tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-221214852024-02-03T10:36:14.223-08:00Qualitative Research BlogA blog that highlights issues for focus groups and qualitative research in Canada. The focus is on discussing projective techniques and probing deeply held emotions based on experience in Clinical Psychology. The blog is published by Brian Baumal, Principal of <a href="http://www.thinklounge.ca">www.thinklounge.ca</a>Brian Baumalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13979778780322097603noreply@blogger.comBlogger26125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22121485.post-20422700063833739492009-10-06T07:40:00.000-07:002009-10-06T08:15:57.267-07:00Mr Sub SinksOK folks, I don't use my blog for a lot, because quite frankly most of what I would post has been posted by someone else in probably a better format than what I can express. So, what you'll read below is nothing new - the only difference is that I happen to be impassioned by the situation...<br /><br />Mr. Sub, a large Canadian sandwich shop put-out a series of ads, with the tagline "No one likes surprises". One of the executions had a middle-aged father sitting at a dinner table with his family, and he says something like "Family, I have an important announcement to make... I'm gay. Flaming gay..." and then the tagline "No one likes surprises" comes up along with Mr. Sub's logo. Here's a link to the ads and the reaction to it <a href="http://www.marketingmag.ca/english/news/accounts/article.jsp?content=20091005_175305_7272">http://tinyurl.com/yekvydx</a> It would be worthwhile to read it now.<br /><br />Here folks is my take on this...<br /><br />I believe that Mr. Sub and it's agency did not set-out to deliberately offend anyone with this ad. I say that because I believe we live in a sensitive society. Moreover, I have to believe that someone at BOS (Mr. Sub's Agency) and Mr. Sub itself would have enough common sense not to produce anything that they felt would intentionally hurt anyone. So, while I actually fully agree with and support everything the CAW says about coming-out, and I agree with the fact that the Mr. Sub ad could be viewed as offensive, I do not believe this is the relevant marketing or research issue.<br /><br />To me, the relevant marketing and research issue is the same old thing that I see in so many ads that I view and test - the ad just sucks (as do all of the executions in this set of ads). The reason why it sucks is that it does absolutely nothing to enhance the brand image, it does nothing to create a bond with the brand and there is no emotional or psychological resonance in the ad what-so-ever. Humour, or irreverence, used in one execution of an ad does not bond people to either the brand or the product. There is no doubt that there are irreverent brands out there, and that there are brands that have irreverence as part of their DNA. However, Mr. Sub is not one of them.<br /><br />In fact, the article above says that the ads were created on the insight (i.e. research) that people know what to expect when they dine at Mr. Sub. That's fine. Though it's not the greatest insight that research could produce, it works to build a campaign. What irks me though is the fact that the agency thinks that it has to use sophomoric, bordering on moronic humour, to get that message across. In my own ad testing experience, I have had to suffer the humiliation of testing ads that have people "playing water glasses" and doing "folkloric dance" because of all the time that they save with a particular service. Fortunately, these ads never test well and they get left on the focus-group floor where they should. And that's what should happen with all ads that attempt to use humour the way Mr. Sub has. <br /><br />Finally, what I noticed was that the final shot of the Mr. Sub Ads say "A Canadian Classic for over 40 years". Now, how about tying that theme of "Canadian classic" into the fact that people know what to expect at Mr. Sub directly in the creative. That's linking the brand to an emotion, instead of linking it to irreverence.Brian Baumalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13979778780322097603noreply@blogger.com52tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22121485.post-8344618733389391802009-07-23T06:36:00.000-07:002009-07-23T07:51:21.885-07:00It's The Lack Of Confrontation That's The IssueThere's a great commercial that was filmed in Toronto (I've used this focus group facility room many times) that skewers focus groups. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOuC5jjTZOI">Here's the YouTube link.</a><br /><br />For those that may not know, Shreddies has launched a "New" "Diamond-Shaped" cereal. The humour around this, of course, is that there's nothing new about Diamond Shreddies - the diamonds are simply the same square Shreddies that have always been around, but they have been rotated 45 degrees. The ad's humour is that it makes such a big deal out of nothing.<br /><br />Anyhow, back to the comments about focus groups, and even about projective techniques used in them. The commercial shows the moderator intently listening to and "soaking in" everything that participants say about the Diamond Shreddies - including answers to his "projective questions".<br /><br />From a therapist's point of view, this passive and even "rah-rah" attitude fosters respondents and clients to produce a significant amount of Bullshit in their answers (which the commercial uses as it's main source of humour). They not only try to please the moderator/therapist, but they realize that once the moderator/therapist accepts their first BS response without challenging it, they will continue to feed BS to the moderator/therapist for the rest of the session/group. There are any number of reasons why a person will continue to feed BS to a moderator/therapist, and are beyond the scope of this article - but suffice it to say, once the BS-genie is out of the bottle, it is very hard to get back in. The important thing to note is that to put the "cork back in", we don't necessarily need to know WHY a person is feeding BS - we just need a quick way to stop it.<br /><br />All of this leads to the issue of "confrontation" - when does a moderator or a therapist risk calling a client/participant on their BS responses, in an attempt to go deeper with the client/participant or get more honest responses. The therapeutic world makes a HUGE deal about this, and with good reason - people react differently to confrontation, and there are literally an infinite amount of ways of confronting a therapeutic client. The therapist needs to be very careful in confronting or the therapeutic relationship can suffer irreparable damage.<br /><br />When it comes to confronting participants in focus groups, I think virtually all moderators have very little idea what they're doing. I think good moderators know how to confront when participants present BS on a "logical level". For example, when I conduct groups concerning Federal Budgets or Policies, it is easy to spot the BS when participants say something like "I want the government to lower taxes and spend more on health care." It's also easy to confront, by explaining the incompatibility of the choices identified, and getting participants to work through what they really want in this situation.<br /><br />The above is kind of a gimme though. How do we get participants to cut through their BS when they feed "passionate" responses about liking or disliking a product/advertisement like they showed in this commercial? Typically, the moderator asks more questions or follows the discussion guide assuming that the questions are ordered such that each leads to a successively deeper insight from the participant. This rarely works, as it does not take into account HOW the respondent is avoiding in the "Here And Now" of the session. It assumes that the participant is "following the moderator" down the path to deeper discovery. If this is not happening, following the guide, or asking deeper questions does not work.<br /><br />Unfortunately how to confront BS in a qualitative session cannot be explained quickly here. I think part of the issue is for moderators to recognize when BS occurs - and in my experience only about half can do this. The next part is how to actually confront. This takes therapists years to learn and do, and it could be argued that about 75% of all therapist training is how to confront successfully. <br /><br />I remember one example where I noticed a participant's responses were getting increasingly "politically correct" and conforming more to "populist idea" about the brand and less about his own experiences. He was also becoming more resistant to projective questions. This participant then related a personal story about how he has such high demands of himself and his family. I then said to him "Has anyone ever called you a perfectionist?" With that one statement, he knew I had caught a hint of how he was avoiding showing his true feelings in the interview. While his initial responses to my remaining questions did not get more truthful, he became more engaged in projective questions that I asked him - and I was able to probe his opinions much more deeply.<br /><br />In the end, many moderators know that we can't believe everything respondents tell us. However, it is up to us to know how to pull the truth out of participants. That trait, in my opinion, is how moderators should be judged.Brian Baumalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13979778780322097603noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22121485.post-14248058116003764202009-04-27T08:01:00.000-07:002009-04-27T08:06:09.320-07:00Branding In A Social Media Context Exposes How Empty And Vapid Most Consumer Goods Really AreAs both a researcher and psychotherapist, I’ve known for a long time that most brands absolutely suck at creating emotion, having empathy and fostering deep connections with their customers (even though they like to think they do). I think that social media will absolutely blow the cover off that fact, revealing this very large deficit in most brands. However, for those brands that adapt, a new life could be found to the point where this is the revolution most brands have been waiting for. After four pages of introduction, I’ll provide a list of how companies and brands can succeed in a social media environment. You can skip to it if you want right now, but that would just be a recipe for failure – and no one wants that, now, do they?<br />Let me start by relating social media to the type of psychotherapy that I practice, called Gestalt Psychotherapy. Gestalt psychotherapy states that the therapist is an active participant in the therapy process – not a passive observer of it. The same can be said of social media – everyone participates, everyone can see everything else, and everyone can change its course, by contributing content, forming their own network or making their own platform. So, with social media, by virtue of being there, your are changing the content – AND THERE ARE NO PASSIVE PLAYERS BUT THERE ARE VIRTUALLY NO DOMINANT ONES EITHER. It is an ordered form of mass contribution and that’s incredibly powerful, and at the same time, incredibly humbling to those brands that used to be the sole seed of power. It’s no longer about your big announcements – it’s about being in the game as an earnest person<br /><br />And that’s the issue social media presents for virtually all consumer-based businesses. Before social media, brands used to be very controlling and passive in what they did. The control and flow of products and communication was one way – from them to you, from them to you in a very “command and control” type of style. They produced, they distributed and you had to buy or else the schedule, and pipeline would get clogged and break-down. They were manipulative, and they had to be to get your attention, as most traditional advertising “interrupted your everyday life” to get your attention. Consumer-based businesses had to become cleverer especially in the face of competition and more decentralized knowledge, distribution and production. That’s why people who understand psychology like me are good at branding – we know how to get attention in a sly sort of way.<br /><br />In social media, the attention is there already – people are having engaging conversations about any kind of topic you can imagine in any number of formats, and to attempt to influence the conversation is like pushing a string uphill hoping it goes somewhere. Where brands used to advertise and shout loudly to get our attention, their attempts to join the conversation of social networks is akin to a 500-lb gorilla crashing a party. They’ve got no idea how to communicate – or what to say in this new media – especially when pushing product in self-interest is verboten! Unless you’re Apple, social media doesn’t care if you’re “new and improved”, “bigger, better, badder or faster”, “soft as the early morning dew on a golf course” or the fact that you enable people to live “longer, better, faster and more beautiful self-actualized lives.” You’re allowed to join the club, you’re not allowed to sell to it. Check your sales pitch at the door, and be prepared to be a real human being. The end result is that when you are human, you will attract people to you. Simple concept, eh?<br /><br />So – what’s the benefit of a brand to join a social media network? As stated before, you get to join the conversation, and have as much power as everyone, but not as much power as you did before. It’s influence, but on a more human scale. A brand gets to listen, not to dominate. A brand gets a chance to actually be of service, instead of always “reacting” to problems. Instead of having a brand’s logo be a friend or buddy to a customer, or instead of having a 30-second spot do your communicating, some executive who is responsible at the brand actually has to sit and respond – and that’s hard for companies that are so used to using logos, distribution channels, internet sites, 1-800#’s, off-shore CSR’s and researchers like me that keep them so distant from the customer. As a psychotherapist researcher, I would say 95% of my job is no more than advocating for the basic needs that customers want from neurotic brands to begin with.<br /><br />There’s a wonderful saying about advertising – that only 50% of advertising works, but no one knows which 50%. In social media, virtually all of your messages will work – but they will do so only on a very small scale. They’ll impact a few people here, and a few people there. Only a very small portion of social media messages will have the mass effect that advertising has, and in many cases, it’s going to be a complete crapshoot as to which one captures the zeitgeist of the social media community. Companies embracing social media will have to get used to the fact that they’ll be hitting a lot of small-scale singles, instead of the large occasional bases-loaded home run. They’ll also have to get used to the fact that they won’t know what will happen once they get to the “plate” that is social media. The best thing that can happen for brands is simply to be in the game, instead of watching from the sidelines.<br /><br />This is going to be a very tough pill for many brands to swallow. The main reason why is that businesses hate not knowing – and I don’t blame them. Businesses and successful brands got to where they were EXACTLY BECAUSE THEY KNEW. Successful brands, companies and people take very little risk once they are successful because what made them a success is a formula that they stick to time and time again. I’ll never forget George Heller, former CEO of Hudson’s Bay talking at a retail conference in 1998. Members of the audience during question period roasted him about the fact that HBC companies had a pitiful web presence, when compared to U.S. retailers. After about three of these questions, Heller looked at the audience and said “You know what, do any of you want to come with me to my next board meeting and tell my board what you’re telling me right now?” No one raised a hand.<br /><br />And that brings me to my next point – if a brand does want to change, they need to get someone in there who is PASSIONATE about social media. All those well-intentioned individuals poking Mr. Heller about the internet were no more than Sunday Afternoon Football sports critics. They’re passionate about their criticisms, but not passionate (or likely smart enough) about implementation. PASSIONED individuals are smart, curious and can live with the uncertainty. They affect people by their passion, and not by their reason or intelligence. I wouldn’t even attempt if I were you, to “whip-up some passion” among some people in your office and start a social media division. You either have passion, or you don’t. It can’t be ingested or injected at regular intervals like a pharmaceutical pill.<br /><br />So, after four pages of introduction, below is a list things that a company can do, from a psychotherapeutic point of view, to engage successfully social media – and show that companies and brands are not empty, vapid, deer-in-the-headlights organizations with no human or social skills or graces at all. My suggestion is that you give this list to someone who is passionate about Social Media. However, chances are someone who is passionate about Social Media already knows these things. So, if you take this list and give it to someone who is not passionate about social media, my deeply profound psychotherapeutic advice is to “enjoy faking it” because that’s all you be doing. I’ll no doubt see you in a little while when you wish to cope with the feelings of failure that you’ll experience.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Realize That Everything Communicates And Everything WILL Be Talked About</span><br /><br />Before training in psychotherapy, I heard the phrase “everything communicates” as it relates to a brand, and I didn’t believe it. However, after my training, I strongly believe this to be the case. I can use a patient’s socks to relate to their childhood, their hair to relate to their parents. I’ve done Fairy Tale psychotherapy, and even underwear psychotherapy! Everything does communicate.<br /><br />However, perhaps it is time to reframe this old axiom to EVERYTHING WILL BE TALKED ABOUT. I can see a Starbucks mug on my desk, and bet that I can find those interested in talking about their wooden stir-sticks. I see s stapler on my desk, and I bet I can find dozens of conversations on that. I see an Ikea product – bet I can find detailed discussions of how well the wheels work on Ikea Shopping Carts.<br /><br />This has two fundamental implications. First, as a social media communicator, you need to know what conversations you need to be involved with – and maybe you should be involved in all of them. Imagine the cart designer for Ikea shopping carts saying “just looking up this topic, and noticed your conversation. We can make some changes you discussed. Twitter me at #CartWheels for more info.” WOW!! Toronto is considering a ban on disposable coffee cups, and I can guarantee you that there are hundreds of blogs, Twitters and Facebook chatter talking about it. Imagine the Starbucks person responsible for coffee cups joining the conversation in a human and honest way. For those that are interested in it, this could be an exciting proposition!!! A business and a brand could literally spend an infinite amount of time deciding what blogs to contribute to. A watch company need not only contribute to watch-related discussions, but perhaps to design and mechanical engineering discussions. A trophy manufacturer could contribute to a local soccer league Facebook account.<br /><br />Second, if this proposition doesn’t make a business self-conscious about everything it does, I don’t know what will. Everything does communicate, and everything will be talked about. Successful businesses in the social media environment will be neurotically obsessed (and yes, there are positive benefits of neuroses) with detail, if only because they now realize that EVERYTHING will get talked about.