new kid on the Hanbury Street block – focus groups.
The
words ‘focus groups’ used to conjure an image for me of a group of women
gathered here today to whinge about washing powder: lots of people in a cold
laboratory-style room being pushed for answers on a product. This week I learnt
that this doesn’t have to be the case. I saw the real insights that can come
from focus groups and just talking to people about their behaviour and brands.
The
way we did the focus groups was not based on the lab model. We didn’t hold them
in the office. “Your place or mine?” The answer to this is ideally yours. The
interviews I listened to were done in the consumer’s home. Somewhere they were
hopefully at ease, and somewhere they are more likely to relax and give genuine
answers. This obviously works well for individuals. But what about when you
want to gather a group? Well then we take them somewhere relevant to the topic.
In this case Old Trafford for a group of young football hopefuls. This was a
place where they were excited to go. It’s also a bit like being told you could
have a lesson outside in the summer at primary school. It’s somewhere
comfortable.
As
these guys warmed up it was more like listening to a conversation than Q and A.
I suppose we were lucky in that they were talking about something they really
loved, something they go nuts crazy for. This made them less self-conscious. I
was amazed by how much you can learn just from a couple of hours talking about
football. We discovered loads about their dreams, their fears and who they look
up to. They were forthcoming and opinionated on the nature of the game and its
industry.
They
were also particularly aware of brands. A lot of the books I’ve been reading
recently suggest brands aren’t something people spend a lot of time thinking
about. Byron Sharp’s “How Brand’s Grow” puts forward a very convincing argument
about how brands are rarely differentiated, and how consumers don’t think of
one as particularly standing out from another. But it seems in the context of
sport, on and off pitch, brands are a priority. These kids are in the know. For them brands are more than just lifestyle;
although what the in-crowd is wearing is undeniably ‘a thing’. They know which
brands are worn on field, which are worn out with their mates, which have the
lightest fabrics and which are crafted from the most durable materials. It
really mattered.
Traditionally
the industry doesn’t always have a lot of love for focus groups. There's a lot
of talk of 'testing to destruction' and using research to 'paint by
numbers'. However, our groups seemed very fruitful as a way of getting to know
the people that use our brands. You can make a lot of assumptions about a
particular group, but often only find good insights through talking to them. As
a planner it’s unlikely that your target audience is going to be a demographic
match to you. This is when we have to shape-shift and adopt a different
mindset. They were also far less contrived than I thought they’d be. Maybe this
is down to the way we held the groups, but people weren’t giving opinions for
the sake of it. They said what they believed in.
[Thoughts
from Planning newbie Alexa]
