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  Japan has found its own way of Breaking the Frame. In Tokyo, after a morning spent doing business, many men and women change out of their office clothes and costume themselves in the uniforms of animated characters. They then eat lunch while interacting with other men and women dressed as animated characters, then change back into their office garb and return to their offices. Japan is also the site of cat cafés, where for 100 yen, people spend their lunch hour playing with kittens and older felines. Underneath the roles society asks them to play is an alternate life they are forbidden to play or express: Breaking the Frame.

  In Japan, of course, many people express the concept known as cute. Cute would play a big role in the relaunch of the Roomba. Whenever I interviewed people about the Roomba, at first most would tell me about its functional benefits. The Roomba saved time. The Roomba freed up its owner from household responsibilities. Thanks to the Roomba, the house was cleaner, not just in the obvious places but in hard-to-reach corners.

  But the body language of my interviewees gave them away. As they spoke, they moved their hands, and scratched the backs of their heads and their forearms. It was the exact same behavior I’d noticed in China when I asked Chinese men to sit behind the wheel of a car. It told me one thing: the Roomba may have had a slew of functional benefits, but its true, visceral appeal was to the owner’s Twin Self—in this case, the child inside who had never gotten what he or she wanted growing up.

  In the course of Subtexting on behalf of iRobot, I repeatedly found myself interviewing men and women who held highly structured, disciplined, administrative jobs with establishment titles. They were lawyers, insurance claims adjusters, sales representatives, middle managers. At home, though, once they changed out of their office clothes, they revealed another side of themselves. To compensate for their standardized, regulated day jobs, most had created a small, rebellious quirk—a way of Breaking the Frame—that couldn’t help but remind me of plants trying to break through pavement—sprigs of hope, individuality, freedom. Not least, every one of them owned a Roomba.

  Here, though, is where the story gets interesting. Most of us own a vacuum, or at least a broom, a dustpan or a box of Swiffers. Even if we decided to trade in our vacuum cleaner, broom and dustpan for a Roomba, we would no doubt store it in a closet, along with our other unsightly household gear. Or would we? As far as Roomba owners were concerned, the answer was no. In most homes and apartments, the Roomba was partly concealed, partly exposed. One half of the Roomba was visible, as if it had decided to hide—in a closet, under a bed—but changed its mind at the last moment. In most homes and apartments, there was ample room and space to store a Roomba, which meant that its passive-aggressive placement was intentional—a major clue, in fact. On the surface, the Roomba may have been about cleaning, efficiency and time savings, all wrapped up in a high-tech robotic package, but that wasn’t why consumers loved the Roomba. No, the Roomba was a way to Break the Frame of the institutionalized lives they led during the week. In common with Trollbeads fans, they were allowing a brand to announce to the world that they were interesting, different, imaginative, quirky and even cute.

  Another interesting fact about many Roomba owners? Many of them had a pet who’d recently died, or else they were on the verge of getting one, and it was between these two points that the Roomba came into their lives. The Roomba represented a bridge connecting the past to the present, an earlier identity with a future one.

  There was one final secret reason why young, unmarried males bought a Roomba: to get women into bed. It took me awhile, and numerous interviews, to figure this out. Absolutely, these young men loved keeping up to date with the latest technology. Yes, the Roomba was a time-saver, allowing them to vacuum and do other things at the same time. But the Roomba was also a major pick-up device, especially for Jim, the man who kept a boxful of baby toys in his apartment. When I asked Jim to list off in their order of importance the four aspects of his apartment most likely to appeal to visiting females, he didn’t even have to think about it. His dog; the baby toys; the frayed flag he had hanging over his bed; his Roomba. As for Stuart, the man who plastered his bathroom with French translations for “The Sink,” “The Shower” and “The Toilet”? For him, the French was (as with Jim’s dog, baby toys and dilapidated flag) a ruse designed to seduce visiting females, considering that French is linked to Paris, which, in turn, is associated with love and romance.

