The Real Cafe Society

The simple life has been the subject of intense fascination among consumer marketers, who have been trying to figure out just how far and wide the movement will go. Somewhere in the Midwest, in fact, is a community of 12,000 people that is serving as a social laboratory of this shift. The townspeople do not know it. No pollsters have knocked on doors. Several new folks in town, however, are not exactly who they seem to be. They are researchers from the Foote, Cone & Belding ad agency, sent there to soak up everyday life and find out what people are thinking in the place code-named Laskerville. They are eavesdropping at school-board meetings, at the local cafe and even at funerals (they say the eulogies really sum up the town's values). The ad people have gone to great lengths to blend into the scenery, leaving their fancy cars back in Chicago and driving pickup trucks. One agency executive was almost unmasked when a coffee-shop waitress took a good look at her and noted that her expensive hairdo "didn't come from around here." So what matters in Laskerville? "Everything that is important seems to be tied directly to children," observes Dan Fox, head of the project. "And helping one's neighbors is not just something do-gooders do. It's all-pervasive."