Focus Group Hypnosis
(Oops — a glance back at my email reminded me that I owe Ellie a blog entry for today, too.)
From Brian David Phillips’s blog comes a reference to a new trend in advertising research: hypnotized focus groups.
Focus groups have been around for a long time, of course. A company or ad agency will assemble a group of strangers and ask for their perceptions and opinions about a product, service, or even political candidate. The ad agency then uses that data to refine their strategy.
According to this article in BRANDWEEK, though, there is a problem with the focus group concept: sometimes all the group yields are superficial impressions that really aren’t that helpful in targeting marketing.
To get past the surface impressions to what focus group members are really thinking, large companies and their ad agencies have taken to hypnotizing the focus group members before asking for their impressions. A quote from the article says, “Hypnosis helped get past the cliches. We needed the conversation to get to a deeper, more emotional place.”
By using hypnosis to delve deeper into the focus group’s perceptions, for example, Volvo learned that while they have a near-universal reputation for building dependable cars, on a deeper level many of the focus group members also equate driving a Volvo with being middle-aged. That sounds like good data to me, even if it’s not what Volvo would have preferred to hear.
The use of hypnotized focus groups is not universally accepted, though. The article goes on to include quotes and perspectives from opponents of focus group hypnosis, too. It’s an interesting Monday afternoon read, both informative and thought-provoking.
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