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 researcher preferring anonymity tells about being an interviewer early in his career, conducting a survey sponsored by a particular regional brand of beer. The brand's advertising was based on the fact that the beer was made using pure water from a particular lake. One respondent, when asked if he found anything hard to believe about the advertising, said he did. The cause of his skepticism? "I once visited that lake and saw a man standing on the shore peeing into it," he said.
In a recent focus group, Linda Fitzpatrick of Fitzpatrick Research began with introductions. The first four women described their young families - names and ages of kids, their husbands, their jobs. One childless woman told a funny story about her dogs. Then another respondent, Bertha, introduced herself: "Got no kids. Got no husband. Got no pets. Got no problems."
Fitzpatrick also tells about conducting a group with blue-collar male antacid users to get their reactions to some anti-gas positionings. Things were going smoothly until she got a note from the viewing room: "Find out more about their gas symptoms! Is there odor? Noise?"
Sensing it was too late to back out of the project, she proceeded down this treacherous path. Slowly, they got into the specifics of their gas attacks, becoming absorbed with tales of misery and embarrassment. Finally, one ribald respondent blurted out, "Good thing there aren't any women here!"
Evidently, he forgot about Fitzpatrick.
Laughter from behind the glass nearly blew out the one-way mirror, she reports.
Another of her experiences relates to her early career at an advertising agency. When Fitzpatrick was working on the sanitary protection category, sales data showed a substantial and unexpected spike in the CDI for certain Western states. It turns out that farmers in the area were using pads as Band-Aids for cows that had been wounded by barbed wire fencing.
Shortly after the recent AMA Fall Research Conference began, Ed Sugar of Triton Technology asked a member of his firm, Mike Feely, to drive down to San Diego from Los Angeles to attend the conference. Sugar, aware there were no available hotel rooms anywhere near the conference, and that his own room had two beds, invited Feely to stay with him.
Feely was to arrive early that evening, and Sugar had dinner plans with clients, so Sugar went to the front desk and asked them to give Feely a key to his room when he arrived.
At 10 p.m., Sugar returned to his room. No Feely. Sugar figured traffic was the culprit. He went to sleep, leaving on a light in the foyer. Just after midnight, Sugar woke up. No Feely.
Just after 1 a.m., the door to the room opened. There stood Feely. He explained that he'd been at the hotel since early that evening. He'd given the desk clerk his name, and was given a room key. He went up to the room, relaxed, watched TV, and plopped into bed, thinking it was unusual that there was only one large bed in the room, whereas Sugar had told him they'd have separate beds. Suddenly, the door opened and a casually-dressed man Feely had never seen before entered, demanding to know why Feely was in his bed. "Because it's my room," Feely told him.
Turns out that the other fellow's name was Ed - Ed Feely, that is. The desk clerk had given Mike Feely the key to Ed Feely's room.
Later, Mike realized he'd left his suit pants in Ed Feely's room, but by then it was too late to retrieve them. So he had to borrow a pair of Sugar's pants for the rest of the conference.
It would be great to be able to report that inside the pocket of those trousers Mike Feely found another key to Ed Feely's room. But it didn't happen.