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">The Goal Is No Longer To Sell – It’s To Excite And Contribute</span><br /><br />I would never want my local soccer leauge’s Facebook page bombarded with posts about bulk discounts at Troy’s Trophy Townhouse. But if my son posted that his trophy broke, I’d sure appreciate Troy telling us how to fix it, or that next season’s batch will take care of that issue. Imagine Dove, Panasonic, Starbucks, Swingline, Vonage, Kraft and Papermate making legitimate, human conversation with me concerning various issues that relate to their brands. Could Papermate tell me how to hold a pen so that I don’t tire my wrist as much? If I complain that I could never staple more than a 5 page document, could Swingline give me some advice? If I tell people I hate the reception on my cordless phone, could Panasonic communicate with me to determine if there is something more I could do? Could all this be done by a human being whose sole responsibility is to actually be caring? Would I re-distribute messages from companies that are actually useful to me? Though none of these would be a marketing home run, they’re little singles that could change the nature of brands, if they are done with humanity, timeliness and respect.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">The Person Communicating Your Social Media Should Be Passionate, Sincere And Wise</span><br /><br />I get a sense that most corporate brands have few individuals who are passionate and sincere about what is being offered. I think the corporate currency of social media will be legitimate, honest and sincere passion for a product or service. Corporate postings cannot be about selling or promoting stuff – they must be about what the social media outlet is talking about. My wife exclusively uses cloth diapers for our son, and is involved in no less than four or five social media outlets about the subject. How does Pampers join the conversation without actually being pushy? It’s not about shouting loudly. I can guarantee you my wife would not use Pampers no matter what, but if the person at Pampers were as passionate and sincere as my wife, my wife would at least likely listen and engage in conversations. It’s about showing real pride and humility, which are the basics of just being human with other people. My wife may never buy Pampers from you, but she may end-up liking you. And as a key influencer in her social media groups, that may be a nice person to have as an ally. The goal is not to influence, it is to connect.<br /><br />Some social media advisors say the face of a company should be the CEO or the VP of PR. I disagree on both counts. The CEO is too busy, and PR guys are trained in PR, not social media. PR guys are not sincere enough for Social Media. If I had to pick a group within a large organization, I know that some firms like cell phone companies have “Executive Response Teams” or people in “The Office Of The CEO”. Those people would likely be my first stop on the search for social media faces for a company.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Responsiveness Is Critical</span><br /><br />There are two kinds of responsiveness – responding to communications within the social media environment, and changing your company based on the comments from social media. This is more than responding in the face of a crisis, but can a company actually be responsive to a single individual, or group in a quick and sincere way? Can a company change an aspect of itself quickly if need be based on a Twitter complaint? Or can it effectively justify why it won’t change? Companies that engage in conversations that show how responsive they are, and companies that are more open and transparent will be the ones who win in the social media environment.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Put Hundreds Of Voices To What You Do</span><br /><br />If you manufacture Diapers, not only can you talk about that product directly, but you can also engage in discussions about packaging, landfill, fasteners, children’s play and various charitable endeavors. If you manufacture computer printers, you can also enter conversations about electricity management, paper and even document handling. The point is, that your product now is never your product. Maybe a computer printer could find new life in a discussion among artists who print-off their work. I can just see marketers in a boardroom trying to find line-extensions or additional markets for their products, spending big bucks to research the market. While I would not counsel against that kind of work, social media could be one of the places where companies can both research and gain an actual presence in a market very efficiently and effectively.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Design, Design, Design As Your Next Emotional Calling Card</span><br /><br />This last one may sound crazy, but it’s going to be one of the most important elements of your firm and product in the future. Advertising used to create excitement for your brand on an emotional level. It used to provide imagery and fodder for the mind to create a sense of psychological engagement with the product. As the power of mass advertising decreases and social media increases, you still need to find a way to engage people emotionally with your product. In my opinion, social media, as brands will use it, will not and should attempt to engage on an emotional level. I don’t think the medium is suited for it, and I don’t think that’s what people want out of the medium (though this could change as social media develops). Also, on a psychological level, when people communicate between others on a social media platform, they bring-up certain images and feelings about the individuals with which they are communicating. The feelings help individuals know what to do and say while they’re communicating. With social media, you can’t hear a voice, or really see a person, so we search for and rely on memories. In my opinion, emotional currency will be created and maintained by a product’s design, the imagery associated with the product and its logo. Product and packaging design has always been a way for brands to impart emotional and psychological feelings to products and services, and they will become more important in the age of social media. Design will serve as a calling card in social media, much more so than advertising will.Brian Baumalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13979778780322097603noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22121485.post-7399890806582424482009-04-27T07:43:00.000-07:002009-04-27T07:48:26.726-07:00How Not Knowing Allows Me To Make Sense Of The Passion EconomyA place of not knowing is a place of growth. How many of us though, dare to go there in ourselves? Or how many of us dare to go there publically? What’s worse – how many of us actually know what a place of not knowing actually feels like? That is, how many of us fool ourselves into thinking we’re there, when we’re not even close?<br /><br />A good psychotherapist will at various points work carefully to create so much confusion in their clients that they no longer know which way is “up or down”, to directly quote a recent and perhaps unfortunate psychotherapy client of mine. A common saying among psychiatrists and psychologists is that the Rorschach inkblot test works because the images “confuse the rational mind so much, that the real personality has no choice but to come through.” And that’s exactly the purpose of being in a place of “not knowing” – when you’re there, it’s when your actual personality shines through. When a good psychotherapist cuts his way through all the flotsam and jetsam that clouds a neurotic individual’s mind and gets to a person’s real being, the therapist basically says “Hi, nice to really see you” and then leaves the client to sit in yet a further existential swamp to come up with their own solutions to the world. The only difference between the flotsam and jetsam that the therapist had to cut through, and the existential swamp that has been reached, is that the existential swamp is “who the client actually is.” We leave the client with their own swampy resources to solve their own problems and their own personality to contact the world.<br /><br />So, what does this have to do with The Passion Economy? Well, as a psychotherapist, and as a human being who through his therapy training has been so confused as to ask “which way is Saturday” The Passion Economy scares me. It scares me because it is another layer introjected of flotsam and jetsam that people swallow whole, hoping that it actually becomes part of themselves. After being exposed to a talk on “The Passion Economy” people could walk around thinking “I’ll be passionate about everything I do”, or “Hey, the people I work with are not passionate – I’ll take myself to a firm that is passionate”, or “I’m going to be the passion transformer in my office”. A similar, and equally scary reaction is “Eh – the passion economy – it’s got nothing to do with me.” <br /><br />All of these are based on the psychological theory of introjection, which is really worth exploring here for just a minute. Between the ages of about 3-19, a child and subsequently teen learns a hell of a lot about the world, and their personality is formed. It is formed by observing and taking-in parts of the world, and by having lessons in basic humanity taught to kids throughout these very psychologically formative years. For Freudians out there, this is the Super-Ego, or ideal of an individual. It is primarily a collection of all the “shoulds” one is exposed to in their life – where the person doing the “shoulding” could either be a parental figure of the individual themselves. Classic examples – “I should respect my elders”, “I should share”, “I should not cross at a red light”, “I should be charitable”, etc… <br /><br />What happens on a more technical level, is that the introject, or should, is psychologically swallowed, and then integrated. Three things happen, two of which are psychologically healthy, and one of which isn’t. I’ll let you guess which is which:<br /><br />- A person is given a “should”, takes it in and takes it for a test-drive. They try it out, see what they like about it, and see what they don’t like about it. If they like it, it becomes part of them, and they can modify it to suit their own personality.<br /><br />- A person is given a “should” and takes it for a test-drive. If they don’t like it, they respectfully return the “should” to the dealership and say very definitively “This is not for me. Sorry if I offend you by refusing it, but it just won’t work.”<br /><br />- A person swallows a “should” whole. There is absolutely no integration process involved what-so-ever. The person simply “becomes” the should, no questions asked. It the becomes like a carrot infront of a horse. A person keeps trying to reach for the should, but never does. Disappointment after disappointment follows because they cannot live-up to this “should-ideal” that they have swallowed whole. In the end, when a person tries to live-up to a number of these shoulds, their ego function is reduced, and their sense of who they are becomes neurotically impaired. This person gets very confused because people continually reject him – he doesn’t know why – because he is afterall, living up to what he “should be” in society. These individuals continue to swallow the next big thing, hoping that it will be them.<br /><br />What my concern about a “passion economy” for you, in this audience, is that unless you have strong ego boundaries, you are likely in danger of having the third option happen to you. How do I know this – because as a marketing consultant, researcher and psychotherapist, I have to ask you one thing – have you guys ever listened to yourselves talk??? I mean seriously? For the most part, you simply put-out quote after quote from other marketing gurus. You’re quoting newspapers, journals, academic studies that you really know nothing about, taking one or two sentences out of very detailed works, and swallowing them whole. You’re quoting successes of other companies to support your own theories, when in fact, you have very little idea as to the truth of the situation. As a consultant, I’m constantly asked for ideas that amount to spoon-feeding you. <br /><br />Just a few weeks ago I was asked to submit a consumer research proposal on innovation to a food company. I wasn’t even there to talk about innovation, I was there to research a brand line extension – they just happened to like my line of thinking. So my proposal to them for innovation said (I’m paraphrasing here) “before I suggest any consumer methodologies, I’m going to suggest researching your staff and finding out their views of innovation – because if you’re so desperate as to ask me how to innovate, the problem is not with how you ask consumers how to innovate, the problem is with what your definition of it is, and how you implement it.” So I do get concerned that you will attempt to package and eat whole “passion” without understanding it. I guess though, I can’t fault you for that – wrapping-up difficult concepts and making them look appealing enough to eat is what you do for a living as marketers and advertisers. However, I hope you can see that a diet of advertising alone will make someone psychologically anemic.<br /><br />I also want you to notice a critical element of this speech – I have not, and will not quote a single thought leader, individual or case study. All the ideas in here, with the exception of the theory of introjection, are mine. Quoting others is fine, but what concerns me is that I have no idea where the speaker begins and the quote ends, if all I hear a speaker do is rhyme-off an endless string of quotes. It amounts to someone chanting positive affirmations to an audience, in my opinion.<br /><br />So, let me return to a “passion economy” and “not knowing.” The previous part of my speech may have suggested that I don’t take a “passion economy” seriously, and that’s actually not true. I take it very seriously. I think that people should do what they are passionate about – it is the way to good mental health, in my view. Passion represents good ego function, good mental health and it is the way society grows. The goal, however, is to find-out what you are passionate about, and you get there by not knowing. Me – I’m passionate about being witty, I’m passionate about laughter, and I’m passionate about making real human connections and contact with people. I’m also a lazy son-of-a-bitch, who’s very shy and uncomfortable around others. I’m a bit of a wise-ass and as my therapist supervisors would say “I’d like to thud people between the eyes with my clinical observations.” I would prefer nothing more than to sit at my cottage 24/7 and listen to the lake, wind and waves. I’d prefer to play with my 16 month old son, but leave the hard parenting to everyone else. Those last few items would lead many to classify me as a narcissist. <br /><br />That’s it. That’s me – and here’s the good news. When I engage in what I’m passionate about, I don’t know and I don’t really care about outcome or results. I will naturally do what is necessary to engage in my passions without knowing. This does not mean I have a sense of recklessness or abandon – it means though I can proceed without knowing, but at the same time be passionate enough about what I’m doing to get help and self-support along the way. It’s a process called maturation, and ability to contact the world. For example, if I as a parent think that I can do all the easy stuff with my kid and none of the work, I’m in for a really rude awakening. With passion comes responsibility that is easily accepted. So, yes, I do my fair share of parenting work because I am passionate about my son<br /><br />I had a therapy client who said to me “Brian, how do we know if this works” and I simply said “I don’t, but it’s something I believe in, or else I wouldn’t be here.” She looked at me with tears and said “Well, at least that’s honest.” I do the same with my corporate clients - I have no idea if my methods are going to work, but I’ll stick with you every step of the process. When you are passionate, there is nothing more, and nothing less you can do. The best part, is that clients appreciate when you’re honest with them and that’s what I think sells – not when you feed them half-assed, half-regurgitated, and half-passioned hyperbole.<br /><br />Now, here’s the bad news. As a researcher, I’ve finally learned I’m not passionate about marketing or advertising (at least bad advertising – I love the good stuff and will tell you straight-up about it). I’m not passionate about profit, big corporations and helping my clients make a buck. I’m not overly passionate about tactics or strategy (though what I’m exceptionally interested in is why people propose the strategies that they do). I don’t care about the latest and greatest way of doing things because that’s not where my passion lies. What that means is that part of what I engage in will never have any appeal to me, but as long as I’m in it with what I’m passionate about, it seems to vanish into the ether.<br /><br />What this means is chances are deep down you’re not passionate about what you do either. You’re not passionate about marketing, on-line, accounting, process engineering, media monitoring, statistics, accounting, HR procedures, law, computer programming, whatever it is that you do. I highly doubt a garbage man is truly passionate about waste removal. When I started my business, I kept observing my Father-In-Law. He’s a gruff guy and a maverick of sorts, who ran a sewing, trim and thread company. There’s no way that this guy was passionate about the ladies sewing and quilting clubs that he supplied. All he was passionate about was being the boss and busting the unions that worked for him and getting as much financial credit as he could through his business. As a therapist, I really question anyone who comes up to me and says “I’m passionate about monitoring how many people walk by and view bench advertising” or “I’m passionate about optimizing the size of an internet ad for my clients” or “I’m in customer service at Rogers, and I love it.”<br /><br />As I close, let me combine passion and not knowing:<br /><br />- When you become passionate, you will be comfortable with not knowing. I have no idea how this speech is going to go over. I think I’m being a bit of an asshole up here and letting some hard truths fly. However, I am passionate about “being cruel to be kind”. Surprisingly, it generally works out for me, except with my wife.<br /><br />- It is quite clear that passionate people are successful people. However, I have also said that passionate people are also comfortable with not knowing. So, let me ask you this as a question – what’s the real driver of success – the passion, the not knowing or some combination of both. I suspect it’s a combination of both. Not knowing allows the passionate person to see others, see options, and be OK with being uncomfortable as they pursue their passions.<br /><br />- One thing you must do is throw-out all of those introjects that you have about who you are, and know who you are not. I have not used a single example of a successful company or individual in my speech. The reason why – you’re not them. Your companies are not Microsoft, Nike, Apple, Coke, Zappos, Google, Amazon, eBay or Yahoo – and guess what – they’ll never be. You’re not Gates, Jobs, Knight, Branson, Dell, Buffett or Obama. Chances are, if you were, you wouldn’t be here right now – you’d be running your company. I’ll never forget reading a book by Sergio Zyman called “The End Of Marketing As We Know It” when I started my consulting company seven years ago. He was Senior Vice President of Marketing for Coca Cola. In it he said “Hire the best people. Pay the best salaries and offer your employees the opportunity to travel the world.” I looked at myself, in my tiny soft-loft condo at King and Bathurst and just said “yeah right.”