Hey folks, Harry here. The following is... perhaps one of the most disturbing and scary emails I have ever received. I?ve talked to a variety of folks all in market research... much of it being gathered for a book I?m writing, but... well let?s call this a bit of a preview of coming attractions. The below person worked at a outside company that the NRG farmed assignments out to. The name and location of the company is hidden to provide cover for the undercovered. And the following report should send shivers down the spines of all you corporate types... And the moral is to listen to your artists, not the numbers. In this past year we?ve watched UNIVERSAL STUDIOS try and market OUT OF SIGHT, BABE: PIG IN THE CITY and MEET JOE BLACK and fail miserably. After reading this report... is there any wonder how that could have happened. Or how about PARAMONT and A SIMPLE PLAN or NEW LINE and their PLEASANTVILLE or MIRAMAX and their THE MIGHTY and SMOKE SIGNALS? There are no guts, no instincts any more. Instead decisions are based on false data from unreliable sources it seems. This is a serious issue that faces Hollywood.... if Hollywood ever chooses to face it.
?I WAS AN NRG HO!!!!?
by Benedict Arnold
Mr. Knowles / Harry / O Wise One;
Before I begin my tale, I'd just like to thank you for creating this excellent site. It's been a great source of information, inspiration, and motivation (I was the one who sent the H.P. Lovecraft card). In fact, I would have never told this tale if not for your site. I've noticed a pattern of trashing NRG and I'd just like to give it a little more support, from someone who (formerly) did some of their dirty work.
For a period of about a year, beginning in May 1997, I worked for a small Market Research company. My outlet was located in the (BLANK) Mall, in a suburb of ANYWHERE, AMERICA. I began work there because of my friend Jeremy. He was 20, lived in an apartment known as "the cave", and had never held a job for more than three months. Well, I had been slaving away at a local fast food joint and was looking for a change. Jeremy suggested his job, and I figured that if he could work there, so could I. So I applied and was promptly hired at the ripe age of 17. (If I'm not mistaken you have to be 18 to work in Market Research, but no one at my Market Research company seemed to mind.) Well, just in case you were wondering, market research (at least the kind we did) involves standing in a mall and harassing opinions out of people. We worked primarily on commercials and trailers, but also did the occasional product test. Clients, such as NRG, would send us surveys, we would find people and use them to fill the surveys, then send them back and get a hefty paycheck.
It was my first day that I began to work on NRG trailer surveys. I'm sure you've seen them; long, colored sheets of paper with typewriter font letters in cryptic arrangements. I managed to pull in three people that day, and I can tell you honestly, it was hell. These surveys had to have the worst design in the history of Market Research. The trailer that day was a three-and-a-half minute non-star-power look at a particularly bad drama, we had to show it to the participants TWICE! The survey took well over ten minutes, and people can become very impatient. After that first day the manager gave me a talk about NRG surveys, a talk I'm sure people all over Market Research get every day.
She told me about short cuts. How to "fill in" things that just took up too much time. In fact, the entire second viewing of the trailer (which was meant to determine which parts the participant did or didn't like) could be eradicated using these simple shortcuts. Everyone did it, and it cut the time in half, besides, we thought, do they really expect everything to be exact? So I began using the shortcuts, and honestly, I don't think it affected the data significantly. However... the next step down that road did...
The mall we operated out of had dry seasons. That's something you can expect in retail, however, the guys at NRG didn't quite get this point. It could be a friday in the middle of July, and we'd get fifty surveys to ship by close on Sunday! On average, one in thirty people would respond to us, much less qualify to take the survey. So the boss let us do a little data fudging, a sixteen year old kid could be a twenty-eight year old businessman and a quota could be filled. At least they were getting people's opinions, and as a firm antagonist of market segregation, I figured I was doing my part to fight the man...
Well, the downward spiral of data fudging just kept descending, though. We started to simply do the surveys ourselves. It was easier, we didn't have to bother with harassing people, and whenever there was a paying survey, we got to keep the cash. We knew it was wrong, but we weren't getting caught, and we still did the legitimate surveys whenever we could, after we made sure we'd meet our quotas. Everyone knew we'd all get fired if we were ever caught, but our manager, who'd worked in survey verification, knew exactly what to do to keep that from happening. Other than the possibility of getting fired, none of us had any qualms about falsifying data. We decided that's the price they'd pay for trying to use the public to form their opinions...
I eventually left that job. Went off to college. Discovered sites like Ain't-It-Cool-News and had a revelation... Those Surveys Actually Meant Something! They really did form the opinions of the people who put the trailers together! People decided to see those films at least partially based on those trailers! Maybe what we had done was wrong. Not as wrong at the execs relying on something like Market Research to make their trailers, but wrong none the less. Don't think what we did was limited to that outlet or that company either. My friend has moved to other locations, and other companies, and he says the same thing happens all over...
So now I reach the moral of my story... Don't trust Market Research! It's just not reliable. When and if you actually get the public's opinion, the sample of people who will interrupt their day to take a survey aren't the mainstream anyway. To think that studios are wasting money on things like this is just disgusting. Find a better way!
Well, thank you for reading all the way to this sentence
Benedict Arnold
