Editor’s note: War Stories is an occasional column in which Art Shulman, president of Shulman Research, Van Nuys, Calif., presents humorous anecdotes of life in the research trenches.
Tony Blass of Field Dynamics reports that years ago he was working for a company that did a mail survey among Toyota owners. Of course, his company paid for the return postage via pre-paid envelopes. What Blass didn’t know is that the return postage fee could be applied to anything returned as long as the return barcode was affixed. So one day he received a brick in the mail. Using clear tape, a respondent had chosen to express his or her feelings by mailing in the brick, which was actually fairly expensive to receive. Blass displayed it in his office to remind him of the importance of respondent outreach and education.
Diane Trotta of Trotta Associates tells of a focus group on frozen entrees she conducted in a suburb of Chicago. Her client was thinking of marketing a line of foods featuring regional Italian cooking, such as dishes from Tuscany, Umbria and Milano. But at the beginning of the group, when respondents were asked what comes to mind when they hear about regional Italian cooking, one woman responded, “Chicago-style pizza.”
I didn’t know there was a Chicago in Italy.
Trotta also tells about a survey she conducted after a product placement in which consumers were asked to take home an underarm deodorant to try. In the interview a few days later, when one woman was asked what she thought of the product she gushed over its aroma, said that it was easy to apply, that it protected her, and went on and on praising the wonderfulness of the deodorant.
But the woman did have sort of a minor complaint. When asked if there was anything negative about the product she reluctantly reported, “Well, after I put it on, my arm got stuck to my side and I couldn’t pick my arm up for hours.”
Apparently some respondents just want to be positive and avoid negativity about new products.
Liz Kovacs of Boulder Focus Center reports that one of their moderators was conducting several focus groups during a trade show, using a room rented in the convention hall. The moderator had left all the boards and materials in a locked room overnight and the next day, a short while before the focus groups were due to start, he discovered that everything was missing.
Thinking fast, he asked to review the security tapes from the previous evening, which showed that a custodian had thrown all the materials away. The janitor was tracked down and remembered which Dumpster the boards were in. Luckily the trash had not been emptied yet. With the help of several convention staff and a hair dryer, most everything was salvaged and the focus group went on as scheduled.
Joe Vorrasi of Harris Interactive tells of a verbatim comment from a national telephone survey they did of men diagnosed with an enlarged prostate. When asked, “To what mailing address would you like us to mail your $5 honorarium, sir?”, the man replied, “I don’t much care for the idea of staring at a tank of fish in my living room, but thank you anyway.”
Corey Hammer of Career Education Corporation was conducting focus groups with college students on educational institutions, and one of his respondents was just like a character played by Sean Penn in the movie Fast Times at Ridgemont High, a slacker and dopehead named Jeff Spicoli. His head sloshed about from side to side. He looked ready for a Twinkie throughout the entire session.
Hammer was able to avoid reacting to the resemblance, but after he returned from conferring with his clients (who were laughing in the back room about “Spicoli”) during a writing exercise, he had the hardest time not grinning like an idiot or laughing out loud to Spicoli’s head bobs.
Toward the end of the session, Hammer had participants in a role-playing exercise about how they would market their school and make it different from schools that offer similar programs. Other students offered reasonable and useful comments relating to improving the advertising, what types of information the school should offer prospective students and so on.
Spicoli’s response? “I would offer them a buffet.”
The glass nearly shattered due to the laughter from the back room.