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.
A few issues ago I wrote about how I thought I was born to be in market research. Well, consultant Roxan Dinwoodie of Via Nova Consulting believes she too was destined for the research trade. She remembers when she was a pre-teen playing "pretend" with her younger sister and a motley collection of dolls and stuffed amals, each with some sort of idiosyncrasy, a few verging on the bizarre. Dinwoodie pretended she was one of them and began to ask her sister questions like, "Is this Mrs. David Smith? Well, I’m a representative of Phillips Milk of Magnesia and I’m taking a survey. What kind of laxative do you prefer above all others? Doesn’t your doctor recommend any specific laxative? Well, I recommend Phillips Milk of Magnesia. It now comes in gum form, as it’s just as thorough and gentle as the liquid."
Dinwoodie now cringes at the mistakes she made back then, mistakes that today, as a scrupulous researcher, she would never make. Still, what kind of kid would choose to play, of all the possibilities, the game of "Interviewer?" Only someone truly born to be in market research!
Ben Pine, president of The Pine Company, remembers way back, to a time before shopping malls, when he was a strapping lad of 20 and starting his market research career as an interviewer. His task was to approach male and female beer drinkers and ask if they were interested in tasting beer at a nearby hotel. Pine nostalgically recalls the disappointment on the faces of some women after they reached the hotel and found that his story about taste-testing beer was on the level and not a come-on.
We research types have to be resourceful. Terry Maize, research manager at Marketing Directions, recently was conducting in-home in-depth interviews. When Maize arrived at 5 p.m. the respondent had just come home and was hectically trying to prepare dinner while dealing with three young children clamoring for her attention. She held one child on her hip, conversed with another and quelled another’s exuberance at indoor soccer. In this bedlam, the woman announced it was her first attempt at white sauce and she was failing miserably.
Meanwhile, Maize had set up her tape recorder, pulled out the communications material she was there to test and was futilely competing for the respondent’s attention. Suddenly, Maize had an idea to make the best of a chaotic situation. She took over the white sauce preparation and the respondent sat down with the materials and her children and gave rich (speaking of white sauce), considered answers during the interview.
W.G. Eaton of Creative Research Systems cites a focus group on frozen hamburgers he once moderated for an ad agency he worked for. Early in the session one participant announced she was a vegetarian who detested all forms of meat and their cannibalistic consumers. Through the session she persisted with her viewpoint. Eaton cringed at what he thought his client’s reaction was behind the one-way mirror for recruiting the woman and not asking her to leave. To his relief and surprise, the client greeted him later with, "What a great idea to put a vegetarian in a group of meat eaters to get a different perspective!"