Editor’s note: "War Stories" is a regular feature in which Art Shulman, president of Shulman Research, Van Nuys, Calif., presents humorous stotqes of life in the research trenches.
Susan Meyer, whose company, National Shopping Service, performs mystery shopping, supplies a list of reasons that her shoppers have given for not completing their shops:
- "I’m glad you called. I’ve been thinking about becoming a nun and I didn’t do the shops?"
- "The waiter informed me that the cook has hepatitis?"
- "I could not evaluate the facility’s cleanliness due to a parade suddenly marching through the lot."
Meyer also tells about one of her dedicated mystery shoppers, who reported, "I’m sorry I didn’t call sooner, but my house burned down. I saved my report, though!"
Before starting Quirk’s Marketing Research Review, Tom Quirk conducted some focus groups for a company making an insect control product. On the evening of the first two groups, the client was late, and Quirk began the meeting without the prototype package. About halfway through the meeting, the prototype package, with the product inside, arrived and was brought in to Quirk.
While the group discussed the package’s appearance, Quirk tried to determine how to open the box so he could get to the actual product. Short of ripping it apart, which he couldn’t do because a second group was scheduled for that evening, he just couldn’t figure out how the package was supposed to be opened. So he did the logical thing -he asked participants how they would open it - but none of them could figure it out either! Receiving no help from his client in the observation room and running out of time, Quirk thanked the participants and sent them off.
After the session, the client asked Quirk why he had recruited such ignorant people.
Karen Hendersin of Quality Education Data reports that when she first started in market research in the mid-'70s she conducted many door-to-door studies. In one, interviewers asked respondents if they could take a picture of the toilet tank. They’d be paid $5 and given a sample of an in-tank cleaner (a new idea at that time). Then, later the company would come back, take a new picture, and collect opinions of the product. Some consumers became suspicious and reported her company to the police, who in tum asked local radio stations to announce that her company should not be let in because it was assumed they were casing the houses for robbery. One radio station referred to it as "the crapper caper."
Moderator Margaret Lane tells about an ad agency creative director who’d lost most of his hair. When asked his hair color, upon renewing his driver’s license, he filled in, "Clear."
Speaking of hair, Saul Cohen of Saul Cohen & Associates, whose hair is naturally curly, recalls asking focus group respondents, after the warm up, if they had any questions. One woman had a question Cohen didn’t quite expect, "Who’s your hairdresser?"
Steve Billig of Billig & Associates tells about the typo in a proposal which a colleague sent to a client in which the +/-10 percent for unanticipated costs was referred to as a"contingency fee!?’ The client quickly called back to find out how he could get one of those.
A marketer who prefers anonymity tells about a series of focus groups he was involved with. After a long day of listening to groups, the advertising director for the client company saw fit to moon the other people in the viewing room.
He might have been making a statement on the value of the groups. The others in the room, though, just called it a case of creative hindsight.