37

Part 36

Shawna looked around at the focus group participants. "Okay, if you're ready, we'll see the tv version of the first ad—"

Ponytail had her hand raised. "Why did you change groups?"

Shawna said, "Change groups?"

"Yeah. The first time, there were six guys and the two of us," she nodded to her friend from the first round. "But now there are six girls and only these two guys."

"Well," Shawna said, glancing toward the mirrored glass, "after we taped the first version of the two ads, our market research came in, and we found out that even though Naked Attraction is a body spray for men, most of the buyers were women, buying it for their men."

The two brunettes looked at each other. One said, "So now your target audience has changed, which is why you've switched from mostly guys to mostly girls here?"

As Shawna nodded, Ponytail sat up a little straighter. "Wait a minute. If you had the office girls showing some skin because the target audience was guys, now that the target audience is girls... is that hunky boss going to be stripping down this time, instead?"

Her partner looked at her, then at Shawna, a smile lighting up her pretty face. "What? Is that it? Is that hot guy going to be getting naked?!"

The tall guy and the lineman looked at each other, frowning. An electric frisson went through the women in the room, and Shawna just smiled, and said, "Get your response meter ready." She walked toward the back of the room, looking at the mirrored window with a sly smile.

Even though Tim knew that she couldn't see through the glass, it looked like she was staring right into his eyes.

The ad started on the big screen at the front of the room. Joy read the voice-over in a breathy, sexy voice. "Naked Attraction, the new body spray for men." As Tim dabbed a little of the product on himself, Joy continued, "Guys, if you've always wanted more female attention... be careful what you wish for."

As she was saying this last phrase, pretty little Mia turned her head as Tim went by, her nostrils flaring and her eyes widening just a bit, before her expression relaxed into a sexy half-smile.

She did her little act with the ladder under the supposedly burned out light, and when Tim came out to help, the redhead said, "Oooh, he is cute!" Ponytail said, "Told ya!"

When Mia batted her eyes and said, "...I'm so short. But you're so tall, I'm sure it won't be a problem for you," Ponytail looked at her friend, getting more excited. "This is different!" Her friend grinned and nodded.

The shot of Mia undoing Tim's pants was accompanied by a little comic piano music, and then she yanked them down. A ripple of laughter went through the room, as the shot cut from the bottom of Tim's snug boxers, to his bare legs, and the pants puddling around his ankles.

"Nice ass!" said a petite girl with dirty-blonde hair, excitedly.

Then the shot of him on the phone in his office doorway, and Anna sneakily pulling the seat of his pants into the door and closing his door on his pants. The focus group girls howled when he stepped toward Julie's desk, tearing away the seat of his pants, as his firm bottom jiggled as he nearly fell forward.

The lineman and the tall guy looked at each other, smirking just a bit, but not nearly as happy as they had been with the original version.

The scene switched to Kaitlyn's stumbling and "accidentally" spilling the hot coffee on Tim's chest. The focus group women giggled merrily as the women on screen leapt to pull their hot boss' shirt off. A big-breasted brunette in the focus group whistled, while the Latina in the group said, "Look at those pecs!"

As the final scene played out, the horny females in the audience had their response meters pegged as Tim got himself wedged under the glass-top coffee table, and Julie pulled his pants off. Tim wriggled his way out from under the table, as the camera caught his round rump jiggling. He stood and faced his pretty employees, a grimace on his blushing, handsome face, his hands clenched protectively over his crotch. After a shot of his four smiling employees, the camera caught Tim from behind, wearing only his loafers, socks and boxers, as he stalked toward his office door.

An image of a Naked Attraction bottle dropped into the picture and partially blocked Tim's gyrating rump as he stepped through his office doorway.

Joy's breathy voice said, "Naked Attraction. Wear it at Your Own Risk!"

The females in the room burst into applause. The women in the observation room with Tim started to clap too, but caught themselves. They didn't want to distract the focus group, and when they looked at Tim, he was glaring at them.

