Short Steve: Ernest Dichter

There is a story concerning Ernest Dichter that I’ll relay in just a moment, and it’s totally untrue – but the true story is even better!

Dichter is credited with coining the term “focus group” to describe a select group of individuals who’s goal is to provide feedback on a given product or situation. He arrived in the United States from Vienna in 1939, and within 18 months had become known nationwide for his success in creating the new marketing direction of Ivory Soap (“Be Smart and Get a Fresh Start!”), Chrysler (recognizing the significance of a woman’s input into a man’s car-buying decision), and his work with saving P. Duff & Sons instant cake mix, and the cake mix industry in general.

The story goes that Duff hired Dichter to figure out why sales of their cake mixes were lagging after such a strong start. Dichter convened one of his focus groups and quickly determined that woman were feeling guilty about using cake mixes – specifically, they felt their contribution to the household was being diminished because all they had to do was add water and bake – hardly a challenging task for a child, much less an accomplished housewife!

His recommendation: remove the dried egg component from the cake mix and have the housewife add egg AND water, thereby fulfilling her need to do something in the process.

Except this story is almost certainly apocryphal. And the truth is so much better!

Dichter DID handle the marketing for Duff, and he DID convene a focus group to determine why sales were lagging. His actual findings, though, were something quite different. He found, in fact, that women were bored with the process of adding water to a premade cake mix and baking it. After some testing and experimentation, he recommended that the best way to improve sales of cake mix was to make it part of a larger enterprise. Rather than just cook and serve the cake, Dichter recommended additional steps post-bake, and voila! the cake decorating industry was born.

That’s right – if you love frosting and/or icing as much as I do, you have the father of motivational research and the coiner of the term “focus group”, Ernest Dichter, to thank!

Working Mothers

I have many fond memories of my mother, both with my Dad and after they divorced when I was eight. This, however, isn’t one of them.

I was cleaning out a cabinet today and ran across a manila envelope. Within, I found two typewritten sheets of paper – it was undated, but it refers to an incident that occurred while driving with my younger brother Eric, and it (apparently) occurred before he was driving, so that places it somewhere between 1982 and 1991 or so. It has all the earmarks of being a letter to the editor, most likely to The Bakersfield Californian.

Here it is in its entirety – typos, bad grammar, and all:

OPINION

“Get A Real Job – Be A Housewife”

Today my son and I was this really great license plate frame, it said, “Get A Real Job – Be A Housewife!”. I told my son, I would really like to have one. I made that choice back in 1963, rather than going to work in an office. I wanted to raise my own Children. I was a single parent for a while and it was not easy, but we survived.

Back at that time, late 60’s & 70’s, it was an acceptable choice, today it seems it is not. Today it is felt that if you stay at home you do nothing, but in fact it is a 24Hr. a day job, no salary, you work harder then most people in the working world, outside the home.

I really believe there would be less problems with our kids today if they had a stay at home Parent at least through their formative years. We need more stay at home parents to take care of their children. No guarantee. “But what do parents expect, when they are not at home, remember these kids need guidance and love from you, your values, not a stranger, they are your Responsibility! There is also nothing wrong with a stay at home Dad either in fact in some cases the Dad is the better choice.

If you were to ask inmates especially the younger ones why you are here, the majority said when I was growing up no-body was at home to care, so why should I. No Excuse!

The only draw back I have found is if you look for a job after “Just” being a housewife, they tell you that you are not qualified no work experience, no real skills. I have felt like taking my kids as refrences. We really have a wide range of skills, more then just your adverage worker.

Stay at home parents have to stand together with heads held high. We are doing an honest days work for no pay, no 1hr. lunch break, no dinner break, 7 days a week 24hrs. a day.

There are rewards too, like when for years you tell your kids something and you wonder if they hear you, but then the day comes you hear the same thing coming out of them and you realize, hey they really heard what I said, it’s a great feeling. There are a thousand rewards, each milestone, special achievements, graduations, weddings, just to mention a few. The kids are so proud to have you there, just the look on their faces when they see you. I wouldn’t change a thing I did.

These rewards are wonderful and worth more then mear money could buy! Your building Memories.

Please remember these children are our future, you need to Invest Now!

Marilyn Neufled

Bakersfield, CA

She makes some really good points (and thankfully, she called out stay-at-home dad’s, as well – something I did for a number of years with our twin boys). More than that, though, it was a surreal thrill, reading words I didn’t know existed from a mother that has been gone for nearly fourteen years.

The most fascinating thing to me, though, is that she perfectly captures exactly how I remember her – always there, always taking care of us, always caring about us.

She was a true working mother, in that she gave everything she could to my sister, my brother and I, working day and night to make sure we wanted for nothing. Not all of her decisions were the right ones, but she did the best she could with what she had, and no one can fault her for that.

Short Steve: DST and Golf

English outdoorsman William Willet is largely credited with the current spring-forward-fall-back Daylight Saving Time model, which he proposed in 1905.

A similar idea was proposed independently about ten years earlier, in 1895, by New Zealand entomologist George Hudson, but 1) he proposed a two hour shift, 2) he was a New Zealander, and 3) he wasn’t a golfer (that we know of), so his proposal went nowhere.

And to be sure, the idea has been around for centuries, from the Romans adjusting meeting times during the summer to Ben Franklin’s “early to bed, early to rise…”

Willet WAS an avid golfer, and he suggested the time change to provide more time in the evening for leisure activities (such as golf).

The first city in the world to enact this new Daylight Saving Time (or Summer Time, as it was/is know in most of Europe) was Port Arthur, Ontario – leave it to those crazy Canadians to jump into the fire first!

The first country to adopt DST nationwide was Germany, at the outset of the Great War. This was done largely to conserve coal – longer days meant less coal burned in the evenings. Britain and other Allied Nations saw the advantages of this and quickly followed suit.

It became common practice again during World War II to adopt DST again, for much the same reason, and then became widely adopted by most countries not already observing full time (the U.S. and most of Europe included) during the 1970’s oil crisis, and it’s been a mainstay ever since.

In 1986, Ronald Reagan, at the urging of the Golf Lobby (yes, that’s a thing), moved DST from the last Sunday in April to the first Sunday in April. By some accounts, this single action added $400 million to the golf industry alone.

Currently, DST runs from the second Sunday in March to the first Sunday in October.

Golfers: getting shit done since 1905!