This cartoon is much less about focus teams than how we regularly use focus teams. Or actually any sort of market analysis.
Years in the past, I overheard some company associates joke about “the Oracles of Eden Prairie.” Eden Prairie is a suburb of Minneapolis, the place loads of focus teams occur.
These company associates went on to explain the unusual strategy of bringing new concepts (for campaigns or new merchandise or packaging designs) to be judged by “the Oracles of Eden Prairie” — eight randomly chosen individuals who had no concept how a lot energy their phrases held on whether or not these concepts made it.
Continuously they have been requested to opine on questions anybody would have hassle answering with any accuracy — like articulating their “unmet client wants.” Later, verbatim quotes have been taken from the main focus teams to justify all types of selections, typically as unquestionable sources of fact.
I as soon as drew the Oracles of Eden Prairie in a cartoon on the prime of a mountain, with a marketer climbing to ask, “Oh all-knowing focus group, inform me your unmet client wants, in order that we will create disruptive improvements for you.”
The Oracles reply: “Extra promotions” and “Make every little thing cheaper.”
Stephan Gans at Pepsi just lately talked about utilizing an AI device from an organization referred to as Tastewise to analysis new snackfood taste concepts. Tastewise makes use of AI to investigate patterns in information from 5 million recipes, two million menus, and 22 billion social media interactions to floor insights no particular person client would ever be capable to articulate. I like this statement:
“For those who would’ve requested shoppers, ‘tell us what you suppose can be an incredible taste for this model,’ no person would have ever provide you with seaweed.
“Individuals don’t affiliate that usually with a specialty snack from a model. However due to the sort of listening and the outside-in work that we did, we have been capable of determine that out by way of the AI that’s embedded in that device.”
Not each market analysis device is true for each market analysis query. Treating any supply of client insights as an oracle can lead you astray. They’re all instruments for decision-making, however shouldn’t exchange decision-making itself.
Listed here are a couple of associated cartoons I’ve drawn through the years, together with one in all my earliest in 2002 — again after I referred to as this collection Model Camp:
“If advertising and marketing stored a diary, this could be it.”
– Ann Handley, Chief Content material Officer of MarketingProfs
