Excellent Answers to Meaningless Questions
Marketers are always on the lookout for surveys and insights that help to bring focus and clarity to today’s complex marketing and media environments.
Some studies however, aren’t all that useful. Around our shop, we call those research efforts “excellent answers to meaningless questions.”
You can imagine how delighted we were to find a study that revealed 70% of adults want “good” information on the content of TV programming. That’s so that they can watch what they are “comfortable with.” Moreover, 50% thought that the number of choices on TV is overwhelming.
Wow. You’re kidding.
Did it occur to anyone in charge of—or during—the commissioning, designing, executing and/or analyzing of this effort that a study wasn’t required to uncover those penetrating facts?
One is forced to wonder whether these people who want “good” information are too busy watching 1,200+ channels of television to occasionally glance at TV Guide, turn to the program-listings in the back of their local newspapers, or press the button on their universal remote controls to find the program listing channel supplied by virtually all cable and satellite operators.
Who even came up with the idea to do the study? Were the folks who commissioned the report sitting around a conference room suddenly struck with worry that they didn’t know what would be on at 9 p.m. that night? And think other people felt the same way. “We should find out what kind of information viewers want,” the intrepid researchers decided. “They probably want ‘good’ information, but maybe not. We should ask them and be absolutely sure.” And they did.
The failed to notice that broadcast and cable providers has already exceeded viewers expectations on this score, with tiny buttons all over the remote controls that would take viewers to program guides for not only upcoming shows but provide information about the shows they were currently watching.
We’re pretty sure that with a small amount of effort, even the most Lagging-Adopters and Techo-Peasants can find the right buttons on their remotes—even the respondents to this study.
You have to wonder how much money and effort went into this exercise. Unless we’ve missed something of galactic proportions, this kind of research is just another example of excellent answers to meaningless questions. And that’s something we’re just not “comfortable with.”
Robert Passikoff, Ph.D., is founder and president of Brand Keys Inc.
