Did you catch the 1939 Wizard of Oz focus group footage skit from last night’s Oscars?  Featuring Christopher Guest, Jennifer Coolidge, Fred Willard and a bunch of other famous faces, the skit pokes fun at how the movie industry has changed over the years.  The video can’t be embedded, but you can view it here (the focus group clip starts at 0:23):

http://ifitshipitshere.blogspot.com/2012/02/focus-grouping-wizard-of-oz-sketch-from.html

A couple of great lines from the “participants” about what they did and did not like:

• “I didn’t particularly care for the rainbow song,”
• “I didn’t like it until they got to the flying monkeys.”

But my favorite, laugh-out-loud part was definitely this exchange:

• Moderator: “Is there a particular character you’d rather not see?”
• Participant: “That’s easy.  Dorothy.”

-Deb Gere

Jeff Papa

Did anyone else read the Forbes article “How Target Figured Out A Teen Girl was Pregnant Before Her Father Did”? Fascinating (and slightly creepy) stuff! Of course, the researcher in me loved the “pregnancy prediction” score

“As Pole’s computers crawled through the data, he was able to identify about 25 products that, when analyzed together, allowed him to assign each shopper a “pregnancy prediction” score. More important, he could also estimate her due date to within a small window, so Target could send coupons timed to very specific stages of her pregnancy.

One Target employee I spoke to provided a hypothetical example. Take a fictional Target shopper named Jenny Ward, who is 23, lives in Atlanta and in March bought cocoa-butter lotion, a purse large enough to double as a diaper bag, zinc and magnesium supplements and a bright blue rug. There’s, say, an 87 percent chance that she’s pregnant and that her delivery date is sometime in late August.”

via How Companies Learn Your Secrets – NYTimes.com.

You can read the whole article here.

It was a beautiful day for our field trip and at the top of the building is a sweeping view of the DC area.  Below is the view of historic Alexandria.  If you look close enough, you might even be able to see our office .

Have a happy President’s Day weekend!

-Leslie Baldino

What’s the quickest way to lose a respondent in an online survey?

By doing this. Can anyone guess what’s wrong? Hint: I’m personally offended! (Don’t worry, this wasn’t a SimpsonScarborough survey )

My valentine for you…. I cant get the embedded video to work, so click the links below. I promise you will enjoy!

Happy Valentine\’s Day

Valentine\’s Part 2

XOXO,

Meredith

Remember when Rich Mintz from Blue State Digital spoke at the AMA Symposium about the company’s work on the first Obama campaign? He reinforeced that simplicity is one of the keys to great marketing. The home page of the campaign Web site had ZERO content. It only asked visitors to enter their email. Nothing else. No name. No address. No phone number. No “how did you hear about us?” Email only.

Looks like Obama is continuing his simplistic approach to building friends and followers. I just happened to visit the White House Web site and this is what came up.

Just give us your email. That’s all. It’s so simple, you’re compelled to do it.  I’m sure I’m on the path to a healthy diet of communication from the Obama campaign….and that’s fine with me. I’m a sucker for a good marketing approach. Most of us are. If it’s easy….we’re in. We higher ed marketers could learn a thing or two from this President about marketing. If you’re trying to generate friends and followers, don’t require people to enter every detail about their profile. There’s time for that later once they’re engaged. To start, just get people on board…..remove the barriers. An email address for 30,000 is better than a complete profile for 3,000.

Elizabeth Scarborough

Click here to follow me on Twitter

I finally got around to watching the SNL from a few weeks ago with Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter) hosting. This particular skit really made me laugh – Kristin Wiig is conducting an exit poll with DanRad, and things get more than a little off topic. I found it pretty funny, because a few things reminded me of various conversations I have had while writing survey instruments… And also, Kristin Wiig is just hilarious.

http://www.imdb.com/video/hulu/vi2743378201/

It is almost Friday folks!

Meredith

Valentine’s Day is less than a week away and I’m sure you wondering what we at SimpsonScarborough are hoping Cupid will bring us! Here are just a few things on our list:

1. “Don’t Make Me Use My Statistician Voice” Mug

2. iPhone Cover

3. Stamps

4. Hat

5. Business Cards

6. Chocolate (of course!)

– Renee Daly