­pleted the sur­vey and sent it in the fol­low­ing day.  What Nielsen did by send­ing me, and I assume oth­ers who received the sur­vey, the two dol­lars up front was to ensure that they would get a phe­nom­e­nal response rate for their efforts.  They tapped into the human behav­ioral prin­ci­ple known as rec­i­p­ro­ca­tion.  They proac­tively did some­thing for me, assum­ing that I would then feel oblig­ated to return the favor.  Isn’t this expen­sive?  Sure, but if they can increase the response rate enough to off­set the money they spent on postage, the two dol­lars actu­ally saves them money.

This is why you get a “free” gift for com­ing to that jew­elry, juice, wine, can­dle, vit­a­min or soap party, and then end up buy­ing $50.00 worth of stuff.  This is why those peo­ple at the air­port give you a car­na­tion first and then ask for a vol­un­tary dona­tion.  It is all about psy­chol­ogy.  They gave in order to get.

Nielsen could have tried to save money by offer­ing me two dol­lars after I sent the sur­vey to them in the form of a rebate, but that would not have had the desired effect.  In this sce­nario I would have been far more likely to look at the two dol­lars as cheap and not worth my time — this is the same two dol­lars that given up front pro­duced a com­pelling urge to rec­i­p­ro­cate their ges­ture.  It was all in the delivery.

My 2 cents:
Nope, I am still not a Nielsen fam­ily.  No black box for me just yet.   See­ing as how I don’t have cable or satel­lite tele­vi­sion, I am not sure how use­ful I would be to them now any­way, although it would be fun to try to skew the rat­ings in favor of Nova, Austin City Lim­its, and Bill Moy­ers.  The dream lives on.  Regard­less, I thought the sur­vey was mas­ter­ful mar­ket­ing which made me admire the com­pany more.  (Send me one of those mys­tery boxes and four bucks, and I will really love you Nielsen.)

Now, what about you?  Do you start by ask­ing or giv­ing?   Think about your approach to life and how the prin­ci­ple of Rec­i­p­ro­ca­tion might help you find new ways to suc­ceed.   By giv­ing a lit­tle up front, you might stand to gain a whole lot more in return.