The word itself makes you want to yawn. For decades MR has been a vital exercise yet many still find it to be a tedious experience both for the survey sender and of course, the recipient. Unsurprisingly, MR’s importance is growing exponentially as the need for data-backed decisions, becomes part of everyday life.
We’ve all been there: a friend or colleague (in this case Simon) politely asks you to complete his survey. You greet the invitation with a fake smile and eagerness to help but as soon as they move onto the next victim you let out a sigh of despair. Question 1: how old are you? easy enough yet quite invasive… Question 2: The selection of snacks in the cafeteria could be healthier: strongly disagree, mildly disagree, disagree, impartial, mildly agree, strongly agree? For god’s sake- I couldn’t care less- how much more of this do I have to go through? Your eyes gravitate to the completion bar… 2% complete???!!! You let out a “F**k this” under your breath but it’s loud enough to catch Simon’s attention. He walks back toward you and ignorantly asks “how are you getting on?”. Red in the face, you reply with a nonsensical “yeah great survey Simon- fascinating questions”
You randomly select options for the remaining 98% of the survey, strategically diversifying your choices as to not raise suspicion. After handing over all your personal details you wonder if you may have given too much away- will Simon steal your identity? Will he download hardcore pornography with your email address? Will he know your inner thoughts that you wouldn’t share with your nearest and dearest? You wonder if your answers are too abstract. Perhaps people will think you’re a psychopath for strongly agreeing that the muesli is lacking enough dried fruit. You hesitantly submit your form and hope the results won’t oust you as a freakish anomaly to the norm.
With your tail between your legs you escape the interrogation and begin to interact with others in the office. You look at people differently- is James a fruit lover or is he a second rate muffin muncher? You chat with Anna from accounting and remember her once telling you how much she adores bananas- respect Anna 🤛 - I “strongly agreed” we needed more bananas in the office and because I like you, I even left additional feedback in the text box highlighting the importance of having potassium rich fruits readily available.
What it was like for the poll sender Simon
Let’s take a minute to pause and turn our attention to Simon. He’s had a rough week. His superior; Linda, wanted him to get out there and get into the minds of the staff. It was imperative that the survey was to portray an image that she cares about the staff and so, instructed Simon to throw in questions about exercise, healthy food options and mental health. With zero MR experience Simon had to get creative and off he went to produce an eighty-question survey, which he then distributed via email.
Three weeks later and Simon has had enough. 15% answered the survey, of which half were incomplete. It’s a shame- the company is made up of 400 staff. Excuses begin to circulate around the office. “Could it be in my junk mail?” exclaims Jonny the intern. Sarah is adamant she did the whole survey meticulously and can’t understand how her answers aren’t accounted for. Sarah, to be fair, desperately wanted smoothies over juices and is now contemplating leaving the firm if smoothies aren’t available with immediate effect.
This is just one small example of how MR is carried out in today’s world. While every other digital industry has blossomed- MR has simply moved from pen and paper to an almost identical experience online. MR has grown just 1.1% annually since 2015 while data analytics has grown a whopping 350% since 2012. Social media, online and mobile surveying are all on the ascent. Replacing a pen with a keyboard isn’t good enough in our opinion. We at ThisThat have had enough and we’re shaking things up- disrupting the status quo and taking on the big dogs. It should be noted that we admire our competitors in many ways- we just like doing things differently.
So why is ThisThat better?
To start, I, like many Gen-Z’ers have a relatively short attention span. Born in a world of immediate answers and infinite choices, Gen Z’ers have an average attention span of 8 seconds as compared to the 12-second attention span of Millennials. Across the board this number is tightening and I’m not surprised- even my mum at the tender age of (insert false number) gets frustrated when the wifi isn’t fibre-optic-Usain Bolt-rapid. She wants immediacy and who doesn’t?. The typical survey in my opinion is a relic from past times and can be compared computers capable of transferring 8 bits of data at the same time.