<br /><br />- When you are working on an introjective level, you are not the catalyst for change that you think you are, or the catalyst that we and others so “pump you up” to be. It is only when you begin to truly change and see yourself that you COULD, POSSIBLY, AND VERY RARELY change and others for what they are. Therapists are taught to live with not knowing whether their interventions have any significant effect on their clients. It’s critical to the training – it takes the self-interest off the therapist and puts in on the actual humanity and human transactions that go on between the therapist and client. Can you live with not knowing about whether you have an affect on others? Can you live without knowing the end result? Can your company live without knowing – because if they can’t and you can, you’re not in the right place as an innovator. Can you enjoy the journey and not the outcome? I think you can, if you’re passionate about yourself.Brian Baumalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13979778780322097603noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22121485.post-68437360675966461872009-03-27T11:59:00.000-07:002009-04-02T10:19:11.760-07:00The Anxiety Of Being A GuruOn the positive side of things for my consulting business, I have engaged a sales associate who will work at growing the business, and it will be an excellent relationship. However, with sales comes the production of marketing materials and other things designed to promote me as a "guru". These things include presentations, theories, outlooks, White Papers, imperatives, frameworks and other such advice that one may receive from a genie in a bottle, horoscope or a fortune cookie.<br /><br />As I have continued to get involved in the marketing community, I have noticed two types of individuals and potential clients - The Introjector and the Projector. The Introjector says "feed me", "teach me" or "tell me what I should do". They are always looking for the latest and greatest idea, swallowing it whole and adopting it without much chewing it over at all. They never include themselves in the incorporation of new ideas because the grounding of who they are in their professions is very weak.<br /><br />The Projector is actually someone who is "scared" of change or even "cowardly" towards those who suggest new ideas. They have a wonderful way of dismissing anyone or anything who is "new" by making other people shake in their boots. The shaking that Projectors cause in others is no more than their own uncertainty - they have the somewhat unique ability (and one that I secretly envy) to make other people feel uneasy when it is they themselves who are feeling awkward. <br /><br />In dealing with both personality types as a supplier of research and consulting, I am surprised at the amount of work, and effort that is involved in justifying and explaining to satisfy these individual personality types. I believe that a good consultant can create value, provide insight and be competent with a particular methodology or framework. However, the best ones that I know simply have the ability to work in the here-and-now with their clients to force and manage necessary change, regardless of theories, frameworks, imperatives and White Papers. Do I have it in me to actually sell the "steak" while most others will still sell the "framework sizzle"?Brian Baumalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13979778780322097603noreply@blogger.com91tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22121485.post-31611011165280054862008-05-08T14:49:00.001-07:002008-05-08T15:36:32.956-07:00Missed OpportunitiesAs a psychotherapist I know there are certain instances where the client is handing themselves over to me on a silver platter. That is, they say or do something that is such a perfect window or entry into their psyche, and it is impossible to ignore. As therapists, we are trained to recognize these and work well with them.<br /><br />The key for a non-therapist to understand is that these "nuggets" are often not visible to the client, or to the untrained eye. It's not like the client blatantly says "I'm so sad" or "I've realized that I like to make other people laugh because my own childhood was so dull" or "I overachieve because I want to best my Father, who never challenged me enough." These, if anything, are more difficult to work with than the nuggets I'm talking about.<br /><br />When a client reveals themselves, they do it through something that may be out of character for them, something that may be a little different or perhaps using a phrase that seems a little unexpected or out of context for the therapist. And just like in any other discipline, when you get these opportunities you run with them. For example, when in a court of law, your opponent makes a mistake, or misses a piece of evidence, or in hockey, when there are three offensive players to one defensive player - you just go with it, and don't waste the opportunity.<br /><br />Recently, I was in a focus group in Calgary, and the subject was a very detailed policy issue applicable only to a very small segment of the population requiring a large amount of knowledge. By all accounts the groups were going well, and were fairly heady - as most policy work is not based on deep emotional stuff. Anyhow, smack in the middle of the group, a participant gives me a psychptherapeutic nugget... I mean somthing that I could not ignore - it was a perfect gateway into her deeper thoughts and emotional frustrations with the topic. So, I switched hats, and put on my therapeutic one, and quickly launched an intervention - and it failed. The participant was still in her head, so I did it again. I asked a different question in a different way designed to exploit the gateway she had clearly left for me - and again the probe failed. I had not moved her past her head to her heart by one inch. After this, I left it and returned to my standard guide, as I could tell I was getting a bit annoying with this person. Basically, there was a missed opportunity to probe an emotional response.<br /><br />On the plane back to Toronto, I got to thinking about how it is that in a therapy session I can easily take advantage of these nuggets, yet in this group I could not. The following were my ruminations, which I believe to be relevant to researchers who wish to do detailed emotional probing:<br /><br />- In a therapeutic session, the relationship between therapist and client is critical, and while it is very dynamic phenomenon, the relationship is built on trust, in that the client feels supported to reveal their emotional feelings. In focus groups, this type of emotional safety is very, very rarely established. Intellectual safety, like it is OK to guess wrong, or speak you mind, is established and encouraged - but the format simply does not foster emotional safety. My participant wouldn't open-up deeply to me because I had not set that tone, and I suspect that virtually all moderators don't either. I believe the introduction that all moderators give "assissnates" participants in the groups. What I mean by that is that the introduction serves to set a very heady tone, and keeps a respectable distance between themselves and the moderator.<br /><br />- Fostering emotional safety takes time, and more importantly, it quite often takes going off-topic, or involves the moderator relating to the respondent in a way that clients may not like (for example, having a moderator admit that a client's product is inferior, or sharing personal stories about a product) to show that the moderator is simply not a gatherer of data, but a human being. Unfortunately, many clients feel that the moderator should not share personal feelings or stories.<br /><br />- To the point above, I remember once meeting a young marketing student studying research, who said to me something like "I hear that researchers should never bias their work, I hope you don't." I turned to him and said "Actually, I bias my work all the time. The difference between me and you though is that I know what I'm doing and why." So, if I bias my work, it is to get the participant to open-up more.<br /><br />- In order to take advantage of that nugget, I would have had to spend siginificant time with that respondent, leaving the structure of the guide behind me. Quite often, guides are way to focused on specific heady issues - which was fine in this case - I wasn't expected to or expecting to find any emotional issues. However, when dealing with emotional issues, a guide should not be overly structured, if there is a guide at all. Instead, the moderator should have instructions to "Find out what the brand image of x is" and leave it at that. The reason is that each person or group is different, and breaking through defences to reach the emotional core is different for every individual (and quite frankly therapists use different techniques themselves), so as long as the objective gets reached, how it is done should largely be irrelevant. Structured guides confine emotion in the group and the ability of the moderator to explore key issues. Even standard projective techniques will not work properly across all groups and across all individuals. Someone who has a highly suggestible personality or fears authority figures will respond much differently to projective techniques (as defined by the research industry) than an individual who reguarly triggered to respond with anger, fear or protection in the same situation.<br /><br />- Clients need to either be very emotionally aware, or acknowledge that they themselves do not understand emotional processes and let the moderator do their job. A good moderator can re-interpret results into a marketing context, and use a framework to place the results into actionable recommendations.Brian Baumalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13979778780322097603noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22121485.post-51226714839068390232007-08-20T16:57:00.001-07:002007-08-20T17:45:49.505-07:00What is the group really doing with the topic?In Gestalt Psychotherapy, there are four common ways to avoid contact. First off - contact between human being is considerer a model of health in Gestalt - the more contact one makes, the healthier he or she is. Anyhow, the four ways are confluence, introjection, projection and retroflection. While they may seem like fancy words, they're really quite easy to understand. Anyhow, one of the reasons I like focus groups is that I get a chance to see which avoidance a group uses when I discuss a particular topic. The results are often quite revealing.<br /><br />First, a brief synopsis of the four avoidances.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Confluence</span> This is often a state of cluelessness and self-absorption. Teenagers are notorious for it. I'm reminded of the scene in Ferris Bueler's Day Off where Ben Stein is taking attendance among the class. The kids in it have absolutely no interest in him because they do not even recognize that he is there. That is the key symptom of confluence - in the group, people have no interest in you or the topic. There's an energy in the focus group room that gets sucked-out of it when a group is confluent, or there is a sense of phoniness. There can also be the exact opposite - too strong a sense of endearment to the particular topic, kind of like a puppy love if you will - which is also a teenage characteristic.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Introjection</span>Ever have a group that seems to passively and politely accept or reject what you are saying? It's the well-considered "Ummmmm.... I see what you're getting at" response. Or it's the "I don't know Brian - what you're saying doesn't sit well with me" response. What is actually happening is that the person is deciding to either accept or reject themselves and their beliefs, and not me or my topics.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Projection</span>In this type of neurotic behavior, group members actually feel something - it could be fear, anger, joy, sadness or pleasure, but they do not own it. Instead, they disown it in some sort of way - usually by not taking responsibility for their thoughts, feelings or actions. Instead, what they do is put these on someone or something else.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Retroflection</span>At this point, the group is using its brains to sit on the fence and avoid contact. That is, it is wondering - should we risk exposing ourselves and our feelings? Should we take a chance and embrace what is being said?<br /> <br />So what I look for is how the group gravitates and behaves on a particular topic. While behaviours may start off disparate, within a few minutes of the topic, a skilled researcher can often tell how the group is behaving. From there, proper probes and client recommendations can be drawn.<br /><br />Rather than give specific rules for specific behaviours, I will use examples. The fact is, there is no specific actions based on just observed behaviour, and besides, a lot depends on the nature of the product or communication being tested.<br /><br />In my first example, my client was selling a service, but people did not want to acquire it because they were unsure about many of its attributes. Within the focus groups, this uncertainty took the form of projection - people were scared of this product, and people were even more scared about their lack of knowledge concerning it. My recommendation to the client was NOT to come up with solutions to each of the objections, or make the product more appealing. Since the product involved personal sales, I simply told the client to have its sales reps listen, emphasize and say "this is a difficult product to wrap your mind around." An indirect acknowledgment of the fear surrounding the product would make it more salable. Overloading with more information would have caused further fear, projection and distancing from the sales force.<br /><br />The second example involved examining people's perceptions of safety and crime in their communities so that communications messages could be developed. What I noticed in the groups is that people were retroflecting their fears - they were spending a lot of time describing issues in the community, but stopped short of saying that they were personally scared for their lives, even though I knew they were. I began launching a few probes to see if I could get the participants to contact the deep fear inside of them, but they were having none of it. All of my probes brought-up further justifications and intellectualizations, which was a sign that what I was saying was really making them uncomfortable. The communications recommendation to the client was easy - do not mention words like "personal safety" or "harm". Instead focus a message on the fact that safety equals comfort and gentleness. Safety need not come with increased vigilance, with a lock-down of one's freedoms or with increased enforcement. Instead, increased safety can come organically from more community involvement and improved infrastructure measures. The goal of the communication was to provide safety alternatives that would not further fan flames of fear, but rather reduce the anxiety people would have about increased safety measures.Brian Baumalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13979778780322097603noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22121485.post-62761504304497247992007-08-09T10:48:00.004-07:002007-08-09T11:30:06.023-07:00We're A Hit Down Under!I recently did a search on my company's name on Google, as was very surprised to find that two account executives from Markinor, a leading firm in South Africa had used my thoughts on projective techniques when submitting a paper to SAMRA, the South African Market Research Association.<br /><br />To download the paper, <a href="http://www.thinklounge.ca/SAMRA%20paper%20-%20Marna%20Kirchner%20and%20Tracy%20Hammond%20-%20May%202007.doc">click on this link, </a href>and note their distinction between "metaphoric and emotional" research responses.Brian Baumalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13979778780322097603noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22121485.post-21355396420870412682007-08-09T10:07:00.001-07:002007-08-09T11:53:21.718-07:00Groups Vs. One-On-OnesOne of the things that has always given me pause for thought is whether to use groups or one-on-one interviews to conduct qualitative research. I've finally figured it out. Focus groups are generally good at producing middle-of-the-road results - say the kind of results you want when you want to reach an audience in a very general way - like with mass advertising. In this instance someone is likely looking for a lowest-common-denominator type of marketing. I will clarify that there are a lot of uses for this kind of approach. One-on-one interviews, however, are much more useful when testing something that is new, unique or takes time to be adopted.<br /><br />Let's start with groups. Early on in my career, someone asked me "why do groups when you can just do a series of one-on-one interviews?" The answer always stuck with me - focus groups produce "group dynamics", and those are the key results of focus groups - it is not necessarily what people say that is important. We get to watch how an idea changes, where there is resistance to it, and where there is acceptance of it. We get to see how strongly people hold on to ideas, and how they react to having their ideas changed, rejected or challenged. A marketer can observe these dynamics and figure-out what arguments or factors will move people and change their opinions. This is why I love using groups to evaluate policy issues, which are very dynamic and flexible.<br /><br />What prompted me to write this blog is a continual interest in why groups can still perform so badly at predicting certain product successes/failures, and why people always assume that "mediocre" products are something that have been "focus grouped." I finally came up with my solution. In observing group dynamics, I've come to realize that the group is always moving towards (or away from) something. Ten people take an idea, play with it and either change it or reach an opinion about it. When group processes like this happen, you can't help but get a watered-down version of the original.<br /><br />In a focus group people are not themselves - it is sort of like "mob mentality" minus the violence - we would do and say things in a group that we would not do and say as individuals (hmmmm - maybe that's why groups are such bad predictors of behaviour). In a focus group, people ARE swayed by dominators - they are shy and they do advance their agendas. A moderator is there to observe, balance and interpret these phenomena. As such, they are not negatives - this is what happens in real life as people live in a dynamic world, and if what is being tested is something that needs to meet these criteria.<br /><br />Let me give two positive examples of this. The first is a psychologist put jellybeans in a jar and asked individuals to guess the number inside. Each individual answer was significantly off, but when all answers were averaged together, it was surprising how close they came to the truth. The second one comes from Malcom Gladwell's book "Blink". In it he describes how market research and focus groups that are used to predict Top-40 hits were very tough on a singer named Kenna, yet the music industry claimed that his was the most innovative sound they had heard in a long time. Gladwell asks how can focus groups differ so much from experts? The answer is what I wrote above - focus groups are great when you want to appeal to the masses (and I know nothing more mass-oriented than Top 40 Radio), and that's what the research is geared towards.<br /><br />It is worthwhile to note that what Gladwell fails to ask is whether it was actually a good thing that the groups were so negative towards the singer. If indeed standard groups produce "mass-oriented results", then what the groups are saying is that this person will not be a hit on Top-40. Maybe, however, there are other marketing avenues to get this singer across. Perhaps the masses do not hear what the record executives hear, and therefore Top-40 is too wide an audience. That to me is what the focus groups are saying. It is not a negative that the groups did not like the Kenna - in fact he even says "the problem is that this type of music requires a leap of faith." The fact is though, that Top-40 programers do not take leaps of faith.