When I find myself with a few minutes of spare time, I sometimes do an online survey or two - the type run by established marketing companies in Australia, and usually concerned with finding out what I think of the latest Pajero or Westpac banking product. The company that runs them usually asks me to do 2 or 3 surveys a week, but I ditch most of them as they are the same boring surveys about:
- which energy company do I prefer
- which bank I prefer
- which phone company I prefer
This week, I finally got something different - a survey on alcohol. It was all about liquers, of which we have quite a few in our bar cabinet. I think most of them will evaporate before we drink them. But that's not the interesting part.
This is what I found fascinating - this is a list of words that the survey company came up with for me to select from when thinking about the type of people that drink certain liquers:
- Mature
- Quiet
- Sensual
- Sociable
- Sophisticated
- Successful
- Vibrant
- Young
- Someone like me
- Admired by others
- Approachable
- Confident
- Daring
- Discerning
- Down to earth
- Fashionable
- Flirtatious
- Genuine
Hmm. That's not the sort of list that I would have come up with when I think of drinking.
How about:
- immature
- obnoxiously loud and rude
- slut
- sociopath
- unsophisticated bogan westie mutant
- unsuccesful drunken loser
- vibrating (having taken too much ice)
- too young to be drinking
- avoided by others
- approachable (for a root)
- a vomit waiting to happen
- idiotic
- undiscerning
- lying flat on the earth
- gang-bangable
- ready to fight
What a fascinating disconnect between how many people behave when they get on the turps, and the image that the marketing companies want to project - especially in this age of beat-ups about binge drinking.
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