Do we still need the two-way mirror when we have tools like Twitter?
“We give them $50.00 and a ham sandwich, and that makes them qualified to advise a brand on its marketing?” That’s how a former colleague of mine once challenged focus groups. I always loved the sentiment; half agreeing that there was something absurd about the practice.
Yes we all want to get closer to our customers, know what they’re thinking, and unearth the insight that might make us, as marketers, more responsive to their needs and wishes.
But with all the alternatives available to us today, the question becomes even more relevant. Are focus groups necessary at all?
Think about it. A bunch of folks from a marketing firm and its client fly to some distant city (usually Cincinnati or Minneapolis), drive to an innocuous suburban park and hunker down in a dark room behind a two-way mirror to observe prospective customer subjects who’ve been recruited for this exercise by a third party company.
On the other side of the glass, in the “laboratory”, a professional moderator probes the recruited subjects for their opinions using a series of exercises that include creating collages or writing imaginary obituaries for the brand in question. In the dark, so to speak, the marketing team eats M&Ms, makes jokes, and hopes desperately to be illuminated.
A typical three-day trip, comprised of perhaps six groups and 18 hours of requisite video, at a cost approaching $30,000, gets consolidated into four minutes of tape and an executive report for presentation to the ultimate decision makers, who are usually too busy to actually attend the groups. Like a Safari tourist thrilled to see wild animals up close in their natural habitat, the decision makers lean in, watch the video intently, and believe they’re actually seeing their customers.
Seems like a few too many intermediaries, wouldn’t you say?
In this day and age could we make our interaction with customers and prospects any more contrived? Compare the above to what we, as marketers, can get on Twitter: 24/7 access to what real customers are thinking, feeling, saying and wishing for. We can listen, ask questions, seek advice, and solicit reactions. Want a dialog? Just start one. Prefer to eavesdrop on positive or negative things being said about your brand? Simply employ the power of search.twitter.com. Need to create a group conversation? Invite followers to a hashtag and take advantage of Tweetchat.
All right, so maybe you have an idea or product or initiative that you don’t want public. There are plenty of other tools available, from Communispace (at a cost) to Ning (for free). With the latter, courtesy of Netscape founder Marc Andreessen you can gather customers and prospects in your own social network, take advantage of a wide range of functionality that includes blogs, discussion groups and media, even get customers to keep journals of how they do or don’t use your products.
Today there are more ways than ever to get close to your customers. And there are more customers than ever willing to share their thoughts and reactions with you. Even if you don’t pay them $50.00 and offer them a sandwich. You just have to do one thing. Get rid of the two-way mirror.
What do you think? Are focus groups dead? Share your thoughts, especially if you disagree.
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Comments
With all the new scientific insights into how the brain works, well documented in books like "Everything Is Obvious (Once You Know the Answer)" by Duncan Watts, "Thinking, Fast & Slow" by Daniel Kahneman, and others, it seems like marketers have been deluding themselves into thinking that people can explain what they think and why they think that way.
The new science proves that our decision making lives mostly in our subconscious, and we simply can't explain how we feel, or why. We THINK we can put it into words, but we're simply creating reasons that may or may not be true, because after all, the focus group company asked us and we need to justify taking the $50 and snacks they gave us. We better say SOMETHING.
I'm a big believer that focus groups are almost completely useless, because they are situations in which you have people in totally unrealistic situations, being asked questions they've never thought about before, and asked to explain how they feel, on the spot. Combine all that with the fact that they're trying to explain something that lives mostly in their subconscious, and you've got a catastrophe of "insight."
It's no wonder so many products and campaigns that "test well" fail the majority of the time.
I agree with edwardbochesthat a much better strategy is to listen to what people are already saying, unprompted by a focus group moderator. Social media is a fantastic resource to discover people's true feelings about brands and products. Is it perfect? Of course not. But it's a much more reliable way of gauging what's really inside people's heads and hearts.
