Focus pocus

Simon Kendrick has posted an interesting response on the Essential Research blog to an article on MediaPost a few months back announcing that “the focus group is dead”.

The argument in that article, which cited marketing cock-ups by the likes of Tropicana and Motrin, was that calling on a sample of consumers in the “contrived environment of a focus group” is not a patch on listening to their views through more direct methods.

For MediaPost, simply mentioning the dirty words ‘focus group’ was apparently sufficient to make the point that these clients went about things all wrong.

Kendrick defends the technique, saying that it is only when focus groups are misused that such problems arise. Only bad workers blame their tools, he writes.

But from the client’s point of view, arguing that it would have worked if it had been done properly doesn’t cut much ice. For whatever reason, focus groups didn’t get these brands where they wanted, and that has allowed another dent to be put in the reputation of the technique at a time when it is already challenged by shiny, new, and often cheaper methods.

Focus groups may not be dead, but more of this sort of thing poses a serious health risk for them.