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Pamela Anderson on expectations

"It is great to be a blonde. With low expectations it's very easy to surprise people."

Sopranos

Seth wrote a noteworthy post about expectations yesterday.  Here's the lead in:

"So, people are upset because of the non-ending of the Sopranos. People are always upset when a TV show ends with a big finale, because it never meets the hype, never meets the expectations. If HBO had been quiet about it, hadn't done the full page ads and the radio shows and the newspaper articles, it would have been fine. Expanded expectations led to big disappointment. The paradox: if expectations hadn't been raised, fewer viewers would have tuned in."

If you've read any of my writing, you know that I'm obsessed with trying to understand marketplace behavior: why  people choose, and recommend, one brand over another, be it a brand of car, restaurant, apartment complex, or even cable TV series.  And as I've stated before, a brand choice is driven simply by someone's expectation of receiving emotional "value" in the marketplace.

So did Sopranos' fans receive the expected value? Based on what I've read and heard, I believe Seth is right: Sopranos fans' brand expectations were not met with Sunday evenings ambiguous finale. But there is no paradox here. Customer antisappointment?  Fuggetaboutit! The goals going in to the finale were eyeballs and art.  Nothing more. Capeesh?! 

Think about it. Assuming that a person decides to trade his or her time and money for a particular expectation of value (a.k.a brand), the experience should validate and reinforce that decision and, thus, the consumer's subsequent behavior. But there is no subsequent desired behavior of HBO's Sopranos customers, other than syndicated reruns or selling a few more Barone Sanitation caps. And any way, who, precisely, would angry fans turn away from in the future? HBO? Director David Chase? James Gandolfini?

If you're not interested in repeat business or referrals, then you can fuggetabout meeting expectations. Instead, gather a crowd and make a statement; make art.  But if recommendations from customers and repeat business is critical to your survival and growth, then by all means raise your customers' expectations of your business category, and then do what ever needs to be done to make their experience a satisfying and memorable one.  If you don't, you'll be sitting at an ice cream parlor watching past customers pass before your eyes.

Posted June 12, 2007
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Comments

Hi Tom

I seem to have read about the Sopranos finale ad nauseum in the past couple of days and this is the first intelligent post I've read. Thanks for the sanity.

=) Marc

Posted by: Marc | June 13, 2007 at 09:45 PM

The thing about the Sopranos grand finale is that it was just as boring as every other episode from the last three seasons. The show had lost its edge long ago... So why should anyone be surprised that the season finale should be any different?

I applaud the writers for not having turned the finale into a "let's kill everybody and blow up the BadaBing!" kind of episode.

Truth be told, the final five minutes (in the restaurant) were brilliant. The way the scene was both directed and edited made us all squirm. It expertly built tension and made everyone WATCH. Even my wife, who finds the Sopranos even more boring than Deadwood (another HBO series) stopped what she was doing to watch that scene.

Effective? Heck yes.

Would people have preferred it if Tony or any member of his family had gotten killed in the final seconds of the show? Would something as predictable have added anything to the show or been a shock? Nope.

The Sopranos team gave us a much needed glimpse into the stress of being a Soprano. It made them seem incredibly vulnerable - and that was powerful.

And the Sopranos team gave us a final gift in allowing us to basically write our own ending. Perhaps the American public isn't ready for that yet?

Posted by: olivier Blanchard | June 14, 2007 at 12:47 PM

Great post, Tom. I've been reading and thinking about this quite a bit.

Posted by: Derek Guyer | June 15, 2007 at 09:11 AM

i agree completely w/ your conclusions here.

while sopr. was running, it was important to keep expectations high. look at simpsons and lost or even american idol. there are expectations driving viewership. strong word of mouth is definitely a factor in those shows' success.
vis a vis american idol, that show has a very strong interest in having viewers tune in for the next season, so the 'finale' is always a very strong finish. lost (like twin peaks before it) typifies this behavior...which leaves me wondering whether i want to tune into the rest of the season.

thanks for the insight!

Posted by: james | June 15, 2007 at 03:26 PM

Tom, I don't think HBO isn't interested in repeat business or referrals. So if the goals going into the Sopranos' finale were eyeballs and art, and nothing more, how do you think the HBO executives felt about the subsequent behavior of angry fans crashing their Web site to voice their complaints, and some going so far as cancelling their HBO service? Does this fall into the category of "all publicity is good publicity"? Whatever it is, it doesn't sound like a good HBO experience.

Posted by: Dan Cote | June 16, 2007 at 08:50 AM

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