Last but not least: Germany's Next Housewife Test

In the so-called "housewife test", a person from outside the company or department is used as a test subject to test the suitability of ideas, concepts or products. In the advertising industry, the ingenious ideas of creative people are unleashed on non-creative people - i.e. consultants or receptionists - in order to assess the extent of their ingenuity. Ingenious!

The term is undoubtedly subtly pejorative. In this context, "housewife" means: doesn't know anything about anything, has no background knowledge - but needs to be convinced because she is a consumer. So it's high time to take the term literally for a change. And high time to ask real housewives for their opinion. Jung von Matt/Elbe has taken up the cause and made an extremely efficient tool available to the creative community: Sylvia, Viola and Regine. The three authentic housewives, aged 33, 43 and 52, sit daily on the corner sofa in the "most frequent living room in Germany" (set up in 2004 on the agency's premises) - in front of the web cam. Between 2 p.m. and 6 p.m., they comment on, evaluate, criticize or praise the creative work sent to them by e-mail. The ladies pass the time between sending in their work by talking about God and the world.

"If you participate with a possibly unpublished work, bear in mind that the entire Internet is watching," warns "the official organizer of this campaign", Jung von Matt, on the website Hausfrauentest.tv. This does not prevent the three housewives from judging the submitted - mostly well-known - commercials with a refreshing, unencumbered directness. If something is funny, they laugh. If not - and the annoying Snickers commercial with Aretha Franklin has long deserved this - it's the "cheap copy of the commercial before...in the changing room...that was funny". Finally someone has said that the commercial - as good as the idea may be - is not funny. Only a real housewife test can do that.

The project is freely available to everyone for the first two weeks. According to W&V plans to establish the idea as a serious market research tool from March: "From then on, companies, agencies and advertisers can choose from a large number of housewives and have them test their campaign - then in private." Sounds plausible. (hae)