Last week I was working for a large international client, running a marketing training program for its key brand managers.
Day one was all about market orientation. In the morning we talked about the barriers between a company and its customers and how, as marketers, we must remove them to build market orientation. In the afternoon I sprang a surprise. We had arranged for focus groups to be recruited at a facility nearby and the marketers had to plan, conduct and analyze some of these and report their results the next day.
It was great on paper, but we ran into a snag. The research company we had hired to run the groups was not keen on the idea of having brand managers with no formal training running their own focus-group sessions. It suggested we should use its professional moderators instead.
Worse was to follow; the head of marketing at the client company agreed. So, rather than illustrating how easy and valuable it was to listen directly to consumers, we demonstrated the exact opposite. My brand managers ended up briefing a researcher and then watching the results from behind one-way glass. Just when you think you have met the prime directive of marketing and got a marketer face to face with customers, another barrier springs up to separate them.
The idea of professional focus-group moderators is a joke. I must have sat through more than 100 groups and the only ones I have ever seen ruined by the moderator were handled by the ‘professionals’, not by a brand manager keen to run his or her own groups.
One of the first things you learn on a PhD research-methods course is the power of the human-research instrument in qualitative research. While we may need computer analysis to make sense of quantitative data, we can rely on a far more complex system for qual data – the mind. We all possess the fundamental ability to make sense of meaning, so anyone can make sense of a focus group, as long as they can learn to shut up and use the skills God gave us.
Even if professional moderators were superior to brand managers, I would still recommend that the manager runs the groups. Any meager advantage of experience is greatly outweighed by being directly in touch with your customers. Sadly, in many cases, the real reason we have professional moderators is that many marketers do not have the time to run or attend focus groups. Shame on them. There is nothing more important than interacting directly and often with customers.
There is a tragic inverse relationship in most firms between decision-making power and degree of customer orientation. As senior marketers get promoted, their ability to influence strategy grows while their knowledge of the customer base declines. Too many of them spend their days issuing orders, and not enough time listening to customers.
Thirty years ago, Charles Saatchi used to judge the quality of his agency’s creative work with one of two words: ‘s**t’ or ‘brilliant’. The same can be said for many of today’s marketers, but it can be very difficult to ascertain which is which in the complex world of marketing.
One of the easiest ways to separate the excellent from the effluent is to pose a simple question: when was the last time you met with customers, shut up and listened? It is our prime directive. Long before we get to build brand or commission communications or segment markets, first we have to listen to customers. So I ask again, when was the last time you personally listened?
30 SECONDS ON … LISTENING
– Human hearing is a complex mechanism that transforms sound waves into nerve impulses.
– Humans can hear sounds with frequencies between 20Hz and 20kHz and discriminate small differences in loudness and pitch over that range.
– The visible portion of the ear in humans helps direct sound into it as well as amplifying sound in the speech frequencies.
– The ability of most adults to hear sounds above about 8kHz begins to deteriorate in early middle age.
– The ability to focus listening attention on a single talker among a mixture of conversations and background noises is called the cocktail-party effect.
– In Western societies, protruding ears – present in about 5% of Europeans – have been considered unattractive. The first surgery to reduce the projection of prominent ears was reported in 1881.
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One comment
Reasonable Robinson
October 10, 2007 at 9:24 am
Isn’t this typically the challenge when working with people who a) are unaware of the prior assumptions they hold, b) cannot distinguish between the principles of marketing philosophy and the task of marketing, c) have a surface rather than a deep understanding of key marketing concepts, d) are un-willing to put effortful thinking into any of the above, e) lack expertise and yet claim to be professional.
I once had the dubious pleasure of working with a ‘super salesman’ in the gaming industry whose research consisted of giving punters 10$ to play the slots. He would then ask ‘so why do play these games, and this one in particular’ …….answer from punter…’err its because you just gave me some cash’ ………..aaaaaaaaaargggggggg
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