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The day a focus group got hijacked by a guy's pet parrot

We were testing a new snack ad in Phoenix last Tuesday, and one guy brought his African Grey, who started perfectly repeating our tagline 'Crunch Time' every time we played the commercial. The bird stole the whole session, and now the client wants to know if we can license animal actors. Has anyone else had real life completely ruin a perfectly planned research day?
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3 Comments
taraanderson
My buddy was running a survey at a mall in Toledo last year, and this lady's corgi would not stop barking at the question about laundry soap. Every single time someone said "fresh scent," the dog went nuts. They had to throw out two whole groups of answers because the data was just barking sounds. The client actually asked if the dog was a plant from a rival brand.
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jesse_green55
That part about throwing out two whole groups of data killed me. @alice_hart is right that it would be amazing research, but only if your client is cool with "barking" as a valid survey response. I had a similar thing happen when I was coding survey comments about car insurance. Some guy's parrot kept squawking "liability" every time he hit the keyboard. I had to scrub 40 responses before I realized it was the bird, not the guy typing.
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alice_hart
alice_hart1mo ago
Oh please, that sounds like the best research data ever!
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