Esoteric, obscure, or just plain useless?

I am often intrigued by the difficulty I have in explaining to people what it is that I do for a living. It is a truth sad but unyielding that outside of the relatively tiny network of people loosely described as the marketing fraternity, qualitative market research is a concept hard to comprehend. Or appreciate.

There is, for one thing, the problem of distinguishing it from its more widely known quantitative cousin. To do this while simultaneously maintaining at least a modicum of respectability is surprisingly difficult. Particularly when conversing with distant, long-unmet relatives, whose kids have all blossomed into astronauts.

“Aaaah, survey type stuff …” nods your interrogator intelligently on hearing your opening explanation. “So you go house to house?”
Er, no … not exactly, you say. I actually call a few people over to one place and have a discussion with them.
“In one place? Isn’t that difficult? So many people coming over?”
Actually it’s not so many. Just 8-9 people usually.
“8 or 9? But how can you come to a conclusion just basis 8 or 9? What kind of a survey is that?”
This is where alarm bells should start to ring. But you forge right ahead. No, no, you say reassuringly, we have more than one such discussion. We usually do 2 or 3 in a city.
“I don’t understand. That’s still about 25 people. There are thousands of people in a city. What sort of survey are you doing?”

Hmmm … valid point, actually. What kind of a survey, indeed. There are two possible courses of action at this point. Withdraw gracefully, suitably reprimanded for lack of integrity, common sense, intelligence or whatever it is that you are seen as lacking in this pathetic attempt to take short-cuts in your job. Or pull out the dal analogy in your defense (you know, the one about not having to eat the entire bowl of dal to describe its taste and how one spoonful is enough). Neither option is wholly satisfactory, in my experience. The first one for obvious reasons; the second one because it never does come off sounding as forceful as it does in theory. At best, it is an embarrassingly transparent attempt at changing the subject; at worst, a fairly lame defense of your devious (deviant?) handling of your job.

Then, of course, there is the bigger issue of usefulness. One that arises with particular force in the company of artists, writers, dancers, mountaineers, social workers, diplomats … the list goes on, but essentially anyone doing anything without a crassly commercial motive. The need to imbue market research with a noble glow is understandably overwhelming here.

“Market researchers, you know, find out what people feel about various issues” you begin tentatively, and receive a startlingly enthusiastic response.
“Oh, that’s wonderful. Public opinion is so important, and people who help give it form are critical to the system”
“Right” you mumble, caught between gratitude and terror, keenly hoping that the conversation goes no further.

“So what are the ISSUES you research?” (The gods will not have mercy).
“Well, you know, about things that people use everyday … how happy they are with them, what changes they want …”
“Things? How do you mean? What kinds of things, exactly?”
“Ummm … toothpastes. Soft drinks. Mobile phones. Lots of things. Anything at all”
Pause
“Toothpastes??” Faintly puzzled, but clearly intrigued.
“Yes. And lots of other stuff.”
“But what about toothpastes? A dental health campaign?”
“In a broad way. We ask why they like a particular brand. What would they like in a new variant. What flavours, colours …”
Pause.
“Oh”
Longer pause.
“Why?”

The strange thing is, it is straight from the heart, that ‘why’. There isn’t any malice there, or a put-down of any kind. It is simple bewilderment that a job like this could exist.

And looked at from an outside perspective, perhaps it is bewildering that a job like this could exist.

It is no wonder that I find my work shrinking in significance after every such conversation with someone outside the marketing spiral I exist in. And that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Many of us live in such tiny, closed worlds – give the trivialities of our work so much more meaning than they need to have. Always takes an outside view, doesn’t it, to put things into perspective?