  But I didn’t realize where iRobot had gone off course until I was headed to the airport for my next job, which was Subtexting for Pepsi. So far, what I had found out about the Roomba puzzled me. Clearly, the machine did a lot more than vacuum floors, and I suspected that I’d caught repeated glimpses of the emotional foundation that might ultimately reunite the Roomba with its fans.

  People often ask me if I hate flying and the long hours I spend aboard planes. The answer is that I enjoy the flights more than I enjoy the long security lines, the crowded airports and the occasionally condescending TSA agents. I also can’t help observe how people change once they board a flight. If you want to understand aspiration, you might consider asking flight attendents, as I have, about their constituents. Contrary to assumption, the most haughty, demanding passengers are neither in the First Class cabin nor in the Economy zone. No, every flight attendent I have ever asked tells me it is the Business Class passengers who are by a long shot the most difficult.

  As I sat in my seat, I began wondering, not for the first time, why food generally tastes worse when you are airborne. Does it have something to do with the airflow, the minimal cooking facilities, or the fact that airliners are cutting back wherever they can? I also observed that when I was wearing my earphones, my food seemed to taste better than it did when I removed those same earphones. I played around with my headset by adjusting the volume, switching off the noise-reduction feature, but it made little difference. Without a doubt my food—and even the soda I was drinking—did taste better when I was wearing my earphones.

  My upcoming work for Pepsi focused around strengthening their brands in the wake of changes in social media consumption. While doing Subtext Research throughout the world, I couldn’t help but notice that in only five years time, consumers had begun gazing at screens in entirely different ways. That said, despite the variety of new platforms ranging from tablets to phones to binge-watching websites like Netflix, the television set endured. Among other reasons, its continuing popularity could be credited less to what consumers watched on TV, or to the larger screen, and more to what they heard. In my experience, we listen to the television more than we actually watch it.

  Still, the question of airline food and flavor kept nagging at me. Over the next couple of weeks, I peppered catering company employees with questions. Did they know whether sound altered humans’ perceptions of food at an altitude of 35,000 feet and, if it did, rather than sound making food taste worse, could sound possibly improve the flavor of foods or beverages? Later, I found out that at several thousand feet, our sense of taste and sense of smell are the first to weaken, thanks to drops in humidity and air pressure and even the role of background noise.17 BBC News once reported that people eating to a soundtrack of loud background noise rated food as being less salty, less sweet and even crunchier than those who ate in silence.18

  All of which made me wonder: Rather than Pepsi focusing on changing the visual appearance of its brands, wouldn’t it make far more sense for the company to concentrate on “owning” the sense space? When you consider most if not all television commercials for foods or beverages, there is seldom any sound. No frying. No sizzling. Rarely will you hear the sizzle of a steak on the grill, or the glug-glug-glug of a soda filling a glass. Wouldn’t it be smart if Pepsi could “own” the actual sound of its soda trickling over ice cubes?

  When I brought up this idea with company executives, their response was enthusiastic, even though it made them ask the obvious question—namely, why had sound gone m
issing from their television commercials for decades too? Almost immediately Pepsi began experimenting with what would ultimately become its trademarked sound.

  If it weren’t for Pepsi, it would have taken me much longer to grasp iRobot’s core issue. From Pepsi, I learned that just as a pair of earphones can persuade us that the meal we’re eating on the plane is flavorful; sound can also change our perception of product performance. (When consumers vacuum using a silent vacuum cleaner, most will tell you it’s not working. This same high degree of irrationality perhaps explains why when we vacuum the rug only to see a tiny thread on the floor, we pass the vacuum head over it stubbornly and repeatedly, even though it would be much easier to pick it up.)

  Human irrationality led me to ponder the following question: By altering, or even eradicating its sound, had iRobot damaged the very heart of its brand? I wasn’t talking about the brand’s logo, design or efficiency, but the sounds that it made. By sending out the subtlest emotional message to Roomba fans, was the silent treatment compromising this particular love affair?

