Editor's note: "War Stories" is a regular feature in which Art Shulman, president of Shulman Research, Van Nuys, Calif., presents humorous stories of life in the research trenches. Readers are invited to call or write Shulman with stories of their own.

Market researchers are important people. We are smart, and we do work that influences the national economy. Sometimes, though, we need to be brought down to earth.

Moderator Michele Zwillinger recalls her first day on the job as director of research for a major advertising agency. One reason she was hired was for her skill in implementing research to generate new business. Upon reporting to work that first day she was informed that focus groups were scheduled for that night and was asked if she would "just show up and be charming."

When Zwillinger showed up at the sessions, she met the owner of the client company, which operated an entertainment attraction. During the groups, the teenage respondents completely slammed and trashed the client's company, so enraging the owner that he broke into the session, told the boys that they didn't know what they were talking about, and then played them a radio commercial he had prepared, which they trashed and laughed at even more.

The client was so upset that he fired the agency. Can you imagine how Zwillinger felt coming to the office the next day?

In another instance of a researcher being brought down to earth, Alan Fine, now a senior executive, but then working at Audits & Surveys, clearly remembers one of his first projects as a marketing researcher, where he was called upon to fly to a distant city and audit a supermarket's shelves for laundry detergent. Fine felt initiated to the research profession when an open box of Tide fell from a high shelf, bopping him on the head and speckling his new suit with flecks of detergent.

At least he wasn't under a pigeon.

An unnamed focus group moderator, often on the road, made a practice of shipping home his used underwear while we was on long trips. One evening he instructed the hostess at the focus facility he was visiting to FedEx a package holding his underwear to his home, and ship the audio tapes to his client.

When the moderator returned home a couple of days later he opened the FedEx package and, to his horror, saw audio tapes. Realizing what his client had received, and more concerned that his client would know whether he wore jockey shorts or boxers than with the client not having audio tapes, the moderator immediately called the
client's secretary, who said that the package hadn't yet been opened. He then instructed her not to open it, and to FedEx it to his office, next-day priority.

Janice Sunday, of the advertising firm Stranger & Associates, made a multi-media presentation to the Los Angeles chapter of the American Marketing Association. She exhibited her agency's creative for a new luxury hotel in Las Vegas, and provided figures showing that hotel traffic exceeded all expectations after the advertising ran. She completed her presentation by telling the audience that that morning her agency had been fired by the hotel.

Cathy Castenaeda, now director of research at Talbot’s, cites a focus group she observed with about a dozen senior executives of the financial services company she worked for at the time. One of the executives, attending his first focus group discussion, turned on the light in the viewing room, leaving the executives clearly visible to the group of women on the other side of the mirror. Some of the executives dove to the floor. Others sheepishly smiled.

Speaking of clients, Paul Scipione, currently a professor at Montclair State University, but then working for a research company, reports observing a focus group with a lecherous client, a Fortune 500 senior executive, in a research facility with a remote-control TV camera and observation room down the hall.

Actually, Scipione was trying to observe the session, but was unable to do so because his client insisted that the camera be trained on the cleavage of the ex-Playboy bunny who happened to be a participant in the group. The camera never budged from the fron of the ex-bunny’s blouse, no matter how significant the comments of others in the group.

Scipione reports that as the ladies left the session his client was there at the door to personally hand the woman her cash envelope - and insistently ask for her phone number as well, which she gave him!