"Wear it at Your Own Risk?" he said, looking at Danielle. "That's not the tag line we wrote."

She tried to keep a straight face as she said, "Well, we couldn't stick with 'You're in Control," when your employees have stripped you to your underpants and sent you running into your office with your tail between your legs, could we?"

The other women began to giggle, and Tim crossed his arms. He knew she was right. And he knew from watching the women on the other side of the glass, laughing and chattering gleefully, that his chances of talking Danielle's company into going with the original ad campaign were not looking good at all.

On the other side of the glass, the dirty-blonde said, "That was great!"

Ponytail's friend said, "I love the way the girls got the best of him this time!"

Ponytail looked at Shawna and said, "There's an internet version of this, right?" Shawna nodded, and Ponytail said, "Let's see it!"

Shawna chuckled and said, "The tv versions are our main concern right now. So we'd like you to answer the questions on your forms about the tv version first. Then we'll watch the tv version of the second ad."

The redhead said, "But then we'll get to watch the internet versions, right?"

"That's the plan," Shawna said. "But we need to get your thoughtful reactions on both tv versions first."

Ponytail looked at the excited, giggly women around her and said, "WRITE FAST!"

Part 37

After about 15 minutes of frantic scribbling from the women in the focus group, they were ready to watch the second tv ad.

As soon as it opened, with Tim's voice-over thoughts, the girls began fidgeting in their seats. When Tim stood in the empty locker room and thought, "But as long as no one else is here, I can sneak this workout in without a t-shirt," Ponytail said, "Yeah you can!"

Several the other girls giggled, but then turned silent when Tim pulled the t-shirt over his head, revealing his pumped-up chest and cut abs. "Ai yi yi!" the Latina girl said, softly.

One of the other girls laughed. "Do Hispanic people really say that?"

The Latina grinned and blushed. "If we see something like that shirtless hottie. We also say, 'Ay papi!"

Onscreen, Tim stood at his locker, and when he pulled out the bottle of Naked Attraction and dabbed it on, the lineman-looking guy groaned. "You'll be sorry."

The pretty redhead sang out, "But we won't!" to more soft applause.

As the ad continued -- with Tim first being pantsed on the pull-up bar, and then as he fell off the treadmill -- the girls in the focus group cheered and laughed. Even from the observation room, Tim and the other women could see they were all vigorously pegging the response meters in their hands every time Tim ended up in his snug gray shorts on-screen.

When the shower scene finally started, the focus group girls were all on the edges of their seats. The camera followed Tim into the locker room, cut to the girls with their nostrils flaring at the scent of the Naked Attraction.

"Get him, girls!" one of the audience shouted out.

The shot cut back to Tim walking toward the showers, with his towel snug enough around his waist to suggest his round rump beneath. As the camera panned up, Tim pulled the towel away, and then slapped it over the shower divider.

One of the girls in the audience said, "Woo hoo!" as Tim stepped under the shower,

Joy and Sandy had done their editing job well -- which meant that the focus group girls hated it. Tim stood beneath the shower, his muscular arms, shoulders and chest glistening as he shampooed his hair. But thick wisps of steam provided a solid fog that covered his mid-section. Ponytail hissed. "Come on!"

When the girls crept into the shower and chased Tim to the door, the focus group was back in full force, cheering them on. When pretty little Mia caught up to Tim just as he was slipping through the door into the alley and grabbed his towel, the focus group clapped.

As the girls piled through the doorway and looked down the alley, the camera shot was long enough to show Tim's much whiter buns against his otherwise tanned body, but from too great a distance to make out his actual bare ass. The effect was to show that he was nude, without any of the tantalizing details the women were baying for.

As the tagline came up -- "Naked Attraction. Wear it at Your Own Risk!" -- the girls in the room let out a cacophony of applause and complaints. They loved the tone and the teasing in the ad, but hated that it didn't give them the unobstructed view of the hot young boss in the buff that they'd been yearning for.

Shawna calmed them down again, and asked them to fill out their reaction forms.

