Earlier this week, SciFi Wire (part of SciFi.com) launched an online poll asking fans what they though writer-director Joss Whedon’s next project should be: another Serenity movie, a movie featuring Buffy/Angel character Spike, or WonderWoman. Much as I love the Serenity/Firefly ‘verse, I voted for Spike. Not because I had any illusions that the poll was scientific, or prescriptive for Whedon. Just for fun, and because I know he does listen to fans. Why not let him know that fans still love Spike?
Occasionally during the week I checked the poll. At some point the various Whedon fandoms mobilized to get out the vote, and to my knowledge at least one group of fans figured out how to "beat" the poll. And of course if one group knew (and posted it), they all knew. Instantly.
Apparently it was not that hard to figure out how to vote more than once – just delete the cookie. And with pretty motivated Whedon fans, not hard to imagine that more than one fan voted more than once.
Well, SciFi.com didn’t like it and replaced the poll with a new question. They had a brief explanation (no longer on the site) that the Whedon poll was pulled down because fans manipulated the vote.
Really…. isn’t that taking everything just a bit too seriously? Personally, I think voting more than once is silly, but these sorts of online polls are just for fun, aren’t they? So who cares? They aren’t statistically valid at all. And if you really wanted to make sure that people could only vote once, wouldn’t you make it a bit harder to "vote early and often." For more on this specific incident, check out this post on Whedonesque.
Okay, I hear you saying – we know you’re a Whedon fan. What does this have to do with marketing?
Statistically valid surveys and polls have methodology and technology behind them to ensure accurate, valid results. Objective questions. Random samples that represent the target population. Answers that mean something. If they are conducted online, the technology prevents multiple voting. Sure, the person conducting the survey has an objective, even an agenda, but the scientific methodology prevents total bias from coloring the result.
But quickie polls on Web sites, whether about Whedon or wikis or Windows, are entertainment. Giving them any other interpretation or taking them seriously is just silly.
The marketing lesson: Don’t confuse the two. If you want to do a quick poll on your Web site or blog to entertain the audience, by all means do it. But don’t use it to prove anything. If you want quantifiable "proof," spend the money to do the survey right.
And the relative importance of Joss Whedon’s next project and whether Patrick Stewart is too old for the next Star Trek movie (the current poll question)? Not going to end world hunger or bring world peace. Who cares if the fans fooled with the poll. As one of the commenters on Whedonesque pointed out, the traffic on SciFi Wire and the number of ad impressions probably increased exponentially by getting the Whedon fandoms riled up.
Which in my opinion is what they wanted in the first place, so they shouldn’t have gotten their knickers in a twist when they succeeded.