A friend sent me this joke* over the break:

A man was walking along a country road one day. Overhead there drifted a hot air balloon with a single occupant. The man in the balloon calls down to the man on the ground: ‘Excuse me sir, can you tell me where I am?'

After a moment of consideration the man on the ground replies: ‘You are in a balloon, 70 feet above the ground, drifting at four miles per hour, in a southeasterly direction.'

The man in the balloon then replied: ‘You must be a market researcher?'

The man on the ground said: ‘Why, yes, how did you know?'

To which the man in the balloon answered: ‘Because, while everything you have told me is absolutely true, it is of no use to me and I am no better off than I was before.'

To this, the market researcher responded: ‘Then you must be a business manager. You were lost... didn't know where you were... and didn't know where you were going. You asked for my help and I gave it to you, and though you are still lost, now it is my fault.'

Luckily, most of us have a sense of humour but as we begin a new year as a profession, imagine what we could achieve if we all set ourselves this objective: do one thing as an individual in 2010 to change this perception of market and social research within public and private business, and among Australians in general.

Your membership dollars and continued support will enable AMSRS to play its part by:

And whether we brief in, spec out, present, design, write or listen in our day to day activities, each of us can play a part to also do something during 2010 to help make research investment the hero during 2010:

4. Stop writing/approving/specifying long, boring, hard to follow surveys that lack engagement - ask yourself, would you complete the survey yourself in your own time? 5. Tell people what has happened as a consequence of their feedback - ALWAYS.
6. Think about the piece of work you have completed in the past 12 months with the most impact and email a short entry (maximum 2,000 words) for the 2010 Research Effectiveness Awards, as the deadline has been extended to Friday 26 February. Entries can be emailed to amsrs@amsrs.com.au and for more information visit: http://bit.ly/8lZliH

Do your bit to help make research the hero during this year, when heroes are likely to be recognised.

Peter Harris, national president
Twitter: @peteraharris
Blog: http://peteraharris.wordpress.com/

* Editor's note: RN endeavoured to find the author of this joke but the closest we came was finding that it was posted by Sherman Whipple among a selection of other market research jokes on the Marketing Research Roundtable at http://forum.researchinfo.com/showthread.php?t=1370

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