Today’s soundtrack: layin’ in the cut!

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Today at 7:02pm: tippling

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For once I’m on the phone with a marketing guy who’s trying to make me money.

“You like scotch?” he asks.

“Scotch is great,” I say.

“I’m gonna put down that you drink Johnny Walker Blue twice a week,” he says. Jesus, like I can afford that.

“How much money do you make?” he continues. I tell him. “No no no,” he says. “I’m gonna put down that you live in an over-$100,000 household.”

“Okay,” I say. Basically the marketing guy is fudging figures so I can qualify for a focus group he’s trying to fill out. Who knew marketers lie?

#

Later I show up to the focus group, which is at some faceless office building in lower midtown. I take the elevator up to a frosty reception area decorated like what would have been considered a classy cafe in the 1980s: Everything is shiny, polished surfaces, faux marble, tall round tables with tall black chairs. I’m expecting to hear Robbie Nevil’s “C’est La Vie” blaring out of the stereo.

The receptionist has me fill out a questionnaire about my alcohol preferences. A table at one end of the room is loaded up with meats, cheeses, cookies and soft drinks. “Help yourself,” she says.

I fill the questionnaire out as bodies start filling the room. In my jeans and T-shirt I am the shabbiest-dressed fellow in here. The rest are mostly suits, with only two other working-class guys showing up in jeans. Everyone is male, ranging from their 30s to their 50s. Afterwards I go to hit the refreshment table, but the suits have already picked the damn thing clean.

Next they split us up into two groups of eight. The two other working-class guys are in my group, and we’re led down a corridor into an ‘80s-style living room with black leather couches, pastel tones and a large mirrored wall. There’s a gaunt, intelligent-looking man waiting in the room to greet us.

As we take our seats, the man introduces himself as a marketing guy doing research for a well-known alcohol manufacturer. He looks like he’s pretty behind on sleep. Then he gestures to the mirrored wall behind him. “There’s an observer behind this wall,” he explains, “but please ignore it.”

Next he asks us to familiarize ourselves with the people sitting on either side of us. “I’ll break you up in pairs,” he says. “Please learn a little bit about your partner, where he’s from, his favorite movie, and so on.”

We dutifully make perfunctory small-talk. To my right is a pompous, sharp-suit-wearing entertainment lawyer who looks like Dr. Gaius Balthazar from Battlestar Galactica. To my left, a down-to-earth real estate guy who looks like George Clooney’s heavyset older brother. His favorite movie is The Sting, and I tell him mine is The Third Man. Whoopee.

Marketing Guy then makes us go around the circle and introduce each other. I’m tempted to tell the group that Real Estate Guy’s favorite movie is Anal Avengers 4 but I stick with The Sting. After we’re done he breaks into the presentation.

#

He basically shows us a bunch of liquor bottles, some real, some fake, and asks us what we think of them. The shapes, the heights, the label sizes, how much would you pay for this, et cetera. It goes on and on. After about an hour he shows us one concept that’s a little on the frilly side.

“That’s totally queer,” says one of the working-class guys on my right. Then he realizes there’s a totally gay mixed-race guy sitting on my left. “Uh, I didn’t mean it that way,” he hastily adds. I was half-hoping the gay guy would pick one of the bottles up, break it into a jagged weapon on the table’s edge and scream “Well what did you mean, motherfucker?” just to break it up a little.

Marketing guy continues with the questions, asking us stuff like “Now this bottle here--if it was a person, what would it say when it walked into the room?” I’m guessing it would say Holy shit, I’m a bottle that’s been transmogrified into a human being! but I knew those weren’t the answers he was looking for.

#

At the end of it, Marketing Guy leaves the room for a minute, and comes back in with a tray loaded up with highballs. It’s expensive scotch from the client! All of us grab a glass, some of us clearly more greedy than others, and start swilling it.

Then we’re done, and as we walk out the receptionist hands each of us our remuneration--an envelope containing $125 in cash!

#

I hear there’s a whole subculture of broke-ass guys like me who try to make a living out of attending focus groups. The friend of mine who tipped me off about this one made $250 sitting in on a Macintosh session, and a couple hundred bucks here and there watching VW commercials and looking at logos for Wendy’s. If ever there was a subculture I needed to join, this is it.

#

I took the train home smelling like scotch. The little taste I had had given me a craving, and on the way back to the apartment I stopped off at the neighborhood liquor store. I walked in with a hankering, and walked back out fifty bucks lighter with a bottle of single-malt. Maybe marketing does work.

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