<br /><br />So, this brings me to one-on-ones. In these settings, people make decisions independently, and the moderator has more time to probe deeply. Now what do I specifically mean by probing more deeply (focus groups often claim that they do "deep dives" into people's opinions, so how much more deep can a one-on-one interview get?) Well, Gladwell in "Blink" says that when people evaluate new and unique products, they don't have the words to describe them, or relevant frames of reference. As such, people need time to develop these - a moderator can take the time to develop this language with an individual participant more easily than in a group setting. A moderator is able to initiate more challenges and probes in a one-on-one interview.<br /><br />Evaluating a new product or even a new signer in a group does not leave room for individual opinion. Moreover, in a group, people are not willing to take the "leap of faith" that Kenna recognizes is necessary to enjoy his music. A one-on-one will determine whether there is long-term success for a product. A group will help determine if there is mass, instant-term appeal. The issue for marketers is to determine which is more important to them. Unfortunately, in my opinion as a consumer, the latter seem to dominate.Brian Baumalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13979778780322097603noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22121485.post-91412886483512817922007-07-31T14:46:00.000-07:002007-08-09T08:18:51.078-07:00"In The 1950's most major advertising agencies employed Freudian psychoanalysts"This is a quote from Malcolm Gladwell's book "Blink". The central premise of the book is that humans make snap judgments within a blink of an eye - BUT that this mechanism works at an unconscious or "unaware" level, and attempts to have people explain WHY or HOW they reach these quick decisions often ends in failure. In fact, asking people to explain what the actual snap judgment was is often an exercise in futility. <br /><br />Gladwell makes the quote because the exploration of the why and how we make decisions is the purview of psychoanalysts and psychotherapists. In my own psychotherapy training, every time I asked "why" to a mock client - my instructors (and the entire class, if they were watching, would cringe at the question). When I was reviewing other students who asked questions like "HOW does that make you feel", I'd call "Dr. Phil" on them. <br /><br />So how do psychotherapists get at hearing these snap decisions, and at asking the hows and whys? Typically, we look at two things - inconsistencies and explanations. Inconsistencies are often what academic psychologists spend a lot of time studying. They study physiological responses when people lie, they map the human face or they grade how people interact with one another in order to <br /> get deeper understandings of the relationships between individuals. Psychotherapists, however, do not have access to the monitors or methods these academics use - so we end up using what happens in the "here and now" as a way of digging deeper.<br /><br />We are trained to look for inconsistencies and "explanations". There's a saying that goes something like "I can't hear what you're saying, because what you're not saying is deafening." It's what's not being said that is the useful stuff. For example, if we ask someone to comment on whether they like the look of a new product and they say "Ummmm... well... it's kind of ugly." What is of interest to us is the hesitation the participant is presenting us with, and not what they are saying. There is a reason for the hesitation. What the moderator needs to do is get to the bottom of it as it relates to the client's product (as opposed to relating to their psychological issues).<br /><br />What I would probably do is just repeat the words "kind of..." back to the participant and see where it goes from there. They may say "Well, I don't know... the colour is a bit off and the sides are too angular." At that point I have all I need - the participant has said "Well, I don't know..." At that point, I know that the transaction is less about the ugliness of the product, and more about the participant trying to come up with words to describe something that is new to them. The door is wide open for me to get deeper meaning words than "ugly" to describe the product. I may say "I see - the colour and the sides. Let's not focus on those. You said it was ugly, yet I get a sense that that word was just your initial reaction. What else is going on?"<br /><br />Besides having a hesitant participant, an exact opposite situation may occur. A person may say "Oh my God!! Look at the thing. It's a design disaster. My two year old could take Lego and do a better version of it than that!!" From there I may say, "Well, tell me all about it... let it rip." What I will do is let the person explain away, and exhaust themselves, their need to be superior and their need to explain - what this person wants is an audience, and a chance to be heard - whether or not what they are saying is useful or true. I will generally not be roped-in by any of the explanation given (unless something is really striking). Once they are done, I will say something like "Now that you're done... look at it again - and this time, tell me what you really think." In this situation, it is critical to ensure that the participant does not think that that I am trying to bias or change his answer in any way. What I am trying to do is get past the initial BS, and get to opinions that are not based on a person's neurotic desire to criticize.<br /><br />In closing - Malcolm Gladwell states that when people evaluate new products, they often do not have the language to describe them. This is true - and another axiom of new product development is that people tend to criticize more than they compliment - people don't like change. There is no doubt that initial reactions play a very strong role in marketing - competition is fierce, and many companies can't take the "time" to see if something will succeed or not (which to me is a very sad state of affairs). However, what is initially "figural" for someone about a new product WILL eventually change or shift. It is one of the central beliefs of psychotherapy - people do have the ability to change. The examples above attempt to show how someone can go from an initial impression of a product to the next stage. A good marketing campaign will use this information to get people there faster, and with a higher rate of success.Brian Baumalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13979778780322097603noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22121485.post-82810928191638339472007-07-31T14:45:00.000-07:002007-08-02T07:37:11.312-07:00Anyone wonder why we are called moderatorsWhen I started moderating about 10 years ago I wondered why that was the title given to us. Why aren't we called "interviewers", "facilitators" or "leaders"?<br /><br />The answer suddenly hit me as I completed my training in psychotherapy. In Gestalt, one of the models of a healthy person is one who can deal with circumstances in an "even-keeled way" and take responsibility for his or her actions. In other words, they can moderate their behaviour.<br /><br />Looking further at the definition of the verb "to moderate", we see it means "to reduce the excessiveness of; make less violent, severe, intense, or rigorous: to moderate the sharpness of one's words."<br /><br />To me this gives the perfect definition of a focus group moderator - they are there to make sure that everyone's opinions, thoughts and emotions get equal time - no one person or thought should dominate. What this means to me, however, is that I am moderating the whole person within the qualitative research. My goal is not to just let a person's head or rational thoughts dominate the discussion. My goal is to view participants as a whole and moderate between their head, heart, emotions, dreams and fears. I know I have done a good job as a moderator when I have moderated the "sharpness of one's words" and brought out "the richness of one's emotions".Brian Baumalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13979778780322097603noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22121485.post-7935141017169081302007-07-31T14:01:00.000-07:002007-08-01T08:26:24.228-07:00Communicating Research To Dumb-DumbsBet the title caught your eye. For any clients or potential clients, the title is not what you think at all!! I actually had a client that I just finished an assignment for a few weeks ago. The main objective was to determine how they could build better relationships with one of the constituencies they serve. A specific focus was to determine how my client could present scientific research to their constituents in a way that would convince them of its validity.<br /><br />In my focus groups, when I asked about their use of scientific research, my BS detector went off when I heard their responses. Most of the groups were comprised of individuals who did not have a research or scientific background - so to them research was "complicated" and "biased". Moreover, participants doubted the methods and conclusions drawn, saying they just did not know how the research could be so precise as to isolate specific effects of certain substances. I had no reason to doubt these stated responses, but the BS detector told me that these participants were actually scared of research and embarrassed about not knowing how to use or interpret it. This was the unsaid truth in the groups.<br /><br />Knowing this, my recommendation to the client was not modify how research was presented - rather I simply told them to present the research as is, but to LISTEN and actually AGREE with most everything their constituents had to say about the research, even though, in my clients eyes what was being said was not true. I said in my presentation "What you need to realize is that these people don't know how to use research and are scared of it. If you actually agree with them in general, and then softly point-out point out how the research you are discussing is different, they will be much more likely to listen to you. You can teach them without triggering their concerns over not knowing too much about scientific research."<br /><br />The recommendation is based on a number of theories in Gestalt Psychotherapy:<br /><br />- In every transaction, the other person has "the power", not you. If you can yield to this, your mind begins to open-up and listen to the other person. In this example, my client's constituents are actually obliterating the research with a simple thought - how's that for power. They don't have to take any action - all the constituents have to do is say "I don't believe what you're putting in front of me." When this happens, you're dead in the water, and there is no way that you will be able to out maneuver this state of mind. There's a wonderful saying I use - "Never argue with an idiot - they just drag you down to their level and beat you with experience." Now I'm not calling anyone involved in this research an idiot, but the saying holds. If someone is not going to see your point of view, no matter how "right" you are, you're the one that walks away frustrated and angry. The other person walks away "victorious", because they could care less about increasing their knowledge - they care more about winning and have in fact done so.<br /><br />- There is a wonderful model called the "Co-dependency triangle". In it, people involved in any transaction can be described as "Persecutors", "Rescuers" and "Victims." In my client's case, the constituents were the Persecutors, and my clients were the Victims (i.e. "How could you not accept this research... it's completely valid"). The way to deal with a Persecutor is not to react to what they are saying, but to simply listen to it, keep listening and then show that you have listened. The persecutor simply wants to be heard. When that happens, the transaction opens to more possibilities.<br /><br />- The Gestalt Cycle is a model that explains how a person makes contact with his or her environment. The very first part of the cycle assumes that a person is able to recognize that his environment is saying something to him (ever day-dream at the office and have someone call your name for 5 seconds - you're missing the environment), and that what the environment says is valid (ever feel slightly warm, but wait too long before you blast your A/C - you're dismissing yourself and your hot environment). My client was not recognizing any of their constituent's objections as valid. When this happens, my client is in a better position to respond.<br /><br />In closing, I have taken on as my position to bring "humanity" into market research. While I have used three very "highfalutin" theories to describe why my client should engage with their constituent's objections, the bottom line is that I am simply recommending that my client make some human contact and show empathy to someone who is a bit scared and does not know how to express it. When looked at this way, who needs the theory, eh?Brian Baumalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13979778780322097603noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22121485.post-50445551604581713362007-07-31T05:49:00.002-07:002007-07-31T12:25:34.019-07:00It's Time To Stop Using Qualitative Research As A "Pass/Fail" SystemQualitative Research, and in particular, Focus Groups, are the target of a lot of criticism because of their inability to accurately determine the success or failure of what is being tested. If I hear one more New Coke story, or Malcolm Gladwell's Herman Miller example in "Blink", I think I'll puke. However, despite my gastrointestinal reflux reflex, the fact is these stories ring true, and qualitative research (and I would argue Quant as well, but I don't do either Windows or Quant so I won't speak to it) should not be used to pass or fail a product.<br /><br />A good psychotherapist will know within a second what someone's reaction is to a new product, regardless of what they state. A good researcher will know how to use that reaction to get relevant data for their clients. The main way to do this is to take the "focus" off the "evaluation" and put it more into a moderated discussion, or into a realm where people do not have to justify anything. "Evaluations" and "justifications" (e.g. Why did you react this way? What do you like... what don't you like...) have a very technical term in Gestalt Psychotherapy - they are called Bullshit. What ends up happening is that even though the researcher/therapist can see how a person reacts to a new product within a second, often the person doing the reacting is completely unaware of their reaction. As such, when they are asked to justify or explain, they end up being confused and spewing-out answers in order to please themselves or the moderator. This also has the effect of "fixing" a person onto a specified answer. Participants will not want to be seen as "flip-flopping" in front of a group, so they tend to keep justifying a position that may have changed.<br /><br />There are very few reactions someone can have when seeing something new - positive, negative or neutral (neutral could also be called confused). What needs to happen in a product evaluation is that even though the moderator knows initial reaction, the moderator must let participants sit with their thoughts and feelings for 30-60 seconds before people have a chance to speak.<br /><br />From there, the moderator simply probes with a "Well..." and lets the discussion flow from there. What begins to happen in the discussion is that people are much more in-tune with their initial impressions (they've had a chance to sort through their own BS so their clarity of thinking is better), and will often what will happen is that people will begin to refer to their initial reaction, and discuss how it changes as they have had time to sit with their impression, or to hear others in a group.<br /><br />So, here's where the pass/fail concept gets thrown out the window. Someone could have had a negative initial split second view of the product, but when they sit with their thoughts and feelings, the negative impression can be melted away - and this is what the product test measures - the change in opinion (if any) from initial reaction through to a final opinion. The change can go from negative to positive, positive to negative or from any change in between. The only thing that a moderator needs to be on the lookout for is whether the change in views someone has is a real phenomenon or whether it a result of "group-think", an attempt to please, or an attempt to "kybosh" a good idea. These three behaviours are considered neurotic and unproductive, and a good moderator will know how to get around them, and know the extent of legitimate influence or neurotic influence.<br /><br />So what we wind-up getting from a concept test is not a pass/fail result at all. Instead what we get is a dynamic result (which the last time I checked is the way a market actually operates). We can measure initial opinions (which, to a good marketer or advertiser should mean very little - their job is to change opinions after-all), but more importantly we can measure how those opinions can be changed and influenced. The group discussion will illuminate what factors changed their initial impressions of the product, or what factors keep people stuck in their initial impressions. The goal for the moderator is to ensure that the conversation is kept free of that very technical Gestalt term - bullshit. <br /><br />And speaking of that, it is worthwhile to return to the initial split-second reaction observed by the moderator when the product is first exposed - he needs to be keenly aware of it as people are speaking. It is possible that someone could "fudge" their explanations, or change their story based on what they hear in the group. It is important for the moderator to check-out what a participant is saying versus the initial observed reaction. There is nothing wrong with a moderator calling someone and saying "I hear that you initially said you liked Product X, but I happened to see you out of the corner of my eye and I would have made a bet that you didn't like it - just let me know how far off I am." All this does is re-frame the participant back to their initial thoughts so that the data is more accurate, and we can more accurately measure the progression of thoughts and opinions.Brian Baumalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13979778780322097603noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22121485.post-58603944449504887072007-07-30T10:29:00.000-07:002007-07-30T16:36:06.794-07:00If You Want "Real Usage" Figures Go Elsewhere!Most reported "usage" data from qualitative research should be treated as suspect, and I would go so far as to recommend that my clients NOT make decisions based on usage data reported in qualitative research.<br /><br />Before I go into details, let me provide a key reason for my recommendation. I have a summer cottage, and a few times a year we have myriad visitors, like cousins and friends of cousins who go to the local casino. The funny thing is that most every visitor to this casino comes back "a winner" - they doubled their money, beat the bank, killed at Blackjack and knew just how to bet at Roulette. My question to them is simply this - "What farking casino are you people going to, because every time I go, I lose money." When I challenge them with this, what invariably happens is that these "killer winnings" get whittled down to statements like "well, we won enough to pay for dinner" or "I did well at roulette, but I lost a lot at blackjack."<br /><br />Now, most people know exactly what's going on. A bunch of beer-drinkin, nature-luvin, Muskoka-bound, middle-aged Canadian "dudes" want to "play up" their winnings so that they can puff-out their chests bigger than the next guy. Of course, we know full-well that the odds of so many people winning so much money are slim to none.<br /><br />So, how does this relate to reported usage in qualitative research? There are three ways. The first is rather intuitive - many people in a group will "fudge" just a bit to blend-in. The fudging may be to ensure that they are equal with the group, or ensure that what they say corresponds to social norms. Some may just be scared of telling the truth. This forms the basis for why we can't rely on qualitative research to provide us with numbers of any sort of reliability.