When Do You Do A Focus Group?

To focus group or not to focus group, a prevalent question for marketers, whether you’re testing concepts for a new product or advertising or purely gathering inputs for a full blown consumer research. Some would ask me, “Do we do a quantitative or FGD?” It really depends on the purpose or the objectives of the study. 

FGDs are exploratory in nature and it can also stimulate discussion not included in the moderator’s agenda. A not so rigid out of the discussion guide free wheeling facilitator is required to accomplish that.  

Bruce Crandall’s of Decision Analyst suggested these pragmatic approach on focus groups. 

Conduct focus groups when:

1. Relatively little is known in a given product or service

2. You need to explore multiple concepts

3. You want to develop survey for a subsequent quantitative research

Download “To focus group or not to focus group” to find out why.

Research Your Way Through A Recession

The global financial crisis is weakening both consumer confidence and the consumer spending. I don’t know about you but I see the importance of researching the customers more when making marketing plans or whenever I make a strategic marketing move.

Instead of cutting the market research budget, you need to know more than ever how consumers are redefining value and responding to the recession. Price elasticity curves are changing. Consumers take more time searching for durable goods and negotiate harder at the point of sale. They are more willing to postpone purchases, trade down, or buy less. Must-have features of yesterday are today’s can-live-withouts. Trusted brands are especially valued and they can still launch new products successfully, but interest in new brands and new categories fades. Noticeable consumption becomes less prevalent.

Listen and get engaged with your customers.

What Would You Do If You Have 1 Month To Live?

Here’s one for the books, and it took me a while to blog this. What’s your favorite love story movie? I mean a love relationship between human beings, opposite sex, a boy-girl, man-woman love connection movie. How about this for goosebumps? What was your favorite scene in the movie? A memorable scene, that triggered your emotions, happy or tragic scene that made you teary eyed or mesmerized.Im sure you’ve heard love quotes like, ” You have never loved until you have loved.” or “You are designed to give love and receive love.” Yikes!

We all have fallen in love at one time or another.But what if you only have a month to live? What would love mean to you? How are you going to express or show your love particularly to your love ones and the people around you? You’ll probably make every moment count, wouldn’t you? Or maybe even have wandering thoughts such as: What else is missing in my life?  Yes, it’s still about “me.” Ask someone how he would live his last days on earth and it’s not suprising to get answers like travel around the world, bunjee jumping, space travel, etc., all the things that they’ve been aspiring or dreamed of. Die happy for themselves and live life to the max until their last breath and that’s it? How sad isn’t it? Did they leave any legacy to their love ones or left behind a pile of credit card bills?

Here’s the point Im driving at, Love is about giving, sharing and service to others. It’s taking risks and opening up oneself to a possible pain. A strong foundation of love is how long you persevere, hold on until the end. 

You’ll find out more about how to live a powerful no regrets life from One Month To Live by Kerry Shook. Or download the “diary” which you can use to put yourself into action.

Know When To Lead Change

If you’ve been managing or creating change lately like me, you and I know that there is no clear cut way of managing change. One can be ahead of it, but in a period of uncertainty, such as the one we are living in today, change is the norm. Yes, it’s risky and above all it requires a great deal of patience and hard work.

If leading change is not perceived as the main task today, your organization will not survive. Who survives then? Those who challenge the status quo, the fearless who put their butt on the line. Change leaders who put their career, health and relationships at stake. Those who know how to find the right changes and knows how to make them effective inside and out the organization. 

There’s a lot of risk, yes. It is less risky however than not to try or challenge the status quo.

Don’t get stuck by simply anticipating and analyzing the future. Be a change leader starting today.

Using Information As A Trust Builder

In business, they say that information is power. I certainly believe that. It’s like gaining competitive edge over your competitors. We see a lot of service oriented companies in fact use that in their communication strategy. It’s a semblance to information is knowledge. Yes, from a context of being a contribution to others but when you withhold it with a power agenda it becomes selfish.