Today’s computers processors are 64-bit and even the golden oldies prefer them to the old ones.
Reason number 1: ThisThat is Fun!
Our community angle allows people to follow their favourite brands, users and topics. It’s a great place to stay up-to-date with the latest news, trending topics and gossip. For the first time people feel like their opinions are being listened to. Rise up the rankings and become a “hottest user” by leaving the best answers, comments and uploading the most engaging content. We mimic the Instagram layout in many ways, keeping things visual and minimising the need for text (if you want to get just a glimpse of how cool we are tap here. In fact, none of the questions you see on ThisThat will ever be solely text. For those that do like leaving written answers we have space for you- in a modern comment thread with the ability to tag friends, react and up/down vote. So on ThisThat, you can find out what the world thinks- and why, lightning fast, and at scale…
Reason number 2: ThisThat’s functionality
Our name suggests we are a simple This vs That platform. To be fair we used to be but we have harnessed the power of binary and can now apply it to some amazing new features. Tournament Mode- our latest creation allows you to pose a question with an infinite number of answer options. We take all the options and pair them against each-other. Imagine a chess tournament (for the intellectuals) or the Darts at the Ally Pally for those less so. Each competitor is pitted against one-another and as these head-to-head matches are played out, we work out a ranking from top to bottom. We recently asked our audiences “who is the best Batman?” with 12 potential candidates. The results can be seen below:
This data was very quick to collect. We obtained over 1,000 votes in the first 12 hours without sharing the survey on any social media platforms, mailing lists or anything. This far outshines Simon’s three week turnaround and 7% completion rate. Our results came solely from our active userbase and they provide several interesting insights. Firstly, by pairing competitors head to head we are able to say with an outlined degree of certainty the likelihood of any competitor beating another. This is calculated by looking at percentage of comparisons won. Secondly, with the combination of up/down voting on options and comparisons won we are able to give each option a rating out of 100. This means you don’t have to do any of the math- we take care of that for you 🙂.
Tap here if you want to see who’s the most popular TikTok influencer around right now.
Reason number 3: Connectivity
ThisThat is a three platform service. We have our iOS app, our web app and ThisThat Analytics. We iterated our iOS app over 50 times and can now say with a high degree of confidence that we’ve made polling/surveying fun, fast and sociable. When we hit product market fit with the iOS app we went on to to develop a web app. The web app gives everyone in the world the ability to vote on polls from any location, on any device- even Simon’s Microsoft Surface Pro X. In addition ThisThat surveys can be shared via any medium: Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Messenger, Whatsapp and for those that are still a bit old school, via email and text message too. We’re working with some of the biggest and trendiest brands in the world despite having launched just last month.
Reason number 4: Collections, Filter & Compare
“Collections” spark, for the first time, multi-question surveys on ThisThat. Below is how it’s going to look. Make sure to make a note in your calendar for the end of July when it drops.
On ThisThat we collect basic data like age, location, gender and education level. This already is more than the likes of Instagram polls but our clients want more. Filter and Compare- two groundbreaking features that allow clients to pose any demographic question that can later be used as a means to, as the words suggest, filter and compare results. For example Porsche, one of ThisThat’s clients, want to understand the mindsets of “driven youth”- a group of young individuals that are showing signs of being able to afford their high-end products in the future. This group consists of entrepreneurs, young and successful people in finance, Youtubers, influencers etc. For them the key is to identify this group and tailor their marketing material to really target this specific group. A question that they coined for their use case is as follows: would you rather win the lottery, or work for your success? Of course, those that would rather win the lottery can be rejected allowing for results to be filtered by those who are driven- you have to work hard if you’re to be successful- Patricia Trotman, my Grandmother.
I think that’s enough for now but please book a demo with me if you want to learn more about ThisThat and ThisThat Analytics. We are here to provide you with a brand new service that not only allows for more informed decision making processes but also greater exposure, higher sales volumes and for the first time, the ability to interact with your audiences through surveying.