Like, d'oh!

In honor of this weekend’s premiere of the long-awaited “Simpsons Movie” in the U.S., I’m renaming what I used to call “like, duh! moments” – those lines in press releases that say “a new survey from Client X shows that 89 percent of people prefer their lawns weed-free” or “78 percent of people say that during the holiday season they clean their bathrooms before guests arrive.” They are now officially “like, d’oh! moments.”  (I’m more interested to know that 11 percent of people don’t prefer their lawns weed-free and that 22 percent of people don’t mind their guests seeing their grimy, filmy bathroom sinks and uncapped half-used tubes of drugstore-brand personal hygiene products strewn about their moldy vanity.) As silly as they are – like, d’oh! – these pieces of information so obvious that no one could possibly dispute them are all too commonly used in our profession. And while they’re not always from surveys – I’ve read “like d’oh moments” coming out of the mouths of CEOs and celebrities and from the omniscient voice of a document’s writer – the fact is, they often are. Now, I happen to like surveys when they tell me something surprising or quirky or downright appalling, and I’m at peace with the idea that we build news from their results (it is news, after all, if we learn that only 5 percent of people like their nose or that 94 percent of moms would rather get a Brazilian bikini wax than pick up their kids at pre-school). But when we try to build news off “like d’oh moments,” it not only sullies our soul, but makes it damn hard to write a compelling press release or media alert or whatever. There are a few ways to get around this: Burp up the Kool-Aid you drank that caused you to believe people will think it’s interesting that 92 percent of respondents agree that "murder is bad" when murder has been bad, at least among polite company, since Day One (if you don't believe me, ask God or god or Buddha or Allah or Bhagavan or Obatala or Aditinggi or whomever it is you're worshipping these days)  Help write compelling, surprising survey questions that will elicit equally surprising responses that will both serve your client well and attract the right kind of media attention  In advance, come to an agreement with your client that if the survey results are a snore they won’t be used – in other words, have a relationship with your client in which you can say, “gheesh, this is stupid – we’re not really going to use this, are we?” (I’ve been in several situations where we all agree the results are newsless yet, I’m told, we have to use them anyhow because “the client paid for them” – that’s not doing the client any favors.) Lastly, remember these immortal words of Homer Simpson: "Oh, people can come up with statistics to prove anything. 14 percent of people know that.” Like, duh? Like, d'oh!

Comments

[Jeffrey Treem]

As you mention in the last sentence, these are duh moments, not d'oh moments. A d'oh moment would be sending a press release with a boring statistic only to have a reporter put your e-mail address on his spam list.

[Dan Santow]

Jeffrey: touche