<br /><br />However, the next two reasons are where a deeper understanding of psychology comes into play. The second reason my story relates to qualitative research is because it is not the reported numbers or usage that is important to us. What is important to us is the deeper feelings and thoughts that underly the answer. If a moderator's BS detector is going-off full-tilt like mine does when I hear these "casino stories", I know to probe further. What is it about this reporting that is common to most of these people? There is a hope that they will win, and a fear of looking foolish in front of others.<br /><br />The third way this relates to qualitative research is what I do after the fact. In my casino example, I actually stood quite firm. The way I questioned people about the casino they went to was such that they knew I would likely follow-up with "Exactly how much did you win?" or "Tell me the method you used that night?" When people have to compound their "exaggeration", they usually back-down. Now, in a focus group - it is highly unlikely that I would ask "what casino are you going to..." - mainly because I mentioned that it is not important for me to get the truth in this instance. Instead, what I would likely do is say "Wow - there's a lot of excitement going on in here... Can someone show me what it is like to win a lot of money at a Casino?" Engaging them in their fantasy will show the client how to enhance a brand, experience or communication to play to the perception of excitement that these players have. Attempting to find the "truth" of the matter would serve to ground participants in a reality that they would rather not face, and one that would not be appropriate for a casino message.Brian Baumalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13979778780322097603noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22121485.post-86068418688704990362007-03-15T07:05:00.000-07:002007-03-15T07:46:18.554-07:00Oh Go On - Pry Into People's Personal LivesRecently finished a series of focus groups testing ad concepts. Fairly standard fare. As part of the concept, the agency presented us with some materials that attempted to show what people did in their private lives if they had spare time. The agency attempted to use humour to illustrate this, and our client (rightfully so) disagreed with he approach.<br /><br />However, what the client asked us to do in the groups was "find-out what people do privately in their spare time" so that we could present creative that was relevant. This too, was also a noble goal. The issue was, however, that the entire two hours of the groups were taken-up by testing about 16 different versions of the creative, so all we could do is once we presented the creative with the spare time concept, we asked "what kinds of indulgences do you do with your spare time?"<br /><br />The question absolutely flopped, and the client was quite insistent on asking it. In all of the groups that I did, participants said things like "I thought you said these groups were confidential" and "You expect us to tell you that?" While I was able to manoeuvre around those objections and get to some sort of answer, I knew the response was far from truthful, honest or thorough.<br /><br />While I have very little concern about this for the project I was doing (the main objective was concept testing - this was just an very incidental add-on), what bugs me is that my client was unable to see that this question would get him no valuable information. For some reason, he felt that it was OK, in the middle of a focus group, to stop everything and ask people to reveal what they indulge in during their free time - and what was worse, is that he actually expected people to shift gears and answer the question.<br /><br />The issue is that during the concept testing, people were very much thinking "in their heads" - they were evaluating, using logic, rating the ads, etc... They were not in their emotions, and were not at a place where they could share anything significant about their lives - yet smack in the middle of a group, the client expected to gather this information. <br /><br />What concerns me is that there are people out there who are responsible for advertising and communication and still feel that people function like robots and approach things in a strictly logical and patterned way. "They're being exposed to activities they do in their free time in the ads, so ask them about the indulgences..." When I mentioned that he probably would not get much information out of this, the client just seemed to look through me, as if he did not understand.<br /><br />Anyhow, the creative test went well, and the client got the information needed. Moreover, this was not a time to tell the client to do a fancy projective or other psychological exploration of free-time activities. What this client does need to learn, however, is that people are not logical, but emotional. Once the client accepts that, he may be open to the idea that emotions (such as fear of exposing oneself in a focus group) follow their own set of rules and patterns, and that there is a certain logic to those "soft mushy" emotions that can be used both in focus group and effective communications campaigns.Brian Baumalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13979778780322097603noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22121485.post-63945227997923785162007-01-07T12:19:00.000-08:002007-01-07T12:41:56.346-08:00"Raving Fans" Researches "Friendliness"I was recently reading "Raving Fans" by Ken Blanchard. It is a book I read every few years just to refesh myself about good customer service - afterall most customer service out there really sucks. It is nice to know that there are some people out there who are preaching that customer service can be an easy system to implement.<br /><br />Anyhow, there was a reference in the book which said "Our research shows that friendly people talk about things not related to business." I thought this to be a very interesting comment. Businesses and marketers tend to measure the cold, hard and factual aspescts of a business. They ask questions like "What makes you satisfied", "What featuers do you want in the product" or "How does our quality compare to that of our competition" and on and on this fact-finding goes.<br /><br />In light of these "fact-finding questions" (which I do not discount as important), it is refreshing to see someone a sense that there are people out there who ask "what does frieldliness look like" or "what does joy mean to you" or "describe a fun experience." These are emotional questions, and they are actually how a business delivers its marketing and its service. I mean think of it - the quote suggests that people who want to deliver good customer service actually have a vision of what "friendly service" means. They are not making assumptions, and they are not imposing their own definitions - they are actually researching their customers.<br /><br />Now, since I do have a background in psychotherapy, I know that simply asking "what does friendliness look like" is a sure-fire way to turn an emotional research topic into the same-old fact-finding missions that many researchers typically use. If a researcher wants to get a full understanding of what a friendly experience looks like they need to get a respondent to a place that is outside their logical head responses. They need the respondent to be able to tap their own emotions in order to answer the question.<br /><br />What I want to note, however, is that there is no justice in doing emotional research and then attempting to "mechanically" implement a friendly customer service plan. For example, it does no good to say "Our research shows that friendly service means that we should not talk about business - therefore, all employees will talk about the weather, sports or a top-5 TV show." What this does is that it objectifies the customer, the employee and the experience that they will share.<br /><br />What needs to be done is to trust that employees will know, from their own experiences, how to be friendly and how to give friendly service. However, to help them along, researchers should videotape customers describing, feeling and actually receiving friendly customer service and then show this to employees. From here, we can give employees much broader guidelines in terms of what to talk about and to evaluate each customer encounter as a special opportunity to make real friendly contact, because employees will see exactly what a customer who is receicing friendly service looks like.Brian Baumalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13979778780322097603noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22121485.post-1141873245598378862006-03-08T18:29:00.000-08:002006-03-10T07:59:37.586-08:00Not A Focus Group In The Bunch - Yay!I just came back from an MRIA event where the speaker said he used extensive qualitative research to reposition Barilla, a leading brand of Italian pasta in America. Barilla had a seemingly unlimited budget and the research supplier threw just about every qualitative technique in the book at the study with the exception of - you guessed it Focus Groups.<br /><br />I have to say as a psychotherapist-researcher this makes me very proud. When the objective is repositioning, or any branding work really, we must get respondents out of their head and get at deeply held emotions and opinions. To that end, to reposition Barilla, the research company conducted depth interviews lasting four hours, memory regression interviews, ethnographic interviews, on-site interviews and opinion leader interviews. Not a single focus group in the bunch, and I am proud. Focus groups produce head/logical/bullshit responses, and to take respondents out of their heads in a focus group requires a significant effort. In a two hour session, you would be lucky if five minutes were real emotions or opinions, and chances are the moderator would have to try very hard to get that five minutes (either that or it would just happen out of sheer luck).<br /><br />What struck me most, however, was that during his research, the speaker himself developed a strong passion for Italy, Italian Food and the participants in his study. In Gestalt Therapy terms, he made what we call "contact" with his participants. Contact, in Gestalt Therapy, is kind of the be-all-and-end-all of human behaviour. Contact is basically a raw, honest and open interaction that occurs between two people where there is a confluence of beings, but at the same time an awareness of individuality that works as as an invisible "give-and-take" mechanism during the exchange. The end result of contact is a changed perspective in both individuals. It need not be a change in opinion of the person with whom you make contact, it may be another change (e.g. how one views themselves, or how one views life in general), but the point is that something has shifted in both participants. Contact cannot be "forced" - it just happens. Certain conditions are more condusive to contact, such as the type of research this individual did - with most of his research being lengthy one-on-one interviews.<br /><br />While the presenter had a PhD and was obviously a very astute researcher in the way he set-up and deployed his reserach methods, I wonder if the real value to his research was simply his ability to make plain and simple contact with his participants so that he understood them on a personal level, and not on a theoretical one. He kept telling his audience not about psychological, anthropological or sociological theories - rather he spoke of how his participants spent hours telling him about the Italian meals they ate that had a significant imprint on their lives. He talked simply about the deep impressions that participants had about Italian food. I'm just wondering if his actual contact with his participants was much more worthwhile than any of the theory involved. Is a good qualitative researcher one that can make contact with participants regardless of whether it is in a group, a depth interview, a projective technique, an expert interview or an on-site interview?<br /><br />Gestalt Therapy states that any time we manipulate or objectify someone, we devalue them, ourselves and our transactions together. I am really beginning to think that a good qualitative researcher need do nothing more than make contact with participants and experience a shift in themselves and their psyche (as opposed to a shift in the way they think about the results of the research). If the researcher can read and interpret this shift in themselves, then it is likely that they will be well ahead of a researcher that does not make contact but understands theory.Brian Baumalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13979778780322097603noreply@blogger.com80tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22121485.post-1141655324081056032006-03-06T06:28:00.000-08:002006-03-30T20:13:35.986-08:00Ryerson University Gets An A- For Understanding ProjectivesI continue to look at how the Canadian market research industry uses and understands projective techniques, and will often search Google to see the flotsam and jetsam of thoughts about projectives and their use in qualitative research. For the first time yesterday, I came across an understanding of Projectives from Ryerson University in Toronto that actually captures the fact that projectives are based on a complex psychological process. <a href="http://www.ryerson.ca/%7Emjoppe/ResearchProcess/841ProjectiveTechniques.htm"><br />Click here to see the link</a><br /><br />What is of interest is the last sentence that says <span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">"While deceptively simple, projective techniques often require the expertise of a trained psychologist to help devise the tests and interpret them correctly."</span><span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>Nothing comes closer to the truth about projectives! I wish the Canadian industry would continue to reach-out to people who are trained in psychology to implement and interpret projectives.<br /><br />The reason I only give Ryerson an A- in its understanding is because of what is contained in <a href="http://www.ryerson.ca/%7Emjoppe/ResearchProcess/841ThirdPersonTechnique.htm">this link.</a><br /><br />To quote from the page - <span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">"For instance, when asked why they might choose to go on an Alaskan cruise, the response might be because of the quality of the scenery, the opportunity to meet interesting people and learn about a different culture. But when the same question is asked as to why a neighbour might go on such a cruise, the response could very well be because of ‘brag appeal’ or to show off... By providing respondents with the opportunity to talk about someone else, such as a neighbour, a relative or a friend, they can talk freely about attitudes that they would not necessarily admit to holding themselves."</span><br /><br />While this is true in theory it faces significant issues in practicality. Specifically, we need to ask ourselves if getting a participant to talk about "a neighbour, relative or friend" tells us more about the participant, or more about the "neighbour, relative or friend". For example, I have relatives who would definitely "brag" (ad nauseum in some cases) about their Alaskan cruise, but I have a set of friends who would take the cruise more to discover the science behind Glaciers and Artic Life. As such, the response may vary based on the "friend, relative or neighbour" the participant is envisioning. One relative may be a braggart, another may not, and if this is the case, we need to question the validity of data obtained in this manner. In psychotherapy, a projective like this is used more to find-out about the <span style="font-weight: bold;">relationship</span> between the individual and "the neighbour, relative and friend" than it is to find-out about a person's hidden thoughts or desires.<br /><br />If I wanted to get a person to project about an Alaskan cruise, I would ask them to project the following situation - "Say after your vacation you are contacted by a travel reporter who wants to know all about your vacation. Close your eyes, and start to talk to him about the vacation. What's he going to ask you about the vacation? How do you feel when you are responding? How will you tell your friends and family about the vacation? Will it be the same or different to the way you are talking to the reporter? Now, the reporter pulls out a video camera and tells you to make a silent motion with your body to describe your Alaskan vacation. He wants to include pictures of people in his article. It could be any type of motion or pose, but the point is that you have to communicate the cruise without using words - only your body. How would you do that?"<br /><br />There are a few advantages to this technique:<br /><br />- The projection to a reporter is an impartial stranger. There will be not be confusing inter-individual dynamics in the qualitative data. That is, we get the participant to project onto someone else, but without any of the interpersonal dynamics that may be involved in doing so with a relative, neighbour or friend.<br /><br />- The qualitative researcher should probe the tone of the participant talking to the reporter. For example, the researcher should say things like "I notice you are excited when you are talking - tell me more about the excitement." or "You seem to be stating things very matter-of-factly. How does this relate to the cruise you just took?" or "Do I get a sense that you are bragging to the reporter?"<br /><br />- Getting participants to use body language to describe the vacation also adds another layer of qualitative data. Besides the actual pose they take, we should be looking at the energy, creativity and effort put in to the pose as a way of understanding what the participant thinks of an Alaskan cruise.<br /><br />Another projective may be to ask which relative/neighbour/friend that they know would be most likely to take the Alaskan cruise and then ask the participant to describe the person, and their pesonality traits. This way we will see if the participant chooses someone who is a braggart, a true world traveler, an adventurer, an intellect or whomever. The point is that we are not introducing noise into the projection.<br /><br />Overall, I have to give Ryerson pretty high marks for being some of the first people I have seen in Canada to realize that projectives are both "deceptively simple" and that they require "a trained psychologist to devise and interpret the test." Where Ryerson's example does not get full marks is on its application, and in fact, this illustrates why someone who is trained in psychology is necessary to conduct proper projectives. The example Ryerson provided - having a person project what a relative, friend or neighbour would say about an Alaskan cruise likely tells us more about the relationship between the participant and the relative/neighbour/friend, than it does about the Alaskan cruise itself.Brian Baumalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13979778780322097603noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22121485.post-1141234753845520422006-03-01T09:25:00.000-08:002006-03-01T09:39:13.856-08:00Do We Really Need Discussion GuidesI just returned from doing focus groups in Iqaluit. It is truly one of the most fascinating places I have ever been, and I would suggest that every Canadian take at least one trip to Canada's north.<br /><br />As I was moderating two groups with Inuit population there one thing occurred to me - do we really need to have detailed discussion guides drawn-up and created for us to follow during the groups? Now sure, I know that the client needs to be reassured that their objectives will be met in the groups. I also know that moderators need reminders to cover certain aspects of the project. However, I found that every time I referred to the guide during my time in Iqaluit, participants lost interest very quickly. They much preferred me to engage them in conversation that I createdk, rather than looking at my guide as a reference.