business

Survey Idiocy

Last week I bought four pair of pants online at Wal-Mart.  Since I already knew the size and style, it was very easy.  Then in my inbox this morning, I found the following message:

Thanks for Shopping at Walmart.com!

Was your visit enjoyable?  We certainly hope so.  In fact, we’d appreciate your help in making the shopping xperience on our website even better by telling us what you think.  It’s easy and should only take about 10-20 minutes of your time…
(Emphasis mine)

Ten to twenty minutes? Hey, Wal-Mart web marketing division: are you all insane? 

Why don’t companies apply even an atom of common sense when making web surveys?  I’ll give you three minutes maximum, jokers.  Surely you know that one of the main reasons people shop on the web is quick convenience.  What kind of randomization do you expect to get asking for “10-20 minutes”?  Any marketing survey that long has simply not been well-designed.

Oh, and the three minutes it took me to write this blog entry?  That was the three minutes I would have spent filling out their survey if it had been the right length.

Posted by George on 08/23/09 at 08:03 AM
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Awwwwwww!

I don’t have a category for “gratuitous cuteness” but if I did, this would be in it.  Imagine you own a railway in Japan, and you aren’t packing in enough people to quite turn a profit.  Things are looking grim, until a cute little lost kitty comes to stay and saves the day...

Posted by George on 05/27/08 at 09:50 PM
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Our buggy sales are slipping!

Let’s lobby the city council to ban horseless carriages from the city limits!

In 2006 EMI, the world’s fourth-biggest recorded-music company, invited some teenagers into its headquarters in London to talk to its top managers about their listening habits.  At the end of the session the EMI bosses thanked them for their comments and told them to help themselves to a big pile of CDs sitting on a table.  But none of the teens took any of the CDs, even though they were free.  “That was the moment we realized the game was completely up,” says a person who was there.

- The Economist, 18 January 2008, pg. 55, Music Industry; From major to minor

I dunno, guess it just struck me funny…

 

Posted by George on 01/14/08 at 09:07 PM
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The PCR song (or “What is viral advertising?”)

OK this is just frakkin’ brilliant.  Be sure to stick around for the chorus:

I often hear people use the term “Viral advertising” without knowing what it means.  Well folks, this is viral advertising at its best.  The basic idea is, you have to pay for the distribution of every idea.  Media networks insist on being paid in money.  But social networks will accept payment in humor, or beauty or excitement.  Make the ad interesting enough and people will pass it along to their friends, which boosts its perceived credibility anyway.

This company, BioRad, has a thermal-cycling PCR platform to sell.  Even though it can do some really exciting things, it’s a challenge to advertise.  They only have ‘x’ number of available advertising dollars, so they could:

  • Buy an ad in a professional journal, with a picture of the product line and a bit of text.  The ad would be ignored.
  • Buy access to a database of people who use this kind of technology (listen to the song and you’ll know who that is) and send them a mass mailing.  The mailing would be ignored.
  • Buy airtime on broadcast networks.  That would be a complete waste of money.
  • Spend ALL the money producing this hilarious song, and forget about distribution.  The humor essentially pays off science nerds everywhere to pass it from email to blog to “Hey, come listen to this!”

BioRad isn’t the only manufacturer of this kind of equipment.  But when people are building a crime lab or writing a grant application, what company do you suppose they’ll remember?  (From Greg Laden and as he notes, practically everybody else on the internet.)

Posted by George on 01/12/08 at 12:43 PM
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That little Apple jingle

I wonder how much Apple paid for that simple little melody that plays in the background in their iPhone advertisements?  Whatever, it was worth it, because the tune is seriously stuck in my head.

Not that it’s likely to make me buy an iPhone, though.  I often forget to charge up the cellphone I already have.  I’d feel even dumber forgetting to charge up a phone that cost that much.

Posted by George on 08/07/07 at 12:13 PM
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Shop at Lowe’s

What, a corporation that reviews the ethics of the programs on which it advertises, and tells Bill O’Reilly to take a hike?  Apparently so.

