Great Clips and its bizarre survey

Great Clips, the Edina-based hair salon chain, recently developed shall we say, a unique media strategy.

Last April, the company rolled out online check-in, technology that allows consumers to see how long it will take to get served at a particular salon. Consumers can then add their names to the wait list.

Sounds good to me.

But Great Clips debuted the service nearly a year ago. How can the company get online check-in into the news again?

Naturally, Great Clips commissioned a survey about sex. Let me explain.

The survey focuses on how people would use 15 minutes of extra time. Here are some of its stunning conclusions:

THE #1 CHOICE FOR MOST WOMEN IS SLEEP (Ranked #1 by nearly 1 in 4 women, 24%)
• Most Often Ranked in The Top 5 were Sleep, Clean (organizing closets, dust baseboards, mop floors), Read, Watch TV and Exercise.
• Have Sex was lower on the list after Sit There and Do Nothing with No Disturbances and Cook.

I'm not sure what any of this has to do with cutting hair. Great Clips offers this explanation:

15 minutes is important to Great Clips because Online Check-in has trimmed average haircut wait times by 15 minutes to five minutes or less, giving customers 15 more minutes of time in a day.

OK, so if men used Great Clips' online check-in service, they could theoretically have sex for 15 more minutes?

"This survey is a hysterical look at how we value those precious minutes in a day when we actually have free time," Emily Reas, a PR professional pitching the survey, wrote in an e-mail.