I'm a CD that a few years back, urged by my producers and copywriting partner, started conducting my own qualitative focus groups (no glass wall) with customers and prospects of my clients. Being there in person with the customer, with the ability to show comps and comparison commercials, design ideas, positioning statement concepts, and probe "very real people" for their thoughts about the client's products and services is completely invaluable to me now. I couldn't imagine doing what we used to do—hire an outside research firm, unfamiliar with the client, their challenges, and possible creative solutions, to conduct the focus groups from the other side of the glass to do the qualitative stuff. And, although I think the use of Twitter, Tweetchat, and other tools may get one more peoples' input, and be great for more quantitative research, I wonder if (at this point in time) the customers you'll get thru SM are truly the regular joes and joannes that you may want to hear from (depending on your client's product and/or service)? Recently, I held focus groups for a hospital client (about to rebuild their web site) and was amazed at the large percentage of people who did not ever use the web to find out information about a hospital, find a physician, etc. This majority, I'm sure, would not be found or polled successfully via social media.
I believe social media provides a great opportunity for businesses to get immediate and unfiltered feedback through brand monitoring (listening). A lot of great feedback is already out there, you just have to search for it and be willing to accept what you hear (I suggest wearing armor while searching - it can be brutal).
Groundswell says that the online world is divided into categories of consumers - social technographics. Only the Creators and Critics will offer the feedback. But combined, they account for 43% of the online population. That is a nice specimen. 18% of online U.S. adults are Creators and 25% of online U.S. adults are Critics. The remainder of online population consists of Collectors, Joiners, Spectators and Inactives.
All that said, the two way mirror continues to serve the brands that have yet to buy into the power of social media. The question is, will those brands survive?
Christy,
We'll find out, won't we. As for the Groundswell numbers, they're already a few years old. I'm willing to bet that the numbers of creators and critics is much higher now. Look at things like Zingr; it's but one simple tool that makes it easier and easier to do.
No doubt twitter and social media are great for capturing up-to-the-second information. On the flip side, sometimes there's nothing better than face to face talks with real people, where you can ask them to elaborate on their thoughts. Hyundai's "Assurance" program was the result of focus groups and it helped them become one of two car companies to stay in the black over the past year. Knowing that, it's hard to completely abandon them.
Tom:
Good points. And definitely face to face is good. But with all the new tools out there, why not use social to engage in more real time, ongoing ways. Look at Audi with its crowdsourcing e car project. Focus groups are about asking and listening, often with an artificial outcome: the search for perfect when there is none. SM is about asking and listening, too, but perhaps with deeper engagement.
Michael:
It may be a plug, but if you're involved, I'm sure it's worthwhile. Am sending it off asap to my analytics and account planning teams.
Thanks.
Please forgive the shameless plug... But if you want to distill the online conversation into insights that are actionable for a creative person, Crimson Hexagon is the only game in town.
Michael Troiano (@miketrap)u00e2u0080u0099s last blog post..Pepsi Has Its Act Together
I think Twitter is an excellent tool to provide brands with hundreds of insights in a very short amount of time. What client could deny the benefit of that? Not many, that's for sure. Therefore, it's becoming harder to persuade clients to use traditional insight techniques like focus groups and in-depth interviews, which are often costly and time consuming. After taking an Account Planning class last semester, I learned how powerful in-depth consumer research can be. In a nutshell, I think that for brands looking to make a big change in consumer perception should invest in the time and money to carry out focus groups and in-depth research. It's definitely worth it, as long as it's done the correct way.
Shaunu00e2u0080u0099s last blog post..Communication Visualized
A big, big downfall of paid focus groups is that they pay the individuals involved. Often, that means they get a small sub-section of society that is looking to make a little bit of cash. It limits the diversity and scope of the focus groups.
On twitter, however, people who choose to participate are likely close to your target audience. Better yet, their primary goal is to improve your product, not get paid.
That, and people act differently when they know they're being secretly observed, at least in social media avenues they know they're being observed but they also know who's doing the observing.
Adam Pieniazeku00e2u0080u0099s last blog post..Boston Young Entrepreneurs Recap
Focus groups, or better still, in home interviews, can be valuable in providing additional context to those things which we already know. Give me a person that's passionate about something and I can learn a lot by interviewing them and a group of their peers and having them give me the details that I can't get from a quantitative study.
Observing behavior, e.g. watching shoppers shop an aisle, can be very beneficial. Asking them after the fact why they did what they did is also valuable.
Asking strangers to give input on copy & layout? Useless at best and ruinous at worst.