I wrote to Lowe’s and said how much I appreciate it.  O’Reilly damages my country every time he opens his mouth. Well, probably not every time.  Sometimes he’s probably just ordering coffee.

Posted by George on 07/29/07 at 08:22 AM
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“A fool and his money…”

Posted by George on 07/02/07 at 08:11 AM
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Apparently there is not enough noise pollution

Mrs DoF and I were accosted this morning by loudspeakers on gas pumps, blaring corporate jingles and today’s specials.  Loud enough to be heard nearly a block away.  But hard as it might be to imagine, there’s a way to ramp up the annoyance even higher.

Technology already being commercialized (for advertising) will allow narrow “beams” of sound that will be perceived as voices inside your head that no one else will hear.  Hope they include ads for antipsychotic meds…

Posted by George on 06/20/07 at 03:30 PM
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How do you apply for these kind of jobs?

***Dave asks all the questions that come to mind when stabbing your eyeballs with the new logo for the 2012 London Olympics, starting with; “How can I get a job designing a phenomenally ugly civic event logo for almost seven hundred thousand bucks?”  Sign me up, as long as I don’t have to sign the finished product… Ye gads…

Posted by George on 06/07/07 at 03:15 AM
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Sleazy sales words

Just before dropping the flyer from a local HVAC company into the trash, I spotted their…

IRONCLAD GUARANTEE:  We are confident that if your system is over 10 years old, you may significantly reduce your heating and cooling energy consumption - possibly as much as 25%**

There is no way you can lose.  If these premium air conditioners and matching furnaces were not among the best on the market, I could’t afford to make such a promise.

**Individual results may vary.

What promise? I lost track after the third or fourth conditional qualifier there.  Well, with an ironclad guarantee like that, how could I lose?  LOL

Posted by George on 04/17/07 at 08:03 PM
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Post-hospitalization phone survey

A few weeks ago I was in the hospital for a kidney stone.  They warned me that I might receive a telephone survey from an independent company about my stay.  “Sure” I replied, under the influence of dilaudid, “that would be fine.”  And they called me this morning, reading very slowly, clearly, and professionally from a script:

“Good morning Mr. Wiman, we’re calling to ask you about your outpatient visit to BroMenn Regional Medical Center on or about blah-blah something-something-something.  Would you rate the registration process at the hospital as excellent, good, fair, or poor?”

Uh, I really wasn’t part of the registration process.

“All right Mr. Wiman.  Would you rate the staff professionalism at the hospital as excellent, good, fair, or poor?”

Um, just say ‘excellent’ - in my experience if I say anything else it only leads to a lot more annoying questions.

“Not really, Mr. Wiman.  Now would you rate the care you received there as excellent, good, fair or poor?”

Look, I’m not going to stand here saying “Excellent” over and over again.  I just hate that word “excellent” for various reasons. Everyone did a fine job, I have no complaints. 

“All right Mr. Wiman, we won’t bother you again.  Thank you and have a nice day.”

“Excellence” is 21st-century Taylorism for the service industry.  Once the word “Excellent” infected corporate speech, nothing was ever not-annoying again.  Everything has to be “Excellent”.  If you say anything else, they come in with “What can we do to make sure your experience with our company is Excellent?  Please explain?”  So what if you thought the service was as good as could reasonably be expected from obviously tired people who were doing the best they could?  How can we push them harder?

The purpose of such multiple-choice adjective surveys is to boil a large pot full of data down to a nice mash of statistics for a PowerPoint presentation to be given at board meetings: ”...and 84.567 percent of our patients said staff professionalism was Excellent…”  Folks, it doesn’t mean a damn thing.  When a survey-taker has you on the phone, your one goal in life is to get off the phone. 

Surveys could be used to extract confessions from suspected terrorists; “Mr. Muhommed, would you say America is unjust, evil, terrible, or the Great Satan?”

