|
HOME | NEBULOUS ARRAYS | MULTIFARIOUS CONGLOMERATES | INIMITABLE PRIORITIES | |
![]() In the Autumn of 2011 we talked about doing a reader survey for the Goodlife Mississauga website so we could customize the content based on practical research. One of our sales reps said she had a client who might get involved and provide a prize - so the survey would also be a contest. Then we had to figure out what the questions would be. What do we ask? How much do we want to know? What do you think readers would be willing to provide? Would it have multiple choice questions? We had some short meetings and I created up a working list. We also had to have contest rules (from our legal department) posted on line for everyone to read and readers had to indicate they read them and understood them. The actual survey came down to three sections. PART 1 - Preferences would concentrate on readership. This would tell us if the reader received the magazine at home and/or whether they read it online. We also wanted to know what the "passalong" ratio would be. How many other people in the household looked at it? What features did they like? PART 2 - Personal would ask them about themselves. How often do they take vacations. How often did they go out for dinner, how many children, educztion... PART 3 was optional. If you wanted to win the prize you had to tell us your name and how to contact you. Of course, we would keep the information private and not share it with anyone, but it is identity information we are need to be careful who gets it. The response was great! Readers could win a weekend at a great resort with dinners and breakfasts included. On the technical side (that would be my responsibility), when it came to posting the survey, I did not want to write a custom Perl script or create a server-side form just for this one survey. Instead I went online and did a search for a survey web application (preferably here in Canada). At the top of the list was FluidSurveys. You create an account. They provide some free trial time and the first level of professional service is on a monthly basis. It was easy. It went extremely smoothly. It was all done online and I could manage the account myself. We ran the survey for a month. At the end of the period, I stopped the monthly service - no problem. I downloaded the summary report as a colour-coded PDF and presented to our people here. The whole process went like clockwork and it blew them away. It was perfect. If only the rest of the world worked so perfectly! |
|||
![]() At the moment, I'm working on the *next Projections column for Goodlife Magazine. The topic will be "Production Designers," so you can be sure I'll be talking about all the incredible art and design people who worked on Alien - probably the best designed film ever made. With Ridley Scott drawing the entire storyboard himself (directing his first Hollywood film) and working with the incredible talents of H.R. Giger, Moebius, Ron Cobb and Syd Mead, the film features some of the most talented and original art and design people of our generation. In addition to them, there is also Carlo Rambaldi, Brian Johnson, Nick Allder & Denys Ayling who shared the Oscar with Giger for Visual Effects. Michael Seymour, Leslie Dilley, Roger Christian and Ian Whittaker were nominated for Art Direction-Set Decoration. I'm probably going to have a hard time NOT devoting the entire column to Alien. I still need to cover William Cameron Menzies, Cedric Gibbons, Ken Adam, John Barry, Rick Carter, Tony Masters and our own (Canadian) Carol Spier - let alone the long list of all my other favourite, fabulous designers. It's like trying to pick a "short list" for a startup library procurement budget. *FOOTNOTE (May 18, 2012): Projections has been put on the back burner for a while until advertising lineage picks up and the page count gets back over 100 pages. Thanks to everyone who wrote in and asked. - CS |