This cartoon is much less about focus teams than how we frequently use focus teams. Or actually any sort of market analysis.
Years in the past, I overheard some company buddies joke about “the Oracles of Eden Prairie.” Eden Prairie is a suburb of Minneapolis, the place numerous focus teams occur.
These company buddies went on to explain the unusual strategy of bringing new concepts (for campaigns or new merchandise or packaging designs) to be judged by “the Oracles of Eden Prairie” — eight randomly chosen individuals who had no concept how a lot energy their phrases held on whether or not these concepts made it.
Ceaselessly they have been requested to opine on questions anybody would have hassle answering with any accuracy — like articulating their “unmet shopper wants.” Later, verbatim quotes have been taken from the main target teams to justify all types of selections, usually as unquestionable sources of fact.
I as soon as drew the Oracles of Eden Prairie in a cartoon on the prime of a mountain, with a marketer climbing to ask, “Oh all-knowing focus group, inform me your unmet shopper wants, in order that we are able to create disruptive improvements for you.”
The Oracles reply: “Extra promotions” and “Make all the pieces cheaper.”
Stephan Gans at Pepsi just lately talked about utilizing an AI software from an organization known as Tastewise to analysis new snackfood taste concepts. Tastewise makes use of AI to investigate patterns in information from 5 million recipes, two million menus, and 22 billion social media interactions to floor insights no particular person shopper would ever be capable to articulate. I like this remark:
“If you happen to would’ve requested customers, ‘tell us what you suppose could be an ideal taste for this model,’ no person would have ever provide you with seaweed.
“Folks don’t affiliate that sometimes with a specialty snack from a model. However due to the sort of listening and the outside-in work that we did, we have been capable of determine that out via the AI that’s embedded in that software.”
Not each market analysis software is true for each market analysis query. Treating any supply of shopper insights as an oracle can lead you astray. They’re all instruments for decision-making, however shouldn’t exchange decision-making itself.
Listed below are a couple of associated cartoons I’ve drawn through the years, together with considered one of my earliest in 2002 — again once I known as this sequence Model Camp:
“If advertising and marketing stored a diary, this is able to be it.”
– Ann Handley, Chief Content material Officer of MarketingProfs
