Surveying Life

I admit it, I do surveys. But I’m not addicted….honest! It’s only one or two a week… well, sometimes more.

I don’t mean the sort that involve wellies, theodolites and ultra-long tape measures, or the ones that tell you the only thing holding your dream house together are the dry rot mycelia woven into the wood worm tunnels.  No, I’m talking about market research. OK, there’s no need to wince like that. It’s not a crime and, for your information, I don’t think much of that nonsense either.

If you’ve never done one of these, here’s how they work. They take anything between 5 and 45 minutes and the topics and questions vary widely. The longer ones tend to ask stupider questions, usually. Most of the time I don’t mind answering the questions and answer as truthfully as I’m able, given their limited imagination as to what motivates people to buy stuff, but sometimes they just annoy me enough for me to make things up.

I mean, do they really, in all seriousness, expect people to get excited about an advert for tampons or orange juice? Is their idea of beer choices really limited to the sort of mass-produced plastic rubbish that I wouldn’t clean my sink with? Do they imagine that an ad for washing powder makes one feel anything at all, let alone happy or special? Would a short blurb about how nice they are, make them want to rush out and fill their fridge with vast quantities of chilled meat product, or recommend them, untasted, to all their friends? Is this toothpaste ad exciting and innovative? Does it make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside? No, it’s just a rather boring drone about toothpaste, with unconvincingly enthusiastic people and barely distinguishable from any other advert for toothpaste. There really isn’t a great deal you can say about toothpaste that hasn’t already been said in the last 60 years of advertising the stuff. Get over yourself! Jeez!  But, hey, that’s planet Advertising for you.

So, you might wonder why I bother. Well, they’re going to do the ruddy things anyway and I figure it might as well be my opinions as anyone else’s. The drawback is that it can be an appalling waste of otherwise useful time. I should mention, however, that I only do this because I get paid for it, (in the form of points, usually, that I then convert to gift vouchers). It feeds my Amazon habit nicely. I hope, also, that in some small way it  helps discourage the advertising industry from the more tedious awfulness to which it tries to subject us 😀