<br /><br />If we are conducting qualitative research to better understand the consumer, then wouldn't it make sense to have that very same consumer lead us through the conversation and topic? While I have never moderated groups without a full discussion guide in front of me, I find that I am more relaxed as a moderator and get better results out of the groups the less I refer to a static guide. The more I am able to be spontaneous, the better the results tend to be.Brian Baumalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13979778780322097603noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22121485.post-1140107723583993962006-02-16T08:00:00.000-08:002006-02-16T08:35:23.616-08:00Quick Quip About BiasJust a quick entry today. When I started out in the industry and used to tell other people who were just starting out what I did, they would be quick to say "I hope you don't bias your results and your data." I quickly learned to say "Of course I bias my results and data - I just know what I'm doing, that's all."<br /><br />I firmly believe that any research, regardless of how careful the designers are, will bias its participants in one way or another. I believe that a researcher proves his or her mettle when they are able to analyze bias better than they are able to analyze the raw data itself.<br /><br />I did 25-focus group study and found that participants would be comfortable if a particulary contentious government policy were impelmented on a voluntary basis, instead of a mandatory basis. Thought the client trusted me, they were very surprised to hear the result, and I don't blame them. Here was my explanation - I asked participants about whether it should be voluntary or mandatory after nearly two hours of previous discussion with it. As such, they were comfortable with certain aspects of the policy and other factors such that they felt a voluntary implementation would be just fine.<br /><br />However, if you asked the same question on a quant study, most likely you would get a majority of people wanting a mandatory implementation. There are two reasons - first, a quant study does not allow (in my opinion) to get intimately comfortable with a topic, so they tend to answer from a place of alienation and fear especially if they do not know all the details of a policy - and mandatory sounds like it will provide more protection than voluntary. The second reason is why would someone answer that they want less of something (i.e. a voluntary implementation), when we present them with the option to get more of something (i.e. a mandatory implementation) at no additional cost or burden to them?<br /><br />Here is how I interpreted the results:<br /><br />- The participants got comfortable with the topic enough so that they felt a voluntary standard would suffice. If the client wants the Canadian public to accept a voluntary standard, they would need to spend significant time and effort to educate and communicate with them the same way that a 2-hour focus group got them comfortable with the topic. If the client has the resources to do this, then a voluntary implementation would work.<br /><br />- If, however, the client did not have the resources available to intimately educate the public about the policy, then they would most likely want a mandatory implementation of it.<br /><br />The analysis above was more based on an analysis of bias of the survey instrument and method than it was on any of the particular results that were contained in the study.<br /><br />As a final strategic note, if the client did not have the resources or cash to communicate intimately with the Canadian public to try and create acceptance of a voluntary standard, they would still have to pay-out significant sums of money if policy became mandatory. Specifically, they would need to set-up monitoring and enforcement functions among the industry they regulate. As such, the client would need to investigate which option would cost them less to implement, but realizing that both options would take a significant amount of money to implement.Brian Baumalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13979778780322097603noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22121485.post-1140024912083469752006-02-15T09:34:00.000-08:002006-02-21T17:53:00.676-08:00Layers of the personality - a primer<span style="font-weight: bold;">NOTE - THIS IS A THEORETICAL PRIMER. IT DOES NOT CONTAIN IMPLICATIONS FOR RESEARCH OR BRANDING. IT IS AN INTERESTING READ FOR THOSE THAT WISH TO UNDERSTAND BASIC PERSONALITY AND EMOTIONAL THEORY.</span><br /><br />Most psychotherapies agree that people hide and defend against showing their true emotions and feelings. The reasoning is quite simple - as children at some point we learned that it was not safe to reveal how we truly think or feel. The experience that exposed us to this danger need not have been something horribly traumatic - it could be as simple as not being able to stay out an extra 30 minutes for Halloween, or it could have been the time that we were told to stop crying (maybe because our parents had a really bad headache and just needed some quiet to make it go away).<br /><br />While we may not even remember the particular experience, what sticks with us throughout our life is the method we used to cover-up and subvert our own drives. From that point on, we learn to manipulate our environment to get what we want without having to express our ture thoughts and feelings. It is this manipulation and avoidance that Gestalt Psychologists refer to as the layers of the personality. This personality structure has profound implications both for qualitative research and for branding in general. It is the framework that I use when conducting, analyzing and presenting research results.<br /><br />This blog will contain three articles on Layers of the Personality. This article, the first, gives an overview of what the layers of the personality are on general theoretical level. <span style="font-weight: bold;">It does not have any significant information on branding or qualitative research - so don't read this expecting it.</span> The next two articles will focus on how I use them when I conduct qualitative research and how I can diagnose brands and communications based on the layers of the personality.<br /><br />To start, let's focus on the general context of the layers of the personality. We display our personality when we interact with others. When we do so, we either make conscious or unconscious decisions about how to react and how much of our true selves we reveal. When we make these decisions, we decide what layer of the personality we will be in. The decision to remain in a layer or to change a layer is largely based on how we judge the other person. The more we trust them, the more likely we are to reveal ourselves (NB - while this is not always the case in actual psychotherapy, for our purposes it will suffice). In a research context, the more we trust the moderator and the group, the more we will reveal ourselves. The more we relate to a brand, the more we want it.<br /><br />There are five layers of the personality - the first four are what Gestalt Psychotherapists call Neurotic Layers, and the fifth layer, which I call the Valuable Emotional Core, contains our true thoughts, feelings and drives. It is important to note though, that each layer serves a purpose, and we can function quite well as a person and as a society operating at just the four Neurotic Layers (in fact, I could argue that we do just that!). If we went around constantly showing our true feelings or emotions, we would literally be a bunch of babies crying, throwing temper tantrums and laughing uncontrollably. So keep this in mind - our goal in research and in branding is not to always communicate <span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">in</span> the Valuable Emotional Core, but to communicate <span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">from</span></span> the Valuable Emotional Core and to use/understand how to use the other layers effectively to communicate and find-out information from qualitative research participants.<br /><br />The remainder of this article will discuss the layers of the personality in general terms. The next two articles will show how I apply these in conducting qualitative research so that I thoroughly understand what participants think and feel. The second article provides applications for branding. As you read each layer, keep in mind that these layers are in reference to conversations/interactions we have with other people, and each layer is a defense to feeling true emotion.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Cliche Layer</span><span style="font-style: italic;"> </span><span style="font-weight: bold;">Of The Personality</span><span style="font-style: italic;">:</span><br /><br />At the Cliche layer, you and the person with whom you are talking exchange pleasentries. This is the extent of the Cliche layer. It is watercooler and cocktail party conversation. There is basic talk about family, sports, current issues, mutual interests, basic likes and dislikes and careers. It is called the cliche layer, because much of the conversation is peppered with common phrases and with opinions that really may not be our own. For example, there is a lot of discussion about "They say that our children will not be as successful as us..." or "It's so true that technology is advancing at a rate faster than the government can legislate it's control or use." or "It's getting harder and harder to make a buck these days."<br /><br />The Cliche layer, like all layers of the personality, has both a positive and negative side. On the positive side, it fundamentaly whets our appitite and interest in the other person with whom we are having a conversation. Similarly, the other person becomes more interested in us. There is an undeniable bond that happens at the cliche layer between people that get along. And let's face it, how can you possibly have a relationship with someone that does not share your basic interests, or can talk to you about "things in general"<br /><br />On the negative side, once the novelty of meeting someone new wears off, the cliche layer quickly becomes boring and stiffling. As human beings we long for deeper connections and expressions. As such, sticking around in the cliche layer is really quite boring. How often have you heard yourself say "I wish this guy would just stop talking about his trip to the Turks and Cacos"? The best example I can think of this is Rob Schneider's "Coffee Guy" Character on Saturday Night Live - the guy who goes around the office saying "Drinkin' the Java with the Coffee-meister." or "Ol' Jimbo - havin' difficulty with the photo-copier mahcine.... toooooo baaaadddd." People got bored of him (and Rob Schneider as an actor) very quickly. Staying in the cliche layer prevents us from having any deeper contact with other individuals, and for those who chronically stay in the cliche layer, it serves as a protection against showing any kind of real emotion.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Role Layer:</span><br /><br />Once you get past the cliche layer of the personality, we enter the role layer. Quite simply, this is the layer of the personality that contains all of our "shoulds" and often governs how we act. For example, people take on various roles for themselves - "I'm a good mother", "I'm a business executive", "I'm a helpful individual", "I'm an attractive person", "I'm good at breaking tension with a joke" or "I can sell anything to anybody."<br /><br />As you can see, these attitudes and beliefs underlie most of our outward behaviour. A person who considers himself helpful will do just that. A person who believes that favours should be returned will help people who have helped him. This layer is one layer deeper than the Cliche layer because it governs our actions and relationships to the environment - it is how we reach-out. In the Role Layer, we are aimelessly reaching out and responding at random. At the Role Layer, deliberate actions are taken based on a set of principles.<br /><br />To show how this layer is actually deeper, instead of your friend being a shoulder to lean on because your mother is very, very ill, your friend actually helps you with chores, and makes life easier for you, so that you can deal with the illness in a better way. Your friend does this because somewhere in her role layer she believes "I want to help those in need."<br /><br />The positive side of the role layer is that it literally gives us a "Raison D' Etre" in this world and it brings us closer to our envrionment. The negative side of this layer is that it can just as easily distance us from our envrionmeont and can make us crazy. For example, how does a person who believes his role is "I can sell anything to anybody" begin to feel when he fails as a salesperson? How does the person who says "I am a good mother" deal with a child who has turned anti-social? We can also have opposing "Roles" in our mind - there are probably lots of people out there who are conflicted because on the one hand they believe "As a good human being, I should love, respect and get along with everyone", but on the other hand equally belives "It's a dog-eat-dog world out there." How does a person with both these roles act when a co-worker is out to steal the credit, or even his job? While our roles define us, being constantly stuck in them, and not noticing the envrionment around us makes this world a crazy place.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Phobic Layer</span></span><br /><br />So from the Role Layer, you and a friend or partner have gained a deeper bond - and are doing things for eachother based on your beliefs. However, have you ever thought that a relationship is moving too quickly, that you seem to be doing all the work in the relationship or that the "Honeymoon period" is just plain over? As we begin to doubt and question ourselves and relationships, we enter The Phobic Layer. It is the layer where we begin to see a different picture or truth to the situation. What makes it phobic is how we react to our new perceptions. Rather than acting on our new-found truth and information, we do anything but. We are scared of what we see, and a scared person is someone who tends to ignore the danger rather than dealing with it head-on. For example we:<br /><br />- Give our friend the benefit of the doubt and don't say anything<br />- Give subtle hints, and make casual remarks, but actually don't say directly what we thing or feel. Perhaps we invite them over for dinner less because they have never invited us over for dinner to their house.<br />- Deny our own observations and truth. For example "How can someone so nice have a selfish streak?"<br />- Reproach ourselves for thinking such thoughts. For example "I'm terrible for having these thoughts about my good friend."<br />- Look for things in our friend or partner that are not even there, and begin to make mountains out of molehills.<br />- We may even begin to question whether we are worthy of such a friend or person in our lives.<br /><br />I'm sure the examples above point-out the negatives of the Phobic Layer. It begins to put distance between the people around us. The more nefarious part of the Phobic Layer is that we often don't go beyond this in any of our relationships. There are many people out there who spend their whole lives in the Phobic Layer. They can drag-out relationships for entire lifetimes based on Phobic responses. I'm sure that you have people like this in your life right now - people to whom you are not close, but still see relate to on a regular basis.<br /><br />The positive side is that it serves as a stop-gap for us. It is our filter and keeps us from danger in our lives. Psychotherapists begin to focus their attention at this level, with the belifef that a patient does not observe properly or knows how to make sense of the feelings they receive in the phobic layer. The sense is the patient lacks sufficient internal self-suppport to make proper decisions based on Phobic layer observations and feelings.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Impasse Layer</span></span><br /><br />This is a singular and contemplative layer, where you are not interacting with the outside world. Instead, there is a war going-on within yourself. If you interpret the signals from the phobic layer correctly, you have discovered that the person or situation with whom you are relating is not what you originally thought. You have a choice to make, you can continue in a phobic layer relationship which does not serve you well, or you can make a change and proceed to the next layer of the personality, which is the Valuable Emotional Core. Until you make a decision, you are stuck in the impasse layer. It can be characterized by depression, withdrawl, avoidance or mood swings.<br /><br />The benefit of this layer is that it gets us ready to take significant action or experience strong emotion. When we are here, we are testing the water in terms of what it would be like to progress to the next layer, which is the Valuable Emotional Core. When we were very young, we learned to protect ourselves from showing emotion or doing things that we really wanted because (from a baby's, toddler's or young child's perspective) we felt that our lives were threatened for taking such actions. Adults who cared for us as young children could have scolded us or reacted very angrily at what we were doing, so we learned to be very careful about showing emotion. This guarded approach sticks with us as adults.<br /><br />The disadvantage is quite obvious. We will become depressed or be subject to mood swings. We are cut-off from from our desires and wishes and our actions in the general envrionment are impared.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Valuable Emotional Core</span></span><br /><br />After going through all the other four levels of the personality, we finally reach the valuable emotional core. It is, as you can guess where our emotions lie, and this level of the personality really does govern how we act and feel. Consider it this way - our emotions radiate out from the core through the other four levels of our personality, and by the time they reach our consciousness (or Ego, for you Freudians out there), they have gone through so many filters that they reach us very muddled. Also, since we access the core so infrequently, we tend not to know how to handle our emotions. If we are angry, we tend to "Rage-Out", or if we feel profound sadness, we "break-down" and cry.<br /><br />The core is so powerful that it forms the basis of all the action we take. In many cases, we act NOT to feel certain emotions. For example, we may take on a role of being a good mother, because being anything less will cause us great sadness that we cannot deal with. Someone may be an overachiever because they want to rage-out at certain people in their lives, but do not want to face the anger it would cause them. Our emotions could be tangled-up. We may want to have as many joyus experiences as we can, but in order to do so requires taking some risks - so we live in the Impasse layer, experiencing some joy, but not too much for fear of the sadness that may come in obtaining the risk.<br /><br />Marketers reach this layer when their Brand or product makes consumers feel or experience something that resides in the core. While I cover this in much more detail in other articles, a few examples will suffice. A few examples in my life:<br /><br /><ul><li>When I wear a Swatch, I AM young and hip. In my role layer, I may have the wish to be young and hip, but Swatch actually makes me realize that dream.</li></ul><ul><li>When I wear Roots, I AM rugged, grounded, casual and chic. That is how I feel when I put on Roots clothes. The brand has touched my Valuable Emotional Core. Again, this is different than filling my Role Layer desire to be this way - when I wear Roots clothing I am actually this way.</li></ul><ul><li>When I was in Disneyworld recently, I flew a mission to Mars. It touched my Valuable Emotional Core because it brought me real, unadulterated joy that I felt throughout my entire body. For a few minutes, I suspended all reality, and actually felt myself in a Space Shuttle, and all the joy that came with it.