The two male group members were very subdued, but the females were hyped up.

One of them said, "After this, we get to see the internet ads, right?"

Ponytail said, "Shut up and write!"

As the focus group started scribbling, Shawna left the conference room and joined her colleagues in the screening room. The group in the observation room began to talk about what they'd seen. Tim was blushing furiously, and looked like he might be sick. Everyone knew what was coming up, and Shawna decided that the best strategy was to break the tension and distract him.

"Wow!" she said, looking at Sandy and Joy. "That was an amazing editing job! With so little time, I expected something much rougher."

Several of the other women agreed, while Joy and Sandy smiled at each other, and their colleagues.

Danielle said, "I've seen enough of these focus group sessions that I can say I'm very confident that we're going to be happy with the group's responses."

Pam jumped in. "Absolutely. You all did a great job." She turned toward Tim. "Especially you, Mr. Johnson. You couldn't have done a better job if you've been a trained actor for your whole life."

The other women seconded that. Joy said, "You had a great comic touch in both ads, and you looked great! You should be really proud!"

Tim couldn't think of anything to say, but the frozen half-smile on his handsome face said it all. He was pleased with how the ad had come out, but simultaneously mortified at what this successful result likely meant. And he was dreading watching the internet versions of both ads!

Shawna gauged his expression, and wondered for a moment whether he might actually faint. She reacted instinctively. "Tim, we really do appreciate what a great sport you've been, and we know that this next part might be tough for you."

Anna saw where this was going. "Yes, just like it was hard for us to watch the first version, when we had to get naked."

Kaitlyn appreciated that her co-worker had both expressed sympathy with Tim, and reminded him that he was only going through now what he'd arranged for the girls to go through originally. "Yeah. No matter how well we did, or how good we looked, it was still difficult."

Mia and Julie nodded sympathetically, as Tim looked from face to face. Shawna said, "So I think I speak for everyone when I saw that we wouldn't blame you if you wanted to skip this next part."

Danielle jumped on the thought. "Yes! We wouldn't think any less of you. Really!"

Tim hesitated. Some part of him wanted to "man up" and tough it out, to show his employees and co-workers that he wasn't too embarrassed to follow through with this exercise. But he felt relief welling up in him: there was nothing he could do about what all of these women -- both in the observation room, and in the focus group -- would be seeing.

But the chance to avoid watching his own humiliating exposure with all of the women in his working life was a lifeline too tempting to pass up. He cleared his throat, feeling himself blush a little more deeply. "Well, I- I- do have a few things I need to work on."

Several of the women nodded. "Absolutely," Danielle said.

Shawna said, "One of us can come get you when the internet ad screenings are over, if you'd like."

Tim looked at the pretty, sympathetic faces around him. "You don't mind?" he said.

"Not at all," Danielle said.

"I'll come get you when it's over," Anna said.

Tim's relief was so obvious that several of the women had to struggle to stop from giggling. Tim turned and let himself out the door of the observation room, and into the main office without looking back. He took a deep breath, and went to the water cooler, where he drank several paper cups of chilled water with hands that trembled ever so slightly.

As the door slid slowly shut, the women all looked at each other in a long moment of silence. Then Julie clapped her hands together gleefully, and said, "Right! Who's got the popcorn?"

Anna said, "Let's get this Chippendales show started!"

Mia said, "Technically, since Tim is the only one whose going to be in his birthday suit, won't it be a Chippendale show?"

Shawna waggled her eyebrows comically at her co-workers as she said, "This is going to be so great!"

Then she left the observation room, to re-join the focus group in the conference room. She gathered the pile of reaction forms, and passed out new, blank ones to the excited focus group.

As Tim stalked across the main office space, he kept his eyes straight ahead. To his left, the wall of windows that made up the shared wall of the conference room were covered by blackout blinds that the company used when a focus group needed to watch video presentations.

But as he passed by, Tim thought he heard -- faintly, through the semi-sound-proof walls -- the sound of raucous female laughter.