Do we still need the two-way mirror when we have tools like Twitter?

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?

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.

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)’s 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. Shaun’s 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 Pieniazek’s 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 Blum’s 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. Simon’s 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 Foster’s 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 groups—like surveys—answer 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. Davezilla’s 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 Fields’s last blog post..Free Marketing Courses from IttyBiz