Marketing Roadmaps

Mathom Room

The difference between an online poll and a statistically valid survey

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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.

Blackberry blogging

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This is my first post from my Blackberry. Why moblog now? We are off on a two week vacation shortly, and I don’t plan on lugging a computer.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Serenity, HP Charity Auction

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Just a couple of housekeeping things.

First, a reminder that the Joss Whedon film "Serenity" goes into general release this coming Friday September 30th. Whedon did an interview in today’s NY Times (tip of the hat to Whedonesque and warning, spoilers). You can find many links to other articles on Whedonesque.

Second, the HP charity auction that I did a fast viral campaign for ends this Thursday, September 29th. While some fan bases have bid certain photos into the stratosphere (Bono at the Super Bowl and Elijah Wood), there are some bargains still to be had, especially if you were thinking of buying an HP Photo Printer anyway.

Roadmaps Round-up: decision making, pitching bloggers and Gartner’s Magic Quadrant.

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Finishing up with my blogroll for this week:

From Andrew Lark, Tomcruiseisnuts.com I needed something light after the news of the bombings in London, and this fit the bill.

Another great post from Kathy Sierra at Creating Passionate Users – You’re emotional. Deal with it. She covers the surprising news (VBG) that decisions are most often based on emotions, not logic, regardless of how we choose to justify the decisions. Of course this won’t be a surprise to marketing folks and most women I know, but news like this just might rock the world of a few tech CEOs.

Tom Murphy has an excellent post that lists posts from PR bloggers on the right (and wrong) ways to pitch bloggers. The post that triggered his, from Anil Dash, on how not to pitch a blogger, closed with an admonition about my favorite peeve: PDFs. About four weeks ago, I ripped into someone (privately) who sent me a pitch about a book with at least 3 PDF attachments plus a huge graphic in the HTML email.

Get a simple website, people, post your information there, and include the links in your emails. If you don’t have the technical ability to do this, find someone who does, like a college student or fourth grader. The people getting your pitch — whatever it is — DO NOT want their email bogged down with tons of attachments that they DIDN’T ASK FOR!!!!! It doesn’t matter whether they are on dial up, broadband, corporate network or a blackberry. They don’t want ’em.

BONUS RESOURCE FOR US FOLKS: If you don’t have your own child to help you with this tech stuff, techstudents.net can help you find a college student to do this work for you.

Also from Tom Murphy, I learned about changes Gartner is making to the infamous Magic Quadrant and a new blog (new to me that is): Analyst Equity.

We’ll have to see how it plays out, but I don’t really see how these "changes" are going to make the whole Magic Quadrant process any less capricious. It still sounds like a "black box" where the analyst doing the Quadrant will decide the key elements based on his or her own opinions and biases, and the companies involved will have a devil of a time figuring it all out.

Roadmaps Round-up

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Adrants on the promotion campaign for the John Twelve Hawks’ book The Traveler.  Program includes a character blog, and as I said in my comments on Adrants, I’ve long believed that fans of books/tv/film will embrace well written character blogs. This is slightly different, as it is promo for a new book, not a build-on to an existing franchise, but it will be very interesting to watch this play out. From my quick glance, the program looks very well done, and there is certainly no subterfuge.

Amy Gahran over at Contentious has a great idea for a unique gift: the gift of conversation.

From Creating Passionate Users, Featuritis vs. the Happy User Peak  Main takeaway: give the right features and make them usable as well as useful. Don’t provide a feature just because you can. Make sure it is something that your user actually wants.

Finally, from Jim Logan, some thoughts about CRM — CRM is an attitude and a set of processes, not a piece of software   Main takeaway: Focus on doing active customer relationship management, using whatever software tools you want, versus on a piece of software as savior.