Mitch Blumu00e2u0080u0099s last blog post..Evaluating Performance Reviews
Agreed. Ham sandwiches? We used to give them baloney;-) Probably why moving on to other tools is such a good idea!
Focus groups have been dead as a dodo for about a decade.
The advent of Google Adsense made focus groups a thing of the past. And now, with Twitter Search -- you can get information that's real and raw -- yielding much better insights than anything you'll ever find in a focus group.
Great comments. Haven't read Lindstrom's book, but just ordered it, so thanks for that Jonathan. As for Stuart's suggestion that social media commentary comes only from thought leaders, not sure I agree with that one, especially given the number of people on fan pages. There are plenty of brands from Whole Foods to Harley Davidson to Ernst and Young with thousands of fans and followers on Facebook and Twitter. Granted they have opted in as "fans," but it wouldn't be hard to find prospects as well. Simon, you bring up a point I failed to mention in the post: too many people go into focus groups seeking only to validate what they've already decided. Your case is even more extreme than what I've witnessed. And finally, EK, I'm hoping your comment, suggesting they may not be totally dead, might stimulate more comments in support of focus groups. There must be someone out there who still wants to defend them.
Social media, and non-face-to-face interaction in general, takes away the fear of judgement.
Social media is as real as it gets, because on the web, you're merely an avatar and username (usually a self-appointed nickname followed by a combination of numbers). There's no consequence to truth, and that's what makes social media - like Twitter, that much more powerful than focus groups.
Are focus groups dead? The jury's probably still out... But they're definitely endangered.
The most recent research group I was a part of was exploring creative territories for a new brand campaign for a multinational financial services company. The researchers were undertaking an extensive project in all the major markets to confirm the validity of the approach. I was struck by the structure of the sessions in a couple of ways. Firstly, the respondents were broken up into smaller groups and an agency person was put into each group to facilitate. That seemed fine. But the next part confounds me to this day - the respondents were directed by the moderator to only provide positive feedback wherever possible. The net result was that they spent so much time talking about what they liked, that when the open discussion came - right at the end, they were more interested in getting out the door. And the client signed off on this approach too! It seemed like it was simply geared to validate an approach that the agency and key client were already sold on in the first place, so they could go to their bosses and say - look everyone likes it. Bizarre.
Simonu00e2u0080u0099s last blog post..Interesting piece of street art
I think focus groups almost always have failed (especially for any product that is slightly new and different).
Social media allows for direct dialogue between marketer and consumer...and the opinions given are likely those of the thought leaders. Which in itself creates a problem. Are thought leaders buying your product or is your focus group?
The key is being able to balance both and deliver a quality product. You don't want to middle out, but you also don't want to be so avant garde no one knows what you are selling.
Stuart Fosteru00e2u0080u0099s last blog post..Barriers to Entry
Totally agree, Edward. There are so many cognitive biases in focus group methodologies, too. Band Wagon Effect occurs when everyone gloms onto the loudest mouth in the room. There is the bias to want to please the moderator ("I am getting PAID for this, SO I'd better be good!").
Of course, proponents will always counter, "If you have a good moderator that won't happen." HINT: It always happens.
And of course, focus groupsu00e2u0080u0094like surveysu00e2u0080u0094answer the questions you remembered to ask, not the ones you didn't think to ask. Social media (communities in particular) answers all of the questions.
Communities blow focus groups away. I run one and I cannot believe the difference in the amount of data I glean (daily!) from the community.
Davezillau00e2u0080u0099s last blog post..Overheard
Deader than Larry the Lobster.
Not so much because of social media, though. Focus groups have always been a flip of the coin better than random guesses, we just didn't have the hard science to debunk the process and prove to proponents how terrible a tool they are.
Now, we've got people like Martin Lindstrom sharing fMRI studies that objectively disprove the basic assumptions about the validity of traditional focus groups. Pretty hard science, saying "what are you, stoned?"
So, yes, a hardy ding dong, that sucker's dead.
But, that poses a pretty major condundrum...nobody wants to commit money to a campaign without being able to point to some external "evidence" that they can claim as rationale.
What's going to fill that gap? Twitter. It's a start, but it'll take a lot more than that. I'd love to see companies learn how to research the way top info-marketers do.
Jonathan Fieldsu00e2u0080u0099s last blog post..Free Marketing Courses from IttyBiz
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