<br /></li></ul>A brand reaches the Valuable Emotional Core when it touches an actual emotion, and not just a cliche, role or phobia. For research purposes, all we need to do is get people to project how they actually feel when the are experiencing different brands. I would argue though that so many brands fail to touch people on an emotional level that we would not really know what an emotional response to a brand actually looked like. In most focus groups I have done or viewed, most time is spent figuring out how people perceive the brand from a cliche, role or phobic level. Emotional responses need to be accessed through non-traditional techniques like projectives or ZMET Metaphor Elicitation.<br /><br />It is worthwhile to note that it is much more common that a brand does not reach the Valuable Emotional Core. In that case it is worthwhile to poke-around at what emotions, deep thoughts and images they bring-up. A few examples from my life:<br /><br /><ul><li>I use Microsoft products, and the brand could mean any number of things to me - innovative, big company, high-tech, competitive, quick to respond, etc... However, the feeling that it leaves me with is disappointment. It has nothing to do with the fact that their products don't work - it's just that I find they have failed in their promise to make computing easy for me. When I am my Valuable Emotional Core with regards to Microsoft products, there is always a sense of frustration involved, even if the product is working perfectly.<br /></li></ul><ul><li>I think we could all complain about cell phone or cable company service, and it seems any time I call them I always have to speak to a supervisor to get things accomplished. When I call them, I do not just feel disappointment, I feel like a failure. What I think should take 5-10 minutes, takes upwards of one week to resolve. So, when I deal with Rogers, I AM a failure.<br /></li></ul>The remaining two articles will discuss Layers of the Personality in terms of generating Qualitative Research Results, and the next will provide applications to marketing and branding.Brian Baumalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13979778780322097603noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22121485.post-1139935920018453492006-02-14T08:51:00.000-08:002006-03-31T15:56:22.173-08:00Concept Testing vs. Concept DevelopmentA lot of my focus groups test concepts, either as products, services or policies. All too often clients want to use the results to "pass or fail" a concept. In fact, the Federal Government commonly uses the term "Focus Test" to describe qualitative research that involves focus groups. I have always objected to research "passing or failing" a concept. There are a few reasons. First, people tend to have negative reactions to new ideas. The actual psychological reasons are irrelevant, but people tend to feel threatened by new ideas, are concerned about change or are jealous of not having thought of the idea themselves. Second, research can never duplicate the actual product or service being tested. What we are actually testing is concept statements, or prototypes - not the actual deployment of the product, service or policy - so research is only a proxy test at best.<br /><br />In my opinion, the better approach is concept development, as opposed to concept testing. That is, we should go in to the research thinking of ways to tailor the product to the hopes, dreams , opinions and practical realities of our participants. When this is done we will provide more insight and interpretive value to our clients.<br /><br />Let's start by looking at the topic in a way that interests everyone - money - or value for research dollars. I don't know how many times I've been involved in research assigments that involve more than 20 focus groups, only to hear the same responses said over-and-over again. Sometimes clients have reasons for conducting this many groups, but how much value can be achieved hearing the same responses about a concept that does not change? A better approach is to take the learnings from each successive group and change the concept being tested based on the results from each of the previous groups. The value for money then becomes apparent - we begin to develop the concept based on consumer opinion so that each new session tests and refines the new idea. At the end of the assignment the client receives results that tell them what is needed to make the concept a practical reality, as opposed to passing or failing a concept. Our clients are then in a much better position to decide if they have the resources available to implement the concept based on consumer's wishes and desires. There is just not much interpretive or monetary value in hearing the same feedback again and again. If the groups are in place, it makes sense to get as much value from them as possible - and that means changing the concept with each successive group.<br /><br />Based on the above, the methodology of concept development becomes quite clear - a concept becomes a variable entity that is changed and refined for each successive research session. It is no longer a static idea that gets trodded-about like some trunk-show from group to group. This form of concept development, however, requires an experienced moderator and client. The moderator, as an expert in interpreting qualitative opinion, needs to sort through what is a real opinion and what is a postured response (or defence) to the new idea. The client, on the other hand, needs to be in a position to decide whether what is heard in the groups is realistic or not. That is, it does not pay to refine a concept in such a way only to be told by the client that the refinements simply cannot be implemented due to budgets or resource or strategic constraints.<br /><br />While the client's role is to ensure that successive developments are realistic, the moderator has a more difficult challenge - he must be able to interpret opinion based on one group, and this requires the ability to sort through respondent BS and real pshcyological opinion. In the groups, it requires a more aggressive pursuit of deeper opinion and reasons for it. For example, price and requests for more informtaion are ususlly NOT the main reasons for rejecting a concept. They are simply the easiest reasons participants can give to avoid sharing their true opinions.<br /><br />Similarly, hearing third person comments like "society is not moving in that direction" are not useful comments, nor are comments like "other people think this" or "the target market won't go for it." Psychotherapy talks about "The Language Of Responsibility", which has as one of its tenents a first-person response. In being more aggressive about seeking individual opinions in a concept development group, I will often say in the introduction that it is important for people to talk only about themselves, and not about anything or anyone else. If someone uses a statement like this I will usually ask "What you're saying makes a lot of sense, but what does it mean for you - will you accept or reject the concept?"<br /><br />Shifting the focus to "I" responses needs to be done with care and with a specific purpose. Believe it or not, the purpose of the question is not to get someone to say whether or not they will actually accept or reject the concept - the actual purpose is simply to get the participant to start expressing their own inner thoughts and feelings. If a participant says "The market is not going in that direction so the concept will not work" they are rejecting the concept - and they are doing so in a manner that does not put responsibility on them, or in other words, they are taking the easy way out. If they are asked to phrase the statement in terms of "I" language, they may realize that they, themselves, are rejecting the concept - and they may not want to take responsibility for it for fear of offending the moderator, or people behind the mirror. More likely, they predisposed to being perceived as agreeable. As such, they may say something like "Oh, if it were me, sure I'd try it - I was just commenting on what I think the market would do."<br /><br />What happens next is critical - the moderator cannot accept that response on face value or ask the participant why they are now accept the concept. To ask why a respondent accepts a concept at this stage will likely make them dig deeper into more inaccurate justifications (and in analysis, these responses should not be used as key findings, also the goal is concept development and not testing). Rather, the moderator should just say "OK, let's keep going - tell me what you think about..." and then continue to ask questions that elicit a first-person response. The goal of the intervention is to get the respondent to simply talk in terms of themself and not in the third person. Also, by not acknowledging the response, we will gain credibility in the eyes of the participant - if they are lying, and we did not acknowledge or fawn over the response, they will likely understand that we can detect their BS.<br /><br />When a moderator gets the participant to internalize the concept, the more accurate the responses will be. At the end of the discussion, if the focus has been on "I" responses, the modeartor will have a very good set of qualitative data based on the participant's true thoughts and feelings as opposed to an assemblage of views that are really stated simply to avoid any real judgement of the concept to begin with.<br /><br />There are other important tricks up my sleeve that I like to use when concept testing, and that is when I show a concept statement, I will often start with asking people what they dislike about the concept first. This gets the negative stuff out of the way. People tend to want to criticize a concept more than they want to praise it, so it is a good idea to let these thoughts out into the open, so that participants are not hanging on to them when it comes time for positive comments. Also, since there will likely be more negative comments, this tends to get the creative juices flowing in the group and encourages participants to open-up more. It is important to realize that if the goal is concept development, and not concept testing, clients worried about too much emphasis on the negative turing people off the product, should relalize that the goal of the resaerch is not to determine whether people will actually use the product or not.<br /><br />Another method I often use is projective techniques at the beginning of the group. I will spend maybe 5-10 minutes lip-servicing the general likes and dislikes of the product category so that the client gets a sense of the "head-responses" people have towards the category. To me, the more valuable exercise is a projective technique where participants are split into two groups. One group imagines the most positive experience they can with the product category, and the other group immages the worst possible debacle. This kind of exercise will produce more relevant information about the product category than a simple "what do you like or dislike" about a product. These techniques encourage clients to tell a story - we are more likely to understand their entire situation and gain a more holistic view of the overall data.<br /><br />While group process can play an important part in concept development (i.e. as new developments are described, the group can react), I believe that there is also a strong case to be made for one-on-one interviews for concept development. The main reason is that one-on-ones tend to avoid posturing by participants. In the case of concept development, participants are more likely to give more direct feedback on a concept without being intimidated by anyone in the group. They are not so concerned, for example, as coming off as someone who wants to please others, and therefore never criticizes in public. While a good moderator can find ways around posturing, I believe that one-on-ones are certainly a more efficient method.<br /><br />Finally, in terms of concept statements, it is important to work with clients to emphasize benefits as well as features. In terms of a concept statement, benefits are what will get people interested in the product or service, not a listing of feautres. The features may be important, but it it the benefits that sell the product. I always encourage a client that for every feature they list, they must list either a direct corresponding benefit or have the same number of features and benefits in the concept statement. I also avoid statements that contain jargon like "class-leading horsepower among mid-sized sedans" or "high-end apparel and accessories for the fashion-forward and trendy career woman." Bottom line - that is not the way consumers talk.<br /><br />All of these techniques - projectives, focusing on benefits, changing the concept statement and ensuring that participants evaluate the product from their point of view are all designed to lead to a single two-second moment in the qualitative research. It is when participants go "A-Ha", or "That's what I mean" and a light goes off in their head. This signifies that the product actually provides a solution to them. The "A-Ha" is truly the way of "testing" whether a product will work or not in the marketplace. In my opinion, the only way to reach that moment is to "develop the concept" within the group. The chances of any one concept statement eliciting that response, without any creative intervention or continual development is slim to none. And in fact, I believe, that without taking the steps above to properly research a concept, those are the exact chances that a product will have in the marketplace.<br /><br />Ultimately, good marketers are looking to give their concepts the best chance of success possible in the marketplace. They are not looking to see simply whether a concept will fly or not - and that is why I practice concept development, which by its very definition, gives marketers exactly what they are looking for.Brian Baumalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13979778780322097603noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22121485.post-1139522252498881052006-02-09T13:54:00.000-08:002006-02-13T12:09:17.386-08:00A New Definition Of Projective TechniquesI get very annoyed when people think that projective techniques are "parlour games" like picture sorts, fill-in-the-blanks, simple metaphors or product/brand obituaries. If you want to get purely technical, these are examples of projective techniques, but they are more like empty shells. It's like trying to drive a car without an engine - they just don't get you anywhere.<br /><br />Ever since I started telling people that I was practicing projectives, I got very annoyed when they thought I was doing these rudimentary kinds of projectives. With my feelings front and centre, I knew I needed to come up with a definition of projectives that would differentiate me from the conventional thoughts about projectives. In my opinion, a proper projective goes beyond the metaphoric - it uncovers emotional and deeply held opinions that cannot be touched by conventional questioning or standard projectives.<br /><br />For example, let's say we ask a participant to project "If Calgary, as a tourist destination, were a famous person, who would it be?" Let's say the answer is Clint Eastwood. Many people under the conventional definition of the technique would think that they have hit on a gem of a response - Clint is rugged, handsome, Western, prosperous, legendary, full of achievement, classy yet rebellious and has wide appeal. Surely, people would think, this is a perfect projection of Calgary.<br /><br />Now, let me ask you this - how does the projection of Clint Eastwood differ from asking participants to list some attributes about Calgary? If I asked people to list some attributes of Calgary, they may say things like "Calgary is beautiful and full of Western history and tradition which make it appealing to me. There is a certain ruggedness and rebelliousness in Calgary, yet because it is in Canada there is a lot of class associated with it." In this situation, there is absolutely no difference between the projected response and the conventional question. On top of that, there is absolutely no emotion attached to the response.<br /><br />If projectives are to be given their due in market research, we must understand that there is a difference between a metaphoric response and a true emotional response. In Clinical Psychology, we call the "Clint Eastwood" response a "Head Response" - that is, the participant is answering from their intellect and not from their emotion. In order to get someone out of their head, the we must relax them. They need to be distanced and isolated from the fact that they are answering questions for a market research study. <span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);"><em><strong>If there is one thing you learn from this blog - know that a good projective technique will always involve the participant engaging in some sort of mental relaxation exercise before the projection begins. I do not care how much a research supplier promises that their projective will work at probing deeper responses - unless there is a relaxation exercise first, you will not be getting as much information as you could.</strong></em></span> Projectives that start off with "OK - who can fill in the blank the fastest in this sentence..." are doomed to give a "head response".<br /><br />Prior to giving an example of what a good projective looks like, it is worthwhile to understand the phenomenon of projection from a psychological point of view. Projection is one of the most common psychological phenomena in existence - and psychotherapists have been using projective techniques for over 100 years! It is far from a new innovation, and moderators who have psychotherapeutic training will have learned projectives first-hand.<br /><br />On a very base level, when someone psychologically projects, they are disowing a part of themselves that they do not want to admit to owning. That is, people are too scared or ashamed of certain traits about themselves, so rather than owning what they find disgusting or disturbing, they put it out into the environment. The quintessential example of projection is the "I have a friend" visit to the doctor. Most people know this situation - a person has a medical symptom that they are mortally concerned or ashamed about, but rather than admitting to themselves and to their doctor, they go in attempting to get information for "a friend."<br /><br />As it relates to emotions and market research - Clinical Psychologists believe that people have a difficult time owning or relating to their emotions because society and our own peers prefer that we suppress them or keep them down. For example, how many times have we been told "Not to take it personally, it's just business"? Have you ever noticed that someone who wails in sadness at the funeral of a loved one is often described as someone who "broke-down and cried" as opposed to someone who "had a really, really healthy release of emotion?"<br /><br />Similarly, people from a very early age are told not to criticize or complain, so when we ask about people's honest opinions towards products or services, if people do not like it, we may not get the full story because the feel ashamed to complain. Note too that this takes into account the participant who loves to complain or "dis" a product or service. They may be over-compensating - that is they may amplify their situation so that they feel justified in complaining about something that is only a minor annoyance.<br /><br />The stage is now set to implement a proper projective technique. We know that people project things about themselves that they have difficulty accepting, and we know that emotions and deeply held opinions are things that are not easily accepted by individuals. We also know that metaphoric responses are akin to head responses, and those do not reaveal the real data that is valuable to marketers. To start, we need to get people primed to project, and get them out of their head. In fact, we can combine the relaxation and the projective together. Here is how I would implement a projective to get at real opinions and feelings about Calgary as a tourist destination:<br /><br />"First, I want you to close your eyes and think about the following. You have just won a radio contest - a free trip to a mystery vacation. You know that you have an all-expense-paid week's vacation, so you are excited. Now, I want you to picture yourself on the plane to the mystery destination, and you are very relaxed. You are in first-class and you are in a nice seat. You have a lot of legroom to stretch-out, so stretch out if you want to. You are enjoying a great movie on the in-flight entertainment system. As you continue this relaxing plane ride you are starting to envision your vacation. As the plane starts to descend, the pilot says 'Ladies and gentlemen, we will soon be landing in Calgary.' This is the first time you know where you are going.