Editor’s note: War Stories is a semi-regular feature in which Art Shulman, president of Shulman Research, Van Nuys, Calif., presents humorous stories of life in the research trenches.
David Bauer of Q2 Brand Intelligence reports going through the introductory remarks of a focus group he was conducting. When he got to the part where he told participants about the one-way mirror, he pointed behind him and said, "There are some people on my team sitting behind me." One of the participants looked at him as if he were crazy and said, "There’s no one behind you." Bauer couldn’t understand why she didn’t believe there were people behind him. Luckily for him, another respondent jumped in, saying, "He means that that is a one-way mirror with people sitting behind it."
Some time ago Sharon Livingston of Executive Solutions ran a contest for market researchers rifled, "Funny Things That Happened On The Way To The Focus Group," where entrants had to supply humorous stories, She reports that most of the submissions concerned things like unsuspecting respondents exposing their private body parts with no regard to the mirror or who might be behind it.
What kind of an industry do we work in?!
For example, a group was conducted years ago on women’s undergarments, particularly the Jane Russell line of bras. The buxom women were given bras and asked to go to the ladies room to try them on. A few minutes later they all returned, without any tops other than the bras.
The aim of another group was to increase brassiere usage in Ireland. (It seems Irish women weren’t as supported as their sisters in other countries.) The group came up with the slogan, "Erin go bra."
Livingston, who has conducted many focus groups with physicians, reports that in her experience, the most immature are male gynecologists. For example, in one group discussing birth control devices, a gynecologist picked up a diaphragm lying on the table and used it as a slingshot to hurl something at another doctor across the room.
She also tells about losing a client because she knew she couldn’t read a concept for her client’s new laxative, Prune Power, to a group of respondents without laughing. Instead, she had a respondent read the concept. The client - the soon-to-be-ex-client - was not amused.
Livingston was doing a series of focus groups across the country on Bountiful Fruits and Nuts. They were testing, among other things, the line, "From California, home of the world’s best fruits and nuts." When the line was read on the East Coast, one respondent added, "And flakes." When the line was read in the Midwest, three respondents added, "And flakes." By the time they reached the West, all of the respondents virtually simultaneously added, "And flakes."
One of the highlights (lowlights?) of Livingston’s career was a financial services group she led in San Francisco. She noticed that some of the respondents were attracted to each other. For example, a man was trying, with glances and smiles, to unobtrusively establish further contact with the attractive woman sitting next to him. Apparently the man across the table from him wasn’t very observant, for he was sending private notes to that very man, trying to pick him up.
All of this not-so-surreptitious activity didn’t upset Livingston much, other than the fact that it detracted from the discussion of financial services. But she was truly disturbed later when the odor of marijuana began wafting through the vents. During the same group, a woman upchucked.
As I said, it wasn’t a career highlight.
On a different occasion, Livingston heard a loud noise coming from the back room during a group. So she said aloud to the person who was taking notes for her there, "Allison, knock once ff everything’s okay." Allison didn’t knock. Livingston excused herself and rushed to the backroom, where she discovered her client, bleeding profusely after being hit on the head by a speaker that had fallen off a wall.
Before being carted off to the hospital, the client inspirationally urged Livingston to "finish that group!"
What a trouper!