Sunny Days Sweepin’ the Clouds Away

Sesame Street is not only a favorite childhood TV shows, it is also the longest-running children’s show in history. Why? One of the reasons is because they did their research.

While many organizations are afraid of Focus Groups because they don’t want to hear anything “bad” about who they are or what they offer, Sesame Street succeeded because it probed to find out exactly that. Malcolm Gladwell’s bestseller The Tipping Point revealed that Sesame Street was shaped after many rounds of rigorous testing with kiddie focus groups.

Groups of kids watched an episode, while at the same time another diversion was purposely placed across the room to lure the kids away from the entertaining show. If the allure of the diversion worked, taking children’s focus away from TV, the producers went back and made changes to the episode to make it more compelling. So simple, so brilliant.