  The technology team had gotten rid of the sound, inadvertently destroying the brand’s “cute” factor. It’s no coincidence that one of the founders of iRobot and the Roomba was a big fan of the Star Wars franchise. Over time, as iRobot scaled from its modest 1990 beginnings, the dash of cuteness inspired by R2-D2, the so-called “astromech droid” from the films, had vanished. By the time the company called me in, no one knew what the Roomba was anymore. When I asked the technology team to disassemble a Roomba, they did, and once the parts lay before me on the table, I asked them what was missing. No one could answer. “It no longer talks,” I said. “It no longer says ‘uh-oh’ or ‘dood-dood.’”

  In the course of my Subtexting, most Roomba owners told me how much they liked the noises their Roombas made. When it grazed the wall by accident, the Roomba said, “Uh-oh.” When it backed up, it said “dood-dood,” similar to the sound a truck or backhoe makes as it runs in reverse. But in the hands of iRobot’s crackerjack technology department, all sounds had been eliminated. The Roomba was now another faceless chunk of high-quality technology—sleek, impeccably designed, efficient and boring—with all its humanity bred out of it. Instead of helping Roomba owners Break the Frame, it had become another dreary extension of their already technologically overloaded workweeks.

  The Roomba team had engineered all the whimsy out of the product. When you opened the Roomba, the first thing you saw were the words: Warning: Do Not Return This Unit to Retail. And Please Read Instructions Carefully Before Use. If hard-core Roomba fans were looking for ways to Break the Frame, and if the Roomba served as a silent communication device intimately linked to identity (and in some cases, romantic success), this was a losing strategy.

  My mission? To re-infuse the “cuteness.” When I asked Roomba fans what other brand reminded them most of the Roomba, most told me it was BMW’s MINI Cooper, which everyone will agree has cuteness down to a science. When you order a new MINI Cooper, among other communiqués, BMW promptly sends you updates from England, digital links about the MINI and a reflective decal. When a new MINI is aboard a container ship, bound for its destination, the company’s communications continue: The Mini is enjoying its cruise and relaxing, and can’t wait to see you! MINI owners who’ve had their cars serviced at a BMW dealership have their cars returned with a sign on its wheel saying, I Missed You.

  Inspired by the MINI Cooper, I asked iRobot’s research and development team to set aside the Roomba’s high-tech functionality and to do whatever they could to bring back the Roomba’s emotionality and humanity. I asked them to bear in mind one simple fact: the Roomba may be a wizardly piece of technology, but it was also a toy, a baby, a pet, a conversation piece, a displacement for its owners’ identity and, for some young men, a way to get women into bed. Sure, it may have swept up the most difficult-to-reach places in a home, but that was probably the least of its talents.

  I had the Roomba on my mind when I addressed the issue of tackling a “Made in China” automobile. Again, on the surface, the Chinese are unemotional or, at least, it is culturally taboo to express a range of emotions in public or private. Another critical point was that in contrast to the West, where women and children have a strong say in what car a family buys, in China the men purchase most new cars. Most businessmen are unwilling to buy a “cute” car, or a “cute” anything for that matter. (Japan, as I mentioned, has “cute” sewn up, and the Chinese, who don’t exactly love Japan, know this. Cute tends to be “small,” too, and the Chinese have a cultural preference for the splashy, the oversized and the exaggerated.)

  That said, the concept of “cute” was slowly migrating into China, a phenomenon that can be traced back to China’s one-child policy. “The Little Emperor Syndrome” is the popular term used to refer to the single Chinese son or daughter who receives inordinate amounts of love and attention from parents and other family members. My Subtext Research revealed that more and more Chinese parents were seeking out their children’s opinions and perspectives. I had to bear in mind not just contemporary China, but also the evolving Chinese car industry. This meant that the future Chinese car had to operate on several tracks simultaneously. In order to appeal to the male Chinese driver, it had to be brash, masculine and powerful, while also appealing to his Twin Self, in this case, to a child denied toys when he was growing up. In a culture that lacked opportunities for “transformation,” a Chinese automobile had to create a new, special mood, the illusion that a driver had entered a zone distinct from his everyday life. Not least, the car’s styling—its lighting, how fast or how slowly the doors slid open and closed—had to reflect the unspoken Chinese preferences I’d observed over the course of my Subtexting.

