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This is the first in a three part series on The Wiggles, why they’re so successful, and why I hate them. Parts 2 and 3 will follow tomorrow and Thursday.

I’m sure they’re very nice, but I hate The Wiggles.

A few weeks ago my family and I took our annual trip to Florida. My daughters are too old to just sleep most of the way, and not old enough to keep themselves entertained the whole trip. So they watched TV. My wife and I don’t usually let the kids watch too much TV, but for our sanity and theirs, we were quite content to keep swapping out DVDs and hitting Play. But we didn’t really get to swap out DVDs. We just got to hit Play over and over again.

I can recite 7 episodes of The Wiggles’ show verbatim, because that’s they wanted to watch. On the drive down, I came to hate The Wiggles.

For those of you who aren’t parents of young kids, The Wiggles are giants—GIANTS—in the world of children’s television. They’re from Australia, but their fame and popularity has spread worldwide. They dress like they’re on the original Star Trek TV series, with the addition of a guy in purple. They do live shows. They sing. They dance. They sell a ton of licensed merchandise. And they make crazy amounts of money. In 2006 (the latest year for which I could find figures), according to the Sydney Morning Herald, they collectively made about 50,000,000 Australian dollars. This works out to about 48,000,000 US dollars as I write this. This makes them, as a group, Australia’s highest paid entertainers, beating Nicole Kidman by about 15,000,000 AUD.

Why I hate The Wiggles

I hate them, and not just for the repeated viewings (well,listenings). I listened to the Little Einsteins about the same number of times, and they didn’t bother me nearly as much. But the Little Einsteins at least make an effort to educate. The Wiggles just sing stupid songs and have dumb rhymes and do silly skits over and over again. They make me nuts.

Since the drive down was about 18 hours, I got to listen to The Wiggles a lot, and I started to think about their success. By the time we arrived at our destination, I decided I had a pretty good handle on why they were such a phenomenal success, and, with a little research, would have something worth writing about. I figure there are 7 main reasons The Wiggles have been so successful, and by doing what they do, others will be successful, too. Now, I’m not saying you’ll have a 50M$ year next year, but you’ll likely enjoy more success.

7 reasons why The Wiggles are so successful

1) They target a specific market.

I hate The Wiggles, and they don’t care. Even if they knew me and knew that I am not a fan, they wouldn’t care. I am not their target market. They care only about capturing the hearts of their target market, which is composed entirely of young children. They don’t write their songs for me. They don’t choreograph their dances for me. They don’t act out their skits for me. They do it for my kids. And my kids love them.

Target a market and act to fulfill that market’s needs and wants. Ignore the rest.

2) Give the customer what they want.

This should be obvious, but a lot of businesses still screw this up. The Wiggles get it, though. They know little kids love bright colors, silly songs, and goofy acting, and they deliver. They don’t preach at them, or try to teach Life Skills and Important Lessons. That may be what we parents want, but it’s not what the kids want. And we are not The Wiggles’ target market. The kids want fun, and that’s what they get from The Wiggles.

Find out what your target market wants and give it to them.

That’s it for today.

I’ll go through reasons 3 through 5 tomorrow. On Thursday, I’ll finish up with 6 and 7 and conclude with some ideas for making The Wiggles less loathsome.