The Death of the Focus Group: The Art + Science of Good Research

Linda Jeo Zerba

On a scale of 1 to 10, how stupid is this question?

Or worse yet, you’ve got high hopes for gathering deep insights about your consumer and find yourself behind the glass, eating M&Ms and drinking your fourth Diet Coke, listening to the most inane conversation imaginable, trying to keep from nodding off out of sheer and utter boredom. When the painful 90 minutes have concluded, all you can think is  ”well, that was a huge waste”. Welcome to a focus group – aka, the death of creative thinking and innovation.

When it comes to consumer aversion to participating in research, it is likely that their disdain stems comes from one of the countless annoying phone surveys where the phone rings just the family is sitting down to dinner and the voice on the other end of the phone asks about the likelihood of buying whitening toothpaste over tartar control paste. In that moment, no one is thinking about toothpaste.   All  they care about is dinner getting cold, screaming kids, the barking dog, and getting off the phone.

It’s no wonder then that so many brand stewards have lost their appetite for research.  With tight budgets, a history of failed or weak research, or worse yet – research studies that have left a sea of data behind but no real intelligence or resulting brand action, why bother?

By default, research has fallen into the role of weird old uncle.  You’ve got to spend time with him at the family reunion – but you only do it because you have to. Research is used as the last step to validate and confirm opinions, soothe egos or kill creativity. We’ve all been there and it isn’t pretty.  But, research can be  tremendously helpful, even inspiring.  And when done correctly, research can yield insights into consumers, culture, behavior, the market, product preference and your brand. Good research helps identify the triggers required to create real relationships with customers, meaningful dialogues with prospects, and resonant differentiation and definition for your brand.

GREAT RESEARCH IS FOUNDED ON 5 CRITICAL PRINCIPLES:

1: GOOD RESEARCH IS ABOUT LETTING GO OF WHAT YOU THINK YOU KNOW. One of the biggest mistakes people make in conducting research is trying to lead participants down the path they think is right. You can’t go into the process trying to get people to talk about what you want them to talk about or tell you what you want to know. Good research requires a bit of a leap of faith to ask questions and not have an agenda on where those questions and the resulting answers will lead you.

2: GOOD RESEARCH STARTS WITH GOOD QUESTIONS. Good research raises questions and gets people to stop and think, really think, about the brand, the audience,  your product, and the market. It’s not simply about validating ideas, but also mining for new ones and finding critical areas of opportunity for your brand.  It should inspire people to consider a different reality for the brand.

3:GOOD RESEARCH IS NOT A FOCUS GROUP. Focus groups are fine when it comes to an a/b , yes/no, on/off binary kind of answer.  But focus groups should never be the default or go-to research methodology for gaining deeper insights.  No doubt, groups are easy to organize, can put you in front of a large number of people in person, and are absolutely efficient and convenient. But this clinical efficiency comes with some pretty big drawbacks.   In this contrived environment, people say what they think they should say, trying to earn their incentive payment, trying to appear to be smart and thoughtful or trying to impress the strangers in the room. There’s no shared history of friendship, no common ground to build on, and no checks and balances in the conversation so people can pretend to be whomever they want.

We wouldn’t go so far to say that people lie in this environment, but just because someone intends to get up at 6am, run 2 miles, eat a pure vegan diet and work tirelessly everyday, it doesn’t mean they aren’t holed up on the couch eating potato chips by 7pm. Focus groups are good at uncovering intention, but rarely reveal how people really live or what really motivates and drives behavior and action.

4: GOOD RESEARCH IS PERSONAL. The process requires that you get close to people in their own environments, where they live and make decisions in order to really understand the difference between what they say versus what they really mean and how they really behave.  You can’t pretend to understand what drives someone to act or feel in a particular way if you don’t understand who they are and how they live.

5:GOOD RESEARCH CANNOT EXIST IN A VACUUM. If you stop the process at research then it’s a guarantee that you’ve just spent a lot of time and money creating a really thoughtful presentation that will do nothing more than collect dust on a shelf. Good research is the beginning of the process, not the end. It should be used to ignite new thinking, identify new possibilities and ultimately, shape brand behavior.

Left Brain + Right Brain

We think of research as being as much art as it is science. And when it is sponsored by thoughtful brand stewards and performed by endlessly curious people (who are well versed in a variety of methodologies, who are ready to literally live with your customers, who are able to interpret the insights and most importantly, who make observations, data and information actionable) the end result will have profound impact on your brand.

Good research brings clarity to the table and will leave you with a deeper understanding of your audience, the playing field, and your brand.  The best research acts as the launching point for defining the brand, its behavior, and the value it will deliver to your business.

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