“Aaaaugh!  I confess!  I did it, whatever it is!  Just let me hang up the phone!!!”

There is a large minority of the population from whom no usable data can be collected by surveys.  Some of us will play along, just giving the one answer that we know will result in the fewest number of clarifications and follow-up questions: “Excellent”.  A few will just say; “I don’t want to take a survey”. There are a lot of reasons for this; mine is that I simply hate giving simplistic answers to complicated questions. The result is that the final mash you pour into your PowerPoint presentation is basically meaningless because it omits a lot of reality.

It is an inconvenient truth of commercial life that really good satisfaction data on complicated services isn’t a linear quantity.  If you want to know how my hospital stay was, just ask me, and try to get the sense of my reply.  This means you’ll need very experienced people making the calls or reading the letters, and yes, Virginia, experienced people cost money.  But the multiple-choice survey is dehumanizing to me, and even more so, to your long-suffering employees. 

And for what it’s worth, BroMenn Regional Medical Center, everyone did a fine job; I have no complaints.  The next time I’m in agonizing pain, I will definitely consider going to BroMenn Regional Medical Center for my mortal-agony abatement needs.

Posted by George on 03/17/07 at 10:26 AM
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Steve Jobs has an attack of common sense

You know the problem: you download music, it has “protection” on it.  Move it from one machine to another the wrong way, or lose the wrong hard drive from your backup copies, and BZZT!!! there goes your encryption key.  Sorry, chump.  You had a thousand bucks worth of music, that took you forever to collect.  Now it’s gone.

And it’s all so unnecessary.  The encryption won’t stop piracy; it will only alienate legitimate customers.  Besides, copying and trading has always boosted sales in the long run.  And now Steve Jobs agrees with me.

Huh.  ‘Bout time he came around.  Why don’t these mega-rich super-geniuses ask me in the first place?  I coulda’ told ‘em.  raspberry

Update:  Here’s Jobs’ actual essay - he does a good ‘job’ of exploring the whole topic from several angles.  An excerpt:

...Why would the big four music companies agree to let Apple and others distribute their music without using DRM systems to protect it? The simplest answer is because DRMs haven’t worked, and may never work, to halt music piracy….

 

Posted by George on 02/06/07 at 10:58 PM
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Super Bowl Commercials ‘07

For those who couldn’t suffer through the Super Bowl to see the Super Bowl Commercials, Here they are.  My favorites were:

  • Coke: “Videogame” - matches my natural optimism
  • Coke: “Happiness Factory” - just fun
  • Bud Light: “Reception” - the way I feel about weddings generally, even though I don’t drink beer
  • The Snickers ad with the two guys working on the car - funny take on two homophobic rednecks
  • Bud Light: “But he has Bud Light!” - horror movie spoof
  • Bud Light: “Dalmation Spot Wink” - Awwwww!
  • GM: “Obsessed with quality” - funny, but GM wouldn’t know quality if it bit them on the ass
  • Emerald Nuts “BoogeyMan” - I have always suspected this is true
  • Snapple: “Green tea big game day” - Doh!
  • ...and of course, GoDaddy: “Marketing” - no wonder they’re the best domain registrar.  I have all my domains with them and their service is fantastic.

What were your favorites?

Posted by George on 02/05/07 at 07:40 PM
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“I give the directions around here.”

Thinking about a Global Positioning System for your car?  Do you get a chuckle out of references to the movie, Deliverance?  NexTel has a commercial for you.

Maybe you had to have lived in the South to appreciate it…

Posted by George on 11/29/06 at 03:48 PM
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Perfect vacation spot

S. Korean tourists are actually vacationing in North Korea. 

Not much development means unspoiled beaches.  The locals are delighted to see you, and the streets are quiet (no fuel!)  Sounds very relaxing if you don’t mind power outages, bugged hotel rooms, and the general creepyness of visiting a country led by a madman…

Posted by George on 10/18/06 at 06:25 AM
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