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"This is not a job. This is an obsession," he says. "When we were kids, all we had was toy soldiers and our imaginations. Now we can make them walk and talk and fight."
Exactly. With nothing, at all, left to the imagination.
HOME OF HONEST OPINIONS
I can resist everything except temptation. OSCAR WILDE
The hamburger you eat, the shampoo you use, the shirt you wear, the chair you sit in, no matter where you live in America, basically came from a mall in Des Moines, Iowa.
The computer you use, the bicycle you ride, the color of colors, no matter where you live, make you a Midwesterner at heart.
There is a reason why McDonald's does not have a McFalfa Sprouts sandwich.
"Companies are trying to reach a market that is middle of the road," says Vada Grantham, a test marketer.
You don't go to Boston for that. You don't go to San Francisco.
You go to Des Moines.
Vada Grantham's wife Teresa began their test-marketing business in their basement in 1987. Today they have 500 employees and 200 clients, and they have moved to the test-marketing equivalent of an Ivy League campus.
The Park Fair Mall.
T.L. GRANTHAM & ASSOCIATES, the mall's sign blinks with flashing yellow lights. "Your link to the consumer...Iowa's largest food demonstration company."
It is this mall location, the Granthams say, that gives them an edge over the competition. The Park Fair has a senior center, a post office, a grocery store, retail shops and, most important, the Iowa Department of Transportation.
It's the same in every state. If you're there for a driver's license, there's a chance you'll die waiting. And for TLG employees looking for test targets, it's fish in a barrel. "We can test everything from infant formulas to hearing aids without leaving the premises," Teresa says.
The Granthams say they can't divulge what products they're testing now. They do admit they helped McDonald's with its Big Xtra burger campaign (the Whopperlike 4.5-oz. lettuce-and-tomato burger debuted in Des Moines in January and is being tested in 10% of the chain's U.S. restaurants), and they had a role in Pepsi's decision to change the color scheme on its cans.
"In Middle America, you get a lot of honest opinions," says Vada, unintentionally insulting the entire left and right coasts. But then, would you want, say, New York City, which is basically a psychiatrist's office surrounded by a moat, to decide whether Wheat Thins need a makeover? "We don't jump on a lot of fads. We can get a more accurate reading on the long-term responses of consumers."
Des Moines has both urban and rural within minutes of each other, says Jeff Bradford, chairman of the marketing department at Drake University in Des Moines, and that's attractive to companies that want products tested. With its housing and development boom, Des Moines "captures the growth and the shift in the economy that's taking place across the entire country," Bradford says.
From its home office at the mall, TLG sends those apron-wearing Betty Crockers into supermarkets with free food samples. It also administers taste tests, leads focus groups, conducts mall intercepts (these are the people who carry clipboards and are always smiling, which apparently works in the Midwest).