CrapHammer

Focus Group Dystopia: Marketers Beware

I've been arguing against the validity of focus groups for some time now and I'm certainly not alone.  They are not effective tools for innovation, insight generation or validation. But now they are outright dangerous.

Focus groups lend themselves to being gamed.  We saw it very early in the dot com boom where the same people would show up regardless of how you worded the screener.  It didn't matter which firm you used, or whether you wanted someone with 1 year of experience online, 3 years of experience or a PhD in computer science.  Marla and Jim would be in the submitted names.  They were professional focus groupers and had registered with every research house in town.

So the market reacted and higher end houses worked to identify and screen these people out.  But now a new variation appears to be at play.  One where cheating the marketers is not only the order of the day, it's a business.

A friend of mine loves focus groups.  Let's call him Dan.  As an actor, focus groups allow him to make some easy cash between gigs.  The other day I met Dan for lunch and he informed me that he had a focus group to attend after our meal.  Nothing unusual.

What was unusual was he had notes.  While we were waiting for the bill he was studying them quite intently.  I was quite perplexed and asked him what the notes were for.  He smiled awkwardly and said he had to be a gay man between jobs with two kids from a previous divorce.  He was trying to memorize his previous work history and his views on dating sites.  My jaw hit the table.

His recruiter didn't call with a screener.  His recruiter called with briefing notes on who he was to "become" for the session.

I pity the marketer still using focus groups.  It's only going to get worse.

Image Source: Oliver Ingrouille

MTV as an educator.

I just stumbled across MTV Asia's "Being Young" presentation on slideshare. It is an informed and insightful presentation on the social and media shifts afoot with asian youth.

TV is no longer relevant.  Spending time online, listening to music and communicating are.  I wish I could just repeat that over and over as a mantra.

Every week I have a client wanting to launch a micro-site to "engage" people with some new aspect of their brand or offering.  To what purpose?

MTV shows that youth spend more time online but on "Fewer sites".  If a person only visits 7-11 sites in a day, what are the odds that some new micro-site is going to push its way into the mix?  And what kind of investment is required to bump something like Facebook off their radar?

 

"we have to learn how to earn prime time now that we can't buy it."
      - James Chadwick, Head of Strategy at Mindshare Asia

 

The full MTV Asia "Being Young" presentation is embedded for your viewing below.

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This is it, everyone.  The real deal.  If we want to be "360", we have to think "360" which means we have to develop cohesive views of our audiences that incorporate media, social behaviors, digital channels, devices and what matters to them.

Our view and use of media has to change.  David Armano (or was it Dennis?) just posted a call for engagement  and used real world examples on how Southwest Airlines and Zappos are effectively using twitter to earn time with customers.   

 

"Social Networks are all about facilitating human connections, and instead of talking about how we can do this—I hear marketers asking "how do we monetize" and "how do we advertise" on them."
     - David Armano

 

David gets it.  MTV gets it.  Even Mindshare, one of the largest media buyers on the planet, is getting it.

So why are brands still trying to advertise on social networks?