You Twit

That’s a phrase my Mum used when I was being daft or whenever I got something simple wrong. Problem for me when I was little was that I was (and remain) the ‘Maths one’ in the family. My siblings work in the arts and as language teachers, as did my Mum so the things I was bad at were exactly the things everyone else was good at. I got called a twit a lot.

I flicked on to Channel 9 and the Nations IQ test last month, hosted by TV legend Eddie McGuire. I got hooked. I was on fire; in particular I was doing well on the language questions. Then, question 18: Obsequious means the same as:

A. Nasty   

B: Submissive
C: Clever  

D: Confident?

I was in like a shot – “Submissive” – it’s not quite right but it’s the closest. Next question Eddie, bring it on. No twit here.

Then I was crushed. As the answers were listed, Eddie announced that ‘nasty’ was the correct answer. It was the only one I got wrong, in my weakest area of an IQ test! “That’s not right” I thought. I ‘paused and rewound’ my live TV and jumped on the Mac to Google ‘obsequious’. Do the same and you’ll see – none of the answers are correct but ‘Submissive’ is closest.

I went on to Facebook and sarcastically challenged my friends to answer the question. They came back with suggestions to Google it and leave them alone. Those that answered were with me – submissive. One pointed out that none were right but submissive would be closest. My Mum even came on from the UK, told us we were all ignorant and that all the choices wrong. I told her there was no “E: Other” option so she was in fact the most wrong! (I was tempted, but not daring enough to call her a twit). I did refer to Channel 9 as ‘idiots’ on my Facebook page though.

The Twitter accounts went into ‘meltdown’ and the twits at Channel 9 were tweeted into submission. At the end of the show Eddie announced that you could have a mark for ‘Nasty’ or ‘Submissive’. Sadly for them though, I only know this because of the newspaper articles the following day. I waited for 10 minutes before switching over in disgust. Eddie’s cheering comment “Don’t worry if you don’t get them all right, it’s meant to be difficult” being the last thing I heard before I reached for the remote (I’ll also admit that I was struggling to concentrate due to my anger plus I got a couple of arithmetic questions wrong!).

Pre-show, Eddie McGuire claimed that live TV like this is the way to keep free to air relevant against the tide of hosted solutions for on demand services. There will be plenty more from this group of bloggers on that topic soon but for now the message on this one is simple. The speed of access to customer sentiment and response can enable fast change and response. If you can harness it and respond (and credit to Channel 9 for doing it in the time window of the show) there are huge opportunities. If you don’t, you’ll lose a customer, and probably mates on Facebook as well.

Alec Gardner