<br /><br />Now - as you are sitting in the plane, what do you begin to feel towards the radio station for sending you to Calgary? What do you really want to tell them? What do you envision this vacation will be like for you?<br /><br />Now, as you get off the plane, you look around the Calgary airport. What do you see? What do you smell? How does your luggage feel? How are you walking through the airport?<br /><br />Next, you think about the kind of hotel the radio station will put you in. What kind of accomodations do you expect? Describe the room to me in detail<br /><br />Now, you are driving from the airport to your hotel and you are starting to get a good look at the city. As you look out the cab, you are going to see something that interests you. Look at it closely and describe it to me in detail. Now, you are going to look out the other side of the window and you are going to see something that repulses you. Look at it closely and describe it to me. Now, you get a call on your cell phone - it's a friend of yours that you share all your true feelings with - tell them what you see, think and feel about being in Calgary based on all your experiences so far."<br /><br />I think that most of you can see the true value of the questions that are being asked, and that they will provide richer, more valuable data on true feelings, opinions and emotions than what we normally consider to be a projective technique. If you take away anything from the example, I hope you understand that emotions and feelings cannot be accessed by traditional modes of questioning and that relaxation is critical to any good projective.<br /><br />Finally, to me the projective techniques that I have outlined do more than just provide sound qualitative data - they are a way of incorporating basic humanity in the research process. We are thinking, feeling creatures that work better when we do not have to suppress or keep our emotions in check. I strongly believe that any occasion that gives people a chance to experience, feel and express some of their more deeply held emotions is a very worthwhile exercise. A moderator who recognizes the human factor in all of this will be able to provide clients with information that will truly bind them to their customer base.Brian Baumalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13979778780322097603noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22121485.post-1139443595893923632006-02-08T15:25:00.000-08:002006-02-13T09:23:29.143-08:00I'm Starting With The Man In The MirrorFirst - I apologize if I got that danged Michael Jackson song in your head, but it is a perfectly appropriate title for this blog. Since I started my education in clinical psychology, I quickly learned to hate the dreaded, oversized and exceptionally obvious one-way mirror. Every time I see one I shudder. And for the longest time, I thought it was a necessary evil - until recently - I finally came across a simple methodology that gets me past the man in the mirror.<br /><br />Before I indicate my methodology, let me tell you why I hate the mirror. There are likely a lot of moderators getting ready to perch themselves on their boxes and are about to tell me how they overcome the mirror, and how their results are just fine in a standard room. They'll tell me how they acknowledge the mirror in their introduction and let participants know that there are people behind it observing the process. They'll say that if we are up-front about the mirror people will be more comfortable with it.<br /><br />To me, this is psychological and existential BS - people may accept the explanation and their level of comfort may even improve with the explanation, but no amount of words can remove the fact that the mirror is there - period. On top of that, it's a honkinly big and imposing presence in the group. It physically separates the participants from the observers, and in my opinion it fundamentally changes how people answer and perform.<br /><br />Some simple examples will suffice. First, people react differently when they are being observed. Have you ever been at a stoplight, and you start singing to the radio only to stop when another car pulls beside you, or when you notice that other people are looking at you? This is a prime example of people acting differently when they are observed. While this is a different situation than being in a focus group room, it illustrates our human nature - and believe me, no words of explanation can fully obliterate what is thousands of years of human evolution.<br /><br />As another example, say that you are in a restaurant and you notice an exterminator's truck in the parking lot. Will this change your opinion of whether you want to continue eating there? Say as a further example that the Maitre D' is upfront with everyone saying "Yes there are exterminators, but no worries - they are behind the doors in the kitchen. They're there so they won't disturb you while you are eating, and you won't be able to see them. In fact there has never been a problem in this restaurant, which is exactly why they are here to begin with." Will your comfort level reach what it was before you knew the exterminators were there to begin with? Will you change your order from a full dinner to just a sealed bottle of wine even though you have been given a satisfactory explanation? If you do stay, will your comfort level vary throughout the night? Will you be a little more likely to examine your food when it comes to your table? Will you chew differently? These self-examining behaviours are human nature, and will occur despite a satisfactory explanation.<br /><br />These examples show that explanations, regardless of their truth, may not completely put respondents at ease. The fact is the mirror is there. The fact is participants are being observed from behind it. A mirror in a focus group creates what Martin Buber calls an I-It Relationship, where participants in the room feel distant, observed and alienaited from the larger process.<br /><br />Now, my goal is not to imply that mirros in focus group facilities completely skew results - the fact is they don't, and they won't. However, if you are looking to probe deeply held feelings or engage participants in worthwhile conversation, I do believe the mirror has a fair potential of limiting optimal results. As such, for certain types of research projects, I do not use standard facilities anymore - rather I invite participants for dinner in a restaurant and secure a private spot or room within it. The details of the methodology and its benefits are described below:<br /><br />1) After recruiting, I send-out a dinner invitation on fancy paper - after all, they are attending a dinner, and not a research session. If we are researching the general attitudes and opinions of a specific audience, I can observe how they dressed for the occasions and probe on that factor to uncover information about them.<br /><br />2) I prefer to tell the participants who the client is. I know this is a massive no-no in many traditional research sessions (and I certainly do not give out information about the client if they, or the research methodology would be compromised - for example, I would not reveal the brand or topif if I felt that in so doing participants would drop-out of the dinner). However, I want participants to get an open feeling and that there is nothing to hide. If some participants come prepared and others don't, I do not see this as a significant problem. Research leaders are called "Moderators" because they do exactly that - they level the playing field for participants in the group and "moderate" opinions and group situations to get the most information. Clients coming prepared tells me a lot about the participant and the brand itself.<br /><br />3) I get the client sitting right at the table with the participants - and I introduce the client as such. I instruct the client to keep comments to a minimum, and encourage them not to take copious notes. If they do take notes, I encourage them to do so when I am talking and not when others are talking. I can easily defer to the client when there is a question that I cannot answer, and this makes for a very fluid group. Moreover, I can use a wonderful projective technique with the client there. For example, if the client is from Ford, I can ask people to look at the client and ask them if they would have been able to guess that the client was from Ford - what is it about the client and about the brand that are the same and different? It is a wonderful experience for a client to see how participants think they personify the brand.<br /><br />I also ask the client to avoid answering questions or responding directly to participants. What matters most is to observe how participants communicate with someone who they feel represents the brand. The fact is, in the real world, my client himself or herself will not be communicating back to the participants - it will be the client's brand, logo, advertising, customer service reps, etc... In the group process, it is important to realize that in some instances we will learn more about a person if there is less interaction than if there is more of it. With less interaction, the participant has the opportunity to express more of their real feelings and emotions, as opposed to simply "reacting" to different stimuli. After the group session is over, I encourage the client to address any unfinished discussions with participants directly, so this way participants will still leave knowing that the client still cares enough to address their issues directly.<br /><br />4) I choose an approrpriate restaurant. If I have a group of suburban housewives, I may choose a Kelsey's or The Keg. If, however, I have urban hipster 20-somethings, a downtown hot-spot would be better (say the back room of 7-Numbers on Danforth). The point is that the environment should make participants feel more comfortable than a typical focus group facility.<br /><br />5) I find the best application of the dinner methodology comes when a client wants to understand the thoughts, ideas, hopes, fears, language, attitudes and outlook of a particular group so that they can develop communications or products. On a fundamental level I belive that if you want to learn about a group of people, you should observe them in environments in which they feel familiar and comfortable. Focus group facilities do not give this feeling the way a good restaurant does.<br /><br />I belive that if we fully humanize the entire process of gathering qualitative data, we will achieve better results. Focus group rooms have a lot of benefits, and I continue to use them with many clients and for many topics. However, I have also taken a good look in the mirror and realized that in certain instances it definitely pays for me to get out from being infront of it.Brian Baumalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13979778780322097603noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22121485.post-1139417755491932882006-02-08T07:57:00.000-08:002006-02-21T20:03:33.813-08:00Branding and Psychological CathexisHuman behaviour is largely about acquiring and destroying. Freud stated that we attach a either a positive or negative cathexis to every object, person or idea in our environment. When we attach a positive cathexis to something, we will invest a significant amount of time and energy in acquiring that object or living in that idea. When we attach a negative cathexis to something in our environment, we we do everything in our power to obliterate or destroy it.<br /><br />Think about it this way - when we fall in love with someone, we want to do everything we can to be with and even possess the person that is the object of our desire. Should our affections change, we will do everything we can to avoid or remove that person from our lives. This is a prime example of positive and negative cathexis, and for those who have been in and out of love, we know the amount of energy that we can spend on these pursuits.<br /><br />I believe that attachment to brands works the same way - we attach either a positive or negative cathexis to every brand that we see. If there is a positive cathexis, we will go to the ends of the earth for that brand. If there is a negative cathexis, we will not bat an eye towards it. The challenge for branders and marketers, of course, is to determine what attributes will create a positive cathexis, given that every individual is different and has a unique set of ideals as to what they positively or negatively cathex.<br /><br />To address this challenge, in qualitative research I am often called-upon to evaluate what people think of products, brands or communications. Though clients may not like to hear this - I know within 5 seconds whether a person or group likes what I am presenting to them. The reason why is we react instantly to objects to which we assign a positive or negative cathexis (imagine the dewey look a new lover gets in his/her eyes when describing their new significant other - we know in an instant that the person to whom we are speaking is smitten, even if we don't know all the details). In psychotherapy clinicians are trained to look for these shifts in a person's face, body posture, language and even the energy they give off. Though these cues may not be highly visible from behind the mirror, to a trained moderator in the room, they can hit like a ton of bricks.<br /><br />Many of the questions that typically follow after presenting a brand, communication, product or concept are typically less reliable than the initial reaction that reveals the cathexis participants have towards what is being presented. That is, we typically ask what participants think, what they like, what they don't like, how it compares to other products, etc... These questions put participants into their heads - participants are trying to explain their own cathexis process that operates invisibly to them.<br /><br />There are a number of practical considerations for qualitative research and analysis based on this:<br /><br />- Qualitative research should not strive to have participants "head-state" their ideal product, brand or communication. Rather, the moderator should attempt to create an environment where participants will be able to actually display those initial reactions to products, brands and ideas. The moderator should probe the reaction as it happens (and the associated feelings) and not read from a pre-defined list of questions, as this will put participants into their heads, losing all the visceral emotions from the initial reaction. Clients need to trust a moderator's instinct, and for that matter should work with a moderator who has clinical psychology experience or training, as it is more likely this person is more in touch with his or her instincts.<br /><br />- Projective techniques and guided imagery are often useful in this instance. For example, if a client is researching a new body soap, rather than having participants describe their "ideal characteristics" of the soap, we can use guided imagery that starts-out by putting the participants in an environment in which they already have a positive cathexis. Say, for example, we have participants close their eyes and ask them to drive around in their dream car - we ask them what it is like (e.g. the interior, the noise, the smell, the power of the car, the look of the dashboard, etc......) and how they feel (e.g. exhilarated, luxurious, practical, etc...). From there, we can ask them to look over at the passenger seat, and see emerging in it a bar of soap, and this bar of soap is going to give them the same feeling that they have driving the car. We can ask them, for example, what smell the soap has to it that gives them the same feeling, etc... The logic to this method is fairly simple - we have placed the participant in a positively cathexed environment, and asked them to get in touch wit the emotions and attributes they have in it. From there, we ask them to project those attributes onto the client's product.<br /><br />- While the above will provide clients with a good sense of the emotional features and drivers for the bar of soap, most products or brands do not succeed unless they help consumers solve a problem. Think about it this way - we have a positive cathexis towards a partner based both on their physical attributes <u>and also</u> because they fulfill our human need to be loved and to care for others. A product, no matter how it is designed, must fill a need as well. Needs can be divided-up into two categories - practical and emotional. A car provides transportation, and it gives us a sense of identity in the world. Nike gives us both athletic shoes and confidence.<br /><br />Again, in order to determine the benefits of the product, all we need to do is have participants envision using the product and then ask them how they envision their ego ideal - that is, what do they expect to happen to them, their environment and their psyche once they use the product and brand.<br /><br />- Where brands, communications and products run in to trouble is when consumers have assigned them a negative cathexis, yet still purchase them anyhow. This is the very definition of neurosis - when one does not have the ability to annihilate a negatively cathexed object, or when one cannot properly acquire a positively cathexed object. Say we have a group of "frequent buyers" of our product in the room and when we ask them about the brand or product, we do not get that instant energy associated with positive cathexis. Instead what we get is a lot of "head talk" about how the brand has the best price/value ratio, or that it comes in convenient sizes, or that children like it, or that the product has a lot of great features. Sure, these are positives, but it is like dating someone just for their looks - the relationship will eventually fail once the couple realizes that they do not have anything in common.<br /><br />The job of a good moderator, and the needs of a good marketer in this situation are not to find out what cosmetic adjustments can be made to the product, brand or communication - as these are just superficial changes. Rather, the moderator needs to delve into two things to attempt to uncover factors that create a positive cathexis:<br /><br />1) What problem does the product or brand really help address or solve, or what problems would they like the product or brand to help solve. What is their grandest wish for the product or brand?<br /><br />2) How do participants want to feel using the product or brand? What archetypes do they want to activate (e.g. the good mother, caring parent, prudent investor, maverick rebel, creative expressionist, etc...) and what are the feelings associated with these archetypes. It it critical to note that probing both of these factors requires use of projective techniques, as participants (and people in general) often blot-out or are unaware of these basic needs.<br /><br />Good branding and marketing are not rocket science. A positively cathexed product addresses practical, emotional and archetypal needs of the individual. Researchers and marketers cannot focus solely on the practical (or head-space) benefits. If they do, they run the risk of putting out products that consumers will not have any long-term attachement to. That is, the products may look good and function well, but in reality the consumer has attached a negative cathexis to the product or service because they do not meet emotional or archetypal needs. When the consumer realizes that they can annihilate brands like this, they will do so - it is inevitable human nature.Brian Baumalhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13979778780322097603noreply@blogger.com1