Break Down the Mirror

You’ve seen it on Mad Men: circa 1960’s advertising research where a focus group is sitting around a table answering a moderator’s questions, while – unbeknownst to them – ever clever client and agency people are watching from a one-way mirror.

Fast-forward 40-plus years. Same one-way mirror. Same focus group. (Well, not precisely the same – their grandchildren maybe.) Who’s kidding whom?

In spite of the fact that times have changed, most facilities – and practitioners of focus groups – have not. It’s all the more cause for pause when you realize that virtually every moderator begins a focus group letting respondents know they are not only being watched, but captured via audio and video digital recording.

More importantly, do respondents even care? Our world has become wildly transparent as a result of the Internet, YouTube and Social Media (Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter and FourSquare…just to name a few). People everywhere shoot photos and videos via their Smartphone and post it within minutes. Chicago alone has over 10,000 surveillance cameras, where it has become impossible to commit even the most incidental misdemeanor without being captured on video.

Among consumers (that’s all of us), there’s widespread understanding that everyone knows everything about him or her, so everyone has stopped pretending. Transparency is one of the core values of Gen Y.

So since it’s safe to assume the respondents don’t care, could it be the facilities that do?

If the dirty little secret ever got out that consumers act just as naturally (arguably, even more naturally) while sitting at dinner with clients as they do in a sterile conference room, maybe facilities would have to acknowledge that they wouldn’t generate the room rental revenue. Or be able to sell clients mediocre pizza and lukewarm lasagna for $50 per person.

We can’t be the only firm that conducts qualitative research who know this is true…can we? So here’s another possibility: could it be the client community that is wedded to hiding behind the mirror? After all, without the shield of the mirror, there’d be no opportunity to make fun of the respondents and get caught up on everything from email to Facebook to illicit web sites. In turn, respondents might become aghast at the amount of M&Ms consumed during the average evening of focus groups.

Are we really afraid that if we allow clients into the conference room, one of them is going to jump up and play Duck/Duck/Goose with the respondents? Really?

In spite of the bad rap focus groups have recently received, we still conduct focus groups. And we continue to find that they remain incredibly insightful and the most financially efficient form of qualitative research (based on a cost-per-respondent assessment). So we continue to conduct focus groups – both with and without mirrors. We also do a tremendous amount of less-traditional qualitative research. Ethnographies? Sure. But also observer groups, dinner parties, picnics, friend-shop-alongs, contrast groups, strategic work sessions with consumers and a host of other innovative approaches to qualitative.

And, in the end, do you know which types of sessions our clients reference most during debriefs and strategy sessions? The ones during which they had an unfettered contact with respondents. Where they could genuinely get to know the respondent and learn not only from what s/he had to say, but body language, tonality, and the sensory understanding that is only achieved without a large piece of one-way glass in between.

So let’s break down the mirror. And let the M&Ms fall where they may.