“Listen Up, Marketers: The Focus Group is Dead”, thus begins a blog post yesterday by Catharine Taylor on Media Post. Since the article was posted yesterday afternoon, there have been over 30 (lengthy) comments/reactions to this. Some agree with her (or at least commend her for being so bold), and some do not:

For:

Bravo Cathy! Another case of calling out the old guard and questioning obsolete thinking still alive and well at many big agencies. Why still use focus groups? Because after countless days behind two way glass eating M&M’s, it’s clear to me an industrial complex has been built around the mutual admiration of this awkward tactic. In other words, agencies and research companies know how to make money doing focus groups. -Jamie Tedford from Brand Networks Inc.

Couldn’t agree more. In fact I think the old model of recruitment and focus group testing will be dead if not nearly dead in a few years. -Jim Lefevere from Independent

Against:

Ummm..let’s try and remember for what we USE focus groups. Focus groups are “directional”. That is, they should be used in the early stages of a project to get input from real life consumers. They are not intended to be the “be all and end all” of market research.
I would never say the focus group is dead. I would say that social media gives us some new tools to use to test ideas.
Nice attention grabbing headline and great quotes…but let’s get serious! -Maryanne Conlin from MMG

I think some of you are drinking your own Kool-Aid. I can’t wait until “social media” agencies have to rename themselves when social media “dies.” C’mon, why would anyone say any form of listening is dead? That’s just ridiculous. Wasn’t anyone listening to Obama? Enough with the grandiose statements and generalizations. Enough with this black and white approach. There are no easy answers to complex problems. -Jesse Dienstag from DGWB

We do not think the focus group is dead. The focus group is still an important part of the research methodology arsenal, if you will. It allows us to listen, glean insight, and move forward effectively with product or concept development. But the main takeaway is that when trying to obtain consumer feedback, it’s not just about listening, but listening to the RIGHT people, in the right context.

There’s a difference between focus group participants and the consumers you find through social media outlets. Research participants are motivated (by M&Ms & $$$) and cognizant of their role. Consumers involved in social media are motivated by a desire to participate and potentially influence an outcome. They are noticing events like Motrin Moms and Tropicana and are seeing just how potentially powerful and influential they can be.

There’s a place for focus groups. There’s a place for Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, blogs, and other forms of social media in the research process. You just need to use them smartly and responsibly.

From Techcrunch:
WOMI campaigns present visitors with ads asking them for some kind of input either though a multiple choice question or using a text field. SocialMedia then uses this input to customize ads which are shown to the user’s friends on the same social network.

For example, if an ad for Star Wars had a call-to-action asking if I was on the Light Side or Dark Side of the Force, it could take my response and then present my friends with an ad that said “Jason is on the Light Side, how about you?”. In turn, their responses are passed on to all of their friends, making this among the first kind of advertising with a viral element. This interaction makes the ads mini-social applications in and of themselves, and have proven to be very successful in trial campaigns.

In testing, WOMIs “resulted in increased awareness, favorability, and purchases for the Fortune 500 company running the campaign”. Social media marketing is finally being taken to the next level; utilizing relationships to pass on targeted content. We would love to see how use of WOMIs grows in 2009.

By the end of the day, Facebook “clarified” their terms of service saying “we do not own your stuff forever”.

“We are not claiming and have never claimed ownership of material that users upload. The new Terms were clarified to be more consistent with the behavior of the site. That is, if you send a message to another user (or post to their wall, etc…), that content might not be removed by Facebook if you delete your account (but can be deleted by your friend).” Blah blah blah.

According to this article in eMarketer, at the World Economic Forum earlier this year, Facebook demonstrated a real-time targeted polling system for advertisers. Facebook quickly denied that this would be used in conjunction with their engagement ads. “However, the social network is currently testing a new type of Engagement Ad that would allow advertisers to pose questions to users.”

Facebook has yet to come up with a truly viable way to make money off of their 150 million users worldwide. Facebook says that they are not going to sell user’s information for market research purposes. At least not until Spring…

Joseph Pine, via Ted Talks, says “experiences are becoming the predominant economic offering.” Because of this, there is more of a desire on the part of consumers, for authenticity. And it is the job of the business to provide that authenticity.

Do you understand your users’ experiences? Are you shaping your experiences to match their expectations through design?

Ted Talks: Joseph Pine - What do Consumers Really Want?

Images of the Dust Bowl are synonymous with the Great Depression.  They are as dry and dull as an American History textbook, which is appropriate since most of these pictures can be found in one.  We predict that this go round, the symbolic image of economic recession will be found and cataloged online.

The Digital Ramble has an interesting collection of such images including;

Tumblr web sites like The Brokers with Hands on Their Faces Blog or Sad Guys on Trading Floors make hay of trading-floor disheartenment.

You can check out the entire post here.  Your grandkids will probably be exposed to similar stuff in their virtual American History e-books.

This behavior is so widespread at this point that it’s already a business model.  Recipe search engines abound, and we’ve personally used the site Cookthink to narrow down our culinary options from time to time.  

As helpful as it’s been, it still can’t compensate for those unfortunate nights when all you have on hand are take-out leftovers.  Combining chinese food with hawaiian pizza produces less than desirable outcomes.  

Who needs a top ten list revisiting stuff that was big last year?  Fast Company has 8 expert predictions on the evolution of Web 2.0 for 2009.  Most of them are variations on the same theme -open platforms, increased portability and mobility of user data, etc, etc.  Pretty safe bets, though a few experts go out on a limb and see advertisers finally getting social media marketing right.

In our opinion, founder of Hush Labs (and former CEO of Rackspace Hosting) Rick Yoo’s prediction is particularly prescient;

“I’m not sure that things will evolve the way people have seen in the past. I predict that it’ll mostly be about trying to figure out what users really want and what they find most important then fine-tuning things based on that feedback. The pace of evolution may really slow down by comparison, but the user experience will be far better.”

We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.

It’s a pretty loaded piece that takes on most of today’s favorite faux-controversial topics (Mr. Obama’s BlackBerry, the rise of China and India, America’s declining economy, and techno-nationalism).  We almost didn’t make it through the entire article, when it seemed to suggest that as a nation, we ought to cut spending on research.

However, the reasoning behind this blasphemy is basically sound.  According to Amar Bhidé, a professor at the Columbia Business School, the possibility for “midlevel innovation” is inevitably lost in the shuffle of a big research budget allocated from on high.

Midlevel innovation is defined as anything

…from a venture capitalist tweaking a business model to trim costs by a few percent to a technician fine-tuning his company’s business software to save a couple of data-entry steps in the accounting department.

It basically boils down to finding new ways of using existing technology, not spending big bucks to invent something totally new from scratch.  It makes sense, and its something we’ve been helping clients do for a long time through research.

Most companies today need research in the first place, because they have previously relied on the latest technology to solve all of their business problems.  Our task is to figure out how to help them use it efficiently, effectively, and profitably.

According to one alarmist press release, page load times, missing graphics, and entire check-out procedures can be compromised if a website hasn’t been optimized to accommodate all manner of web browsers.

Online retailers in particular will be at risk this holiday season, for reasons entirely unrelated to the current economic landscape.  The look and functionality of a single site can vary dramatically from one browser to another.  For e-commerce websites, this essentially amounts to the entire shopping experience.

The conspiracy theorist in us wants to believe the entire browser war conflict is actually the collective brainchild of brick-and-mortar shops, looking to shore up their books come Black Friday.  In all seriousness however, it does beg the question of how an unstable browser market will effect your business.  Does it really matter whether or not customers can find your company’s website if they can’t actually use it?