1) If there are two small bookstores in the mall and a large company purchases them both, should you close one or keep them both open? Answer: Both answers are correct and it depends on your reasoning. Closing one, will reduce overhead costs. Keeping both open will allow you to maximize market potential...really it all hangs in the explanation. 2) Sell me this stapler (this was stupid, awkward, and in my opinion unfair as I was not attempting to get a job involving sales). Answer: This is not an unfair question. You are applying to an ad agency, what do you think they do. As analyst there you need to be able to understand the advertising goals and objectives. 3) How many lightbulbs are in Chicago? (another stupid question that is truly unfair) Answer: Again, this question is neither unfair or stupid. You sound like you were unprepared. To begin you need to define all of you segments and then within in those segments break out basic calculations using assumptions. So....household segment using number of households in chicago, times square foot, time number of light bulbs for square foot.....infrastructure using miles of road, how many light per mile, train tracks, rivers ect....vehicles using number of cars, train, boats and buses then estimating number of lights for each, business and retail space using an estimate for maybe the number of people who work in chicago or the business sector square foot total and multiply by number of light bulbs...this can go on as you continue to break out segments and account for all of the different types of segments that use light bulbs. 4) A credit card company tests a direct-mail campaign by sending red envelopes to 100 people and blue envelopes to 100 people (random samples). Assuming the red envelopes resulted in 1 person signing up and the blue envelopes resutled in 2 people signing up, how would you advise the client to proceed with the campaign? Answer: First of all I would say that this campaign wasn't statistically significant and therefore the observed difference could be related to random variance. If it were stat sig, you would obviously advise to go for the higher one, but I am pretty sure that this question also stipulates that the red envelopes cost half as much as the blue envelops therefore it doesn't matter which campaign you are using as your ROI is the same.

To original poster, I actually worked as an analyst at digitas. And have worked as an analyst at other companies. Case questions are designed to test your ability to think critically and in high pressure situations. They are always expected and it simply sounds like you did not do your homework on the division within the company you were interviewing for. Did you think you would get hired for an analytic role in which you need to be able to manipulate large data sets from multiple sources by simply answering behavioral questions? I don't think so.

I can see why it sounds like no business begin there. But look at this point view, it might be interesting. Question 3 can been seen both as a mock question and as an analytic question. There isnt a real answer to that just how you answer the question. In an interviewer perspective, this is a question to judge the way you think. Question 2 is actually a marketing question rather then selling. This question actually judges you how well you know marketing and advertising. It also judges how well you think. Sounds dumb but imagine the question was sell me a paper clip. Thank you for sharing your insight, but a lot of questions interviewer throw at interviewee is to determine how they think or will act at work.

If you honestly thought any of these questions were unfair when applying to an analyst job you had NO business being there. All of those questions are simple and straightforward analytic questions and very easy to answering if you have any experience working with numbers and data sets.