People who hold information to gain power or superiority over others usually suffer the most obvious consequence – Mistrust from others. It’s lonely and depressing when that happens. Those who suffered the most during the recent financial crisis are the secretive ones who thought they had the right information. Information that were leaning towards greed. It’s winning or the need to win over others.

How else can you detect them?

- Those who exagerates anything without being asked. Most of the time they brag about what they know and make you feel out of touch or from another world. 

- We see most of them answering questions with another question, pretending to be smart. It puts them in a disadvantage if they reveal something. 

- It may be as subtle as not acknowledging emails, returning phone calls and text messages, specially when you have an idea or an information that could make a difference to the other person. Yup, Im guilty of that. My ego says, “Find it out for yourself.”

A lot of you may still be asking, so what? If you still don’t get that it annoys. Be honest. How do you feel when this things happen to you:

- You arrived at your office only to see that a lot of people are not there. You found out that they’re in a meeting and you were not informed about it.

- Important emails where you were not copy furnished or cc. I just experienced one recently with one of my managers who keeps sending updates to clients without including me in the loop.

Again, you’re not gaining power at all if you withhold. You’re only breeding mistrust and your ego. I really feel sorry for those people. Instead of inspiring others to trust and be open, they become suspicious and detached. 

Withholding information is nothing more than a misplaced need to win by yourself.  It’s the proverbial Sinatra line- I did it my way. 

Three things to win using information: transparency and the impulse to share anything out of gratitude and service. I guess timing too is important. What’s the end result – Trust.

How To Write a New Product Concept Statement That Works

Decide what ‘image’ you want for your brand. Image means personality. Products, like people, have personalities, and they can make or break them in the market place. - David Ogilvy

One of the many types of focus groups I moderate are product and advertising concept tests. Usually the client’s advertising agency will provide  2 to 3 written concept statements for the respondents to comment based on several variables. These concepts from a portfolio of a dozen or so studies are supposedly finalize or on some cases refined further. The concept statements are usually written in an illustration board, whiteboard, Keynote slides (if you’re a Macbook user like me) or Powerpoint. I usually request my client to provide the boards and have it discussed at least a day before the session. I also had experiences when my client would just put it in a bond paper on the day itself. Yup, those pieces of paper coming from the other side of the one way mirror. 

What I normally asked my client to produce has a simple visual and a verbal statement that contains the following points.

1. A statement of the problem that the product is meant to solve.

2. A definition of the type of solution that the product requires.

3. Supporting attributes (physical and communications) that adds credibility to product’s ability to solve the problem.

By this I mean that when writing a concept statement you should state the problem the product is proposing to solve. The first paragraph should set the stage for the subsequent solution by defining the customer’s problem. Then tell the customer that your product will solve the problem. Lastly give the necessary attributes to support the facts. 

Feel free to email me at ric.cortez@asiaresearch.com.org if you need any assistance, or to just simply share your ideas.

A Simpler Way To Being A Nice Person

Not all behavior is good or bad. Some of it would be neutral, in-between, so-so or just simply being nice. Actually it’s either good nor bad, neither positive or negative. If for example you’re not regarded as someone who’s nice, to change that impression would be pretending to be a nicer person to yourself and others. We usually come with a long list of positive looking good actions and nice words to say.

There’s actually a simpler way to achieve the goal of “being nice” so to speak. All you have to do is to aknowledge your inauthenticity and  admit that you’re being an a-what or a jerk. It’s not that you’re a jerk, you are just “being” one. You don’t have to think of new ways to be nicer to people. You don’t have to do anything, just stop being a jerk, period.

So next time when someone offers a mediocre idea in a meeting, don’t criticize it. Just get it, acknowledge the person and say nothing after.

When someone challenges your decisions, don’t reason out or argue. Again, simply acknowledge and thank the person and say nothing else. 

Thank them and say nothing. That’s it!

Marshall Goldsmith, author of What Got You Here Won’t Get You There points out choosing between becoming a nicer person and ceasing to be a jerk. Which would you choose? Which is easier to do? Being a nice person requires a concerted series of positive acts of commission. Being a jerk is nothing more than an act of omission.