Notes

A Right Brain Approach to Focus Groups
1. We are in the mental health profession, not the marketing business.
Focus groups are just like marriage counseling. You want to sell, consumers want to buy, but poor communication and lack of understanding can stop a purchase dead in its tracks much the same way they are able to undermine relationships. The idea would be to tear down barriers and identify shared values and mutually supportive behaviors.
As in therapy, respondents come to focus groups to become heard, not only to the financial incentive. Life is tough and most everyone has few outlets to vent. Maybe they've just result from work where bosses, customers and co-workers are making unreasonable (as they perceive them) demands the whole day. Perhaps they have nagging partners or uncontrollable kids at home. Not to mention the daily bombardment of one-way communications, the commercial messages they're able to't help but see everywhere they appear.
Focus groups are their time. Discussion guides need to be planned well, but you can find immense great things about "letting go" every so often. Allowing respondents to babble every now and then presents an unparalleled possiblity to experience meaningful human moments. Understanding who your respondents are actually as well as your brand's role within their lives is where qualitative really shines.
Consumer thought processes aren't linear, and great focus groups don't always need to get either.
2. It's a trip, not a destination.
Just as no person gets "fixed" in therapy, no less than not for a while, it really is unrealistic and counterproductive to expect to find "the answer" in focus groups.
"Validation," or "the winning concept" is not what we should want here. We be employed in a risky business, still more art than science. And without conflict and ambiguity, there would be no art.
One can scan the Cliff Notes for "The Brothers Karamazov," but true appreciation could only result from diving in and wrestling with all the great issues from the human condition represented in this long book.
In art, such as life, sharply contrasting beliefs may be incredibly important and equally valid. In both cases, the answers, in in addition to themselves, are shallow minus the insights and understanding that support them.
It's the wrestling, the journey, the struggle that matters.
Focus groups include the marketing same as this procedure. A great intellectual and artistic adventure where spontaneity and unexpected twists make everything even more rewarding and also the insights that emerge much more now valuable.
The renowned David Ogilvy quote on research is not cited lots of times.
"I notice increasing reluctance by marketing executives to use judgment; they're visiting rely too much on research, and they put it to use as a drunkard utilizes a lamp post for support, instead of for illumination."
Ideas and solutions don't result from focus groups or any research. They result from people who have thought and felt deeply.
When approached because this "journey" or intellectual struggle, the main focus group process offers incredibly rich food for thought, becoming the inspiration for smart, creative marketers to wrestle with and develop their ideas.
3. Be Honest
Qualitative research is the time for creativity and open-mindedness. It is not about forcing our opinions (or ads, logos and cool product concepts) on the throats of our own target consumers. It is about accepting responsibility instead of assigning blame.
How often times have we heard the advertising agency art director, observing inside the back room, say, "Those respondents are really stupid. They don't obtain the work."
It just isn't about us as marketers. It's about them as consumers. What we think is irrelevant within the long term, as well as the more defensive we're, greater we try to rationalize past decisions, the deeper we dig ourselves in a hole.
Given internal corporate politics and a hostile financial state that breeds job insecurity, this is not for people to become honest together and ourselves. If something isn't working, we should instead adjust our approach.
As Albert Einstein once said, "If we knew just what it was we had arrived doing, it would not be called research, wouldn't it?"
In the long run, honesty - and humility - will probably pay off handsomely.
4. If it seamless comfort you're probably to something.
When the fantastic Louis Armstrong had been motivated to define jazz, he replied, "If you have to ask, you will never know."
Like a mesmerizing Armstrong improvisation or Ella's scat singing, great marketing arises from the soul. True, were commercial marketers first, not artists, but to minimize the influence of art and emotion and only a completely analytic approach can be a fatal mistake.
Bonds between brands and their people are no different from how any art connects with its audience. Legendary brands are made with vision and inspiration, never with research.
But qualitative research, while keeping focused groups particularly, present a unique possibility to feel our way through works beginning even as we will be in the second with target consumers and our professional colleagues.
5. Nothing is a lot more important than great stimulus.
Focus groups are like the existing saw about computers. Garbage in, garbage out. Consumers often understand what that like and what they want, but can't always articulate their feelings. We need to provide them while using tools, or even the vocabulary, to speak about these complex emotions.
