Editor's note: "War Stories" is a regular feature in which Art Shulman, president of Shulman Research, Vall Nuys, Calif, presents humorous stories of life in the research trenches.
Jim Nelems reports noticing a disclaimer at the bottom of an ad touting a readership study for a local business newspaper in Georgia.
Greater than 1% response rate. This survey is not scientific but it is accurate.
-Publisher
The ad mentioned neither the data gathering technique, the sample size, nor the sampling error.
Nelems could not resist writing the editor. Referring to the accuracy mention, he wrote, "I guess this means that you correctly wrote down the actual numbers that came from a survey that is not projectable."
The editor replied, "What it means is that if a survey had been done according to more formal standards, the results would have been the same."
Nelems says he was tempted to write back, "How do you know?" but he thought better of it.
Gail Fleenor, research manager for a regional southeastern supermarket chain, thought she had heard every possible story from interviewers as to why they were having difficulties when conducting interviews.
One interviewer, a young woman in her 20s, told Fleenor after being hired for an in-store survey that she was going to have. "The rest of my teeth" extracted the day before the survey started. However, she thought it wouldn't affect her performance since, "It didn't bother me the last time I had teeth pulled." She told Fleenor she would be fitted for an upper plate and have it prior to the survey.
Later, as Fleenor began the training session, this woman proudly tapped her new upper plate to show that she had indeed had all her upper teeth extracted and a shiny new plate installed.
When Fleenor actually visited the store where interviewing was taking place, the woman came over and showed her her gums. It was, Fleenor reports, a scary sight. The woman said the dentures were hurting her gums so she took them out and put them in her pocket.
Over the next four days of the survey, the woman rarely wore her top plate. So, each time Fleenor entered the store she was greeted with a view of the woman's gums. The woman would pull up her upper lip for an inspection, which Fleenor studiously avoided. And each time Fleenor visited the store, the woman proudly proclaimed, "I've got my dentures in my pocket!"
A few weeks ago I conducted focus groups on new advertising executions designed for a company that advertises in the AARP's Modern Maturity magazine. I arrived a couple of hours early to set up, and was told by the hostess that one of the respondents was already waiting in the lobby. Curious. I ventured out and saw a kindly-looking elderly woman, who I estimated to be about 75 years old, sitting peacefully, a pocketbook resting across her lap.
I approached her and introduced myself as the moderator for the group discussion and commented on her arriving so early. Apologetically, she explained. "I came early because I was afraid of traffic in the rain."
"It's not raining." I pointed out.
"But they said it might."
As fate would have it, one of the executions tested that night included an ad featuring an elderly woman sitting in an easy chair, sipping tea from a dainty cup. The photo had a startling resemblance to our respondent. (No, it wasn't her.) Virtually all respondents in the group loved the ad. The only exception was our kindly old woman, who said, "That's just ridiculous. No one would believe that ad. People like that don't exist!"