  Think about a song you love, one that has been covered in the years since by other artists, for example, “Something” by George Harrison. Since the song appeared on the Beatles’ Abbey Road album in 1969, it has been sung by James Brown, Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Ike and Tina Turner, Joe Cocker, Neil Diamond, approximately 150 musicians in all, making it the Beatles second-most-covered song next to “Yesterday.” But arguably, no matter how superior or inferior all the others versions are, I can guarantee you that Harrison’s original recording remains most people’s favorite version. Why? The simple answer: it was the one they heard first. We prefer what we saw, heard or sensed first, whether it’s the color of our childhood bedrooms or the lake, pool or ocean where we first learned to swim.

  Our perception of what “quality” means is no different from our earliest exposure to music or to color. For Chinese cars designed for Chinese consumers, I focused both on male drivers and on the children who would someday grow up to buy cars. But if the Chinese car company was intent on exporting its cars abroad, I had to determine what “quality” meant elsewhere in the world. What better place to conduct my investigation than in two hubs of global car production, Germany and the United States?

  Obviously, you cannot interview children using the same methods you use to talk to adults. Most children find it difficult to put their feelings and desires into words, which is why I’ve found that playing games with them often reveals greater insights. I carried out my study in Beijing, Berlin and Michigan, surrounded by a roomful of children accompanied by their parents. Before us were several boxes of LEGOs. With the goal of understanding the difference in how children in various countries manifested “speed”—which directly correlates with “quality” in the automobile sector—I asked them to show, build, construct and in general improvise around the concept of speed. Then I sat back with my notebook and watched.

  All three nationalities—Chinese, American and German—built enormous cars. There were no surprises there. What did surprise me was when German and American children demonstrated “speed” by dragging their fingers across the floor. In contrast, the Chinese children showed no interest in finger demonstrations, but instead flung a LEGO piece again
st the nearest hard surface. Once they finished building their cars, both the American and German children, as invested in defense as they were in velocity, created bumpers, safety fences, garages and other protections around their cars to safeguard them against danger. One German child even constructed a rocket ship with a smaller survival capsule hugging the main frame, in the case of an emergency landing.

  I next encouraged the children to play a game centered on “crashing.” Here, the differences among the three nationalities showed up at once. The Chinese children showed no hesitation about carrying out one full-on collision after another. Bumpers, garages and safety rails seemed to bore them. When the Chinese kids played a game of chicken with their cars, neither car slowed down at the other’s approach. The Germans and American children by contrast were far more cautious. Their LEGO cars slowed prior to impact. For them, the concepts of “speed” and “crashing” were both regulated and controlled.

  The children couldn’t put it into words, nor should they have, but it was obvious to me that an exaggerated focus on security, safety and protection had affected an entire younger generation. Both the Germans and Americans had intuited an “adult” definition of speed that ran counter to their own natural childhood behavior.

  What did this all mean? When I Small Mined all my data, this insight about speed confirmed that “quality” in China was perceived as fast, no frills, almost breakneck, and would remain the same for the next generation of car buyers, too. I’d seen this same thing in how the Chinese brushed their teeth, in the bars of shampoo soap, in the absence of bedcovers and in the way people ordered, and were served, food in restaurants. Relatedly, the Chinese perceived light—light that other nationalities would find overly direct, naked and even confrontational—as “high-quality,” as it was in the restaurant where I shared a meal with my Chinese host family. With the exception of the country’s religious and memorial festivals, there was a striking nationwide absence of build-up, foreplay and anticipation. Culturally speaking, China went straight to the point.