HOW SOCIAL MEDIA CHANGES RESEARCH

There’s a good reason why many a marketer has doubts about the ways that focus groups tends to be used to test creative and campaign concepts these days. Rather than seek directional insights from consumers, we too often lock a bunch of people in a room and pester them for answers about things they don’t really understand or have the tools to explain (“Is this good creative?” “What could we put in an ad that would convince you to buy our product?”).

It’s no secret that some of the greatest successes in media and entertainment tested “poorly” (Seinfeld) or were never focus group tested at all (iPod ). And we all know of many cases where the tests were great, yet the results were horrible (too many movie titles to mention, New Coke, etc.) or the tests were challenging and the results were just fine (the GI Joe movie, just one recent example, grossed $301MM worldwide).

So why do we persist? Sure, no one likes tossing piles of cash in the rubbish heap. Taking risks is scary and potentially job-threatening. But let’s be honest about it. Most focus groups—rooms full of people enticed to participate by some combination of cash and donuts—are about as scientific as reading goat entrails to forecast the stock market.

Marketers often convince themselves that this type of testing is a necessary evil, required to assess creative output before committing to delivery. It’s not. Especially not in the day and age of social media. Whether or not this was ever valid, the approach proves way too static for a communications space ruled by social media. In this brave new wired world,  we get instant evidence that something is working or not.

With digital media, the best approach is to expose as many creative ideas as possible and let the market pick and chose what wins, continually optimizing and evolving the idea even after it is deployed. The real test is in the doing, not the testing.

Amusing case in point: Perhaps you missed it when Stefani Germanotta performed at a talent show in 2005, at New York University. She performed solo piano renditions of three original songs, and one of the judges said, “Nora Jones look out.” She came in 3rd place. Now imagine testing the persona that Stefani Germanotta created soon afterward—the pop star known as Lady Gaga—against a group of other solo female vocal performances in the “Nora Jones” style back in 2005. The echo chamber of focus groups and market research would likely have produced another Hansen or M.C. Hammer, and Ms. Germanotta would never have had a chance to emerge and evolve into a delightfully over-the-top performance artist musician, perhaps this generation’s David Bowie, with a huge online following.

Focus group testing of marketing concepts represent an understandable attempt to gin the system for success. Done and used correctly, they can provide value. Yet despite consistent evidence that testing with sample audiences helps more with positioning insight than in generating strong creative, we still ram materials through inappropriate ”research” filters, generating watered down, uninspiring campaigns as a result.

It is high time to acknowledge the new world, and to understand that  the test market for Lady Gaga is the actual audience, and not a so-called representative sample. Whether it’s video plays, mentions in Twitter, parody videos, blog posts, sales, clicks, fan sites… we now have near-instant access to good, hard, empirical indicators of success.

Terrifying as it may be, especially to marketers used to intangible measures like awareness, intent, and consideration, we no longer need the security blanket focus groups are frequently used to provide. You don’t need a massive budget to find out whether your precious idea is really promising: There are a billion socially-networked people online every day who are quite willing to give you all the feedback you could ever require.