Breaking the one-way mirror

Measured by the number of times people have tried to kill them off, you’d be forgiven for thinking that focus groups are the least popular of all research approaches. But despite numerous attempts on their ‘lives’, they remain alive and kicking.

Undeterred by such obvious resilience, Tash Walker of The Mix is having a go at putting a stop to them. Walker is fronting The Mix’s Campaign For Real Behaviour and “Death to Focus Groups” is one of its key slogans.

What’s the campaign all about and why are you pursuing this now?
Tash Walker: The campaign is about taking a no-nonsense attitude to research. Often research methodologies have been designed to suit clients and moderators rather than focusing on the best way of understanding how people behave. Behavioural economics has opened up this debate, but it’s really just a fancy way of saying that research tends to over-rationalise people who tend to make decisions in an emotional way.  

Many people have tried to kill off focus groups before. What makes you think you’ll succeed?
TW: Before The Mix I didn’t work in research, I worked in packaging and branding so my background is in communications. People have tried to kill focus groups before but without success because they have failed to see the job at hand as a job of communication. The methodology is the hygiene factor. More important is the principle of telling this story in an interesting enough way that people sit up, take notice and see an attractive alternative. You need clients and other agencies to start doing this before you can expect to see traction. Luckily we are starting to see both happening already. We will succeed because there is no other option. Research needs to change if it wants to thrive in the next generation of marketing activity.  

What if research buyers are happy with the status quo?
TW: I don’t believe that there really is such a thing as a status quo in research anymore, but I accept that there are clients for whom this won’t be their cup of tea. However, we also know that there are plenty of others for whom research just simply isn’t working anymore.

In the campaign literature you say that real life is “alive and messy and social and irrational”. But it’s also complex and takes time to understand properly. How can we, as a sector, produce real insight into real behaviour in a time frame and at a price point that clients are willing to pay for?
TW: One of my biggest bugbears of research when I was working in branding was that the budget for doing validatory research seemed like a massive expense compared to doing the campaign work itself. Traditional qual research has got away with murder in terms of fees for running mediocre focus groups. The solution to this is using lots of digital technology to get into people’s lives over time in a meaningful way.  

Instead of an hour, you get two weeks of a person’s life and all of the complexity that goes with it that can give campaigns real tension and strength early on, not just a bit of tinkering around the edges or – worse – meddling halfway through the creative process. In our experience, the price of doing this sort of work is comparable to running a six-to-eight group project, and often comes in a bit cheaper.

This is not a budget issue, this is about understanding how important insight can be when it is real and meaningful and you know what the hell to do with it at the end of the process.