Therefore, whenever exploring a new product concept, positioning, communications alternatives or any type of innovation, it can be essential to present many single-minded positioning concepts. Putting "stakes inside the ground" provides an excellent place to start for meaningful, articulate discussion with respondents.
6. Put respondents to be effective and take them out from the "Critic's Chair."
Getting respondents associated with exercises right away, even something as simple like a brand sort, helps buy them going. The goal is to get respondents talking, preferably to each other, and never answering "yes" or "no" questions presented by the moderator.
This direct involvement grows exponentially in importance when exploring concepts.
A common complaint about focus groups is the place where easily they seem to change consumers into know-it-all marketing critics. This should be not surprising. Handing out concepts for respondents to mark up or reading concepts individually for group feedback is surely an invitation to keep forth about the dos and don'ts of selling.
This pitfall exists it doesn't matter how skilled the moderator, how well the guide is crafted or how fabulous the stimulus might be. Respondents could be instructed in depth to convey feelings, not judgments, to focus about the big picture and never the minutia, but by enough time the other or third concept pops up for discussion, most have become judge and jury, confidently predicting that "people will (or won't) like this one."
Consider instead a workshop approach, in which a band of eight might be put into "teams" of four years old. They are given a packet of concepts, from maybe five or ten or maybe more, after which arrested for choosing the a couple of most motivating concepts and bringing these phones life.
We can ask these phones name products, design packages, write commercials, go with a spokesperson that best personifies the product, or another number of things.
A great deal of positive things happen with this particular approach. Most importantly, when respondents are deeply engaged using this type of challenge (that they can manage to relish), they become passionate participants which has a stake inside process, not aloof critics.
As they talk to one another and think aloud, first as they feel their way with the concepts and then bring them their favorites one's, were able to observe the consumer way of thinking in close proximity and. The ultimate output with the creative exercise is just not important, and expectations really should not be full of that regard. But Local Government Research Perth with this psychological and inventive journey is invaluable.
This approach also removes the temptation to "keep score." If we test ten concepts, 2 of them show remarkable promise though the other eight are laughed out of the room, does this connote failure? Or if ten of ten are received positively, is that an unqualified success?
Absolutely not. Depth of understanding and direction would be the recommendations for great focus groups, not an unquantifiable scorecard.
7. Adapt Proactively
Unlike quantitative research, focus groups certainly are a live, ongoing experience that will work for a day, every week or higher. This provides the chance to evolve, to absorb, consider, and adapt. The discussion guide and stimuli need to become reexamined after on a daily basis of research. Inaction and static thinking are the enemies. "Keeping it all a similar and then we can compare apples and apples" doesn't hold water. Best to push your opinions, aggressively. You can always keep the "old" concepts within your back pocket for the next niche for a real possibility check or the apples to apples comparison, but being ready with a new challenge that reflects learning how to date will maximize the value in the research.
8. Embrace the shared experience to develop consensus.
Focus groups can be a highly social, shared experience. This isn't only a metaphorical journey, but a genuine one. Together, we hang out in airports drinking coffee desperately seeking Internet connections, fly from city to city, stuff ourselves with unhealthy food inside back rooms of research facilities and still have drinks with the hotel bar if it is throughout each night.
The stated purpose in the journey is to connect with consumers, nevertheless the opportunity to connect with our colleagues is equally important.
Selling an idea internally can often be much more difficult than selling it to finish consumers. Corporate politics and conflicting interests are actually known to kill great ideas ahead of when these are given a good chance to get developed.
Focus groups enable us to watch consumers upfront, absorb their feedback, and talk through key issues, allowing our thinking to evolve collectively. Ideally, key members in the brand team and outside agencies take part with this experience, implicitly granting them "insider status" and enlisting them as champions of a marketing idea or direction.
Building the bonds of the united front help it become much easier to push worthwhile ideas through the system.
Conclusion
It is probably that the most vocal critics of focus groups may well not truly keep the power of meeting consumers face-to-face, and so are likely uncomfortable with something that isn't a "fact." The process demands of these involved the necessity to wrestle with lots of ambiguities. But we are stronger with this intellectual and artistic struggle within the long run, as deeper understanding will cause more incisive quantitative questionnaires and a lot superior marketing executions.
Contrary to the prevailing belief of many marketing research professionals, quantitative research is not the end all. To quote Albert Einstein again:
"Not precisely what can be counted counts, and not anything that counts might be counted."
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