SDIF Monthly 1217 Focus Groups

[Music] ladies and gentlemen Sam in this form is quite pleased and honored to welcome tonight's speaker Lisa frosting it's the light shining in my eyes because I slide animals with my name's line awesome so I'm here to talk to you tonight about focus groups I was contacted about this I was thinking well you know I'm really an advertising person I'm not really an expert on focus groups but I have had some experience with focus groups that I think is really applicable to you guys today and they're telling really fun story about this so I entitled this focus Muse I'm talking to strangers female being perspective on your products get audition marketing a save you a bundle because as as I said before you know you can spend a lot of money on something that isn't really a great idea I think it's a great idea mom thinks is a great idea and it's not just individual inventors that make this mistake you're gonna see some pretty big companies and you've probably seen before I mean these kind of flock because they didn't really listen to their customers so Oh working but that's well that's my that's my new headshot because my mother didn't like them all right where I'm sitting that horrible face so if you need to get your photograph so am i watching you listen to me I'm gonna pee just slightly because I've already had an engine give you a little more kind of more fun so I've been working in advertising and marketing since the early 80s and so it's been I've seen a lot in that time a lot of it's a changed a lot of things haven't changed I'm responsible for a lot of international and national ad campaigns the best-known is is the one piece the one things that make for so many years worth is the jingle that goes where do we get our keys on you so I like to say that I changed your underwear and that campaign really did make a big difference in that and then in the market and why do I looking at this I can see this right here um so yeah I've been a copywriter and marketing consultant for both corporate in my home business and also for small business owners and I just love helping people with their strategy and their marketing and their message and as we do I would say I'm marketing a branding so that's one of the things that I do so this was really my job and Betty remembers the show first I was Peggy and then I was done and advertising agency in New York that was very similar to the one you've seen on that been about 20 years afterwards not all that much had changed I have to tell you so a lot of the stuff that's going on right now I'm thinking well yeah I have that happened to me some of the brands that I worked on including them to talk about Hanes I be able to pick one KFC Comey Palmolive we're gonna be started by a little bit later and a bunch of other ones also lots of big companies and yes I do we're the Michael Jordan nominating staff and bunch of other of the celebrities too but this was my first job my first job was to be a street musician in New York City that's I was getting interviewed on TV that I was becoming a big star that moment I was in college and I needed to make a living easy to summer job and I was too young to work in a restaurant that would sell alcohol I couldn't type worth it down and my parents I won't call myself an adventure right I do have a few ideas I've had patent pending that there have anything name I always been super creative at it and my parents did their credit but it was an okay idea for their sixteen-year-old daughter to go I was down on the street corner Manhattan and putting music it in a cardboard box which is what I did for five centers the reason I even bring this up to date it's no one to show you that I'm one of you and ya interested in making things but also it was relevant to focus groups because there's no focus group like a street corner in Manhattan okay I did this for five summers so I got to see a lot about what people liked and what they didn't like and about what what please then we're going to laugh or didn't be a laugh with living like what they got war up because what was happening was people would put a quarter in vinyl slots called human jukebox I wish I could say I invented it I ripped it off I saw a guy do it in San Francisco when I was 10 and I said someday I'm going to do that New York and and my boats hope I guess they thought I forgot about it when they said what kind of summer job do you want I said I want to do that huge influx thing I saw in San Francisco when I was ten and so but every summer I could meet a little bit of an innovation for summer I've just you know they could have ordered this lot i play whatever song I felt like then I added the buttons where they can choose a song then I realize I'm you get more people to buy more songs if I change my mind I custom for each one so they so here I'm just got finished playing like a piece of the box very small piece of the Bach concerto number two right there so I'm back there I'm so I got people to buy more than one I think things instead of 25 cents I get maybe seventy-five cents or a dollar from the same person so these little innovations that would happen happened because I was watching what my customers were doing not about to do what I felt like doing I saw it work and I used it so it's a little bit like what's gonna be talking about today exactly the focus groups but a little bit so why focus groups why would you want to use the focus group I mean obviously there's that there's some obvious reasons but I hope we're gonna tell you a few like less obvious ones today and you don't offer be as formal as what it looks like here these are the kinds of ones that I'm used to seeing but you know it can be a much more informal situation um the first the biggest reason is oh I've got it really gonna cut off your audience is really the only opinion that matters I'm showing pictured England I'm here because he had a lot of other you know professional comedians well still very often not just every once in a while go into a little comedy club that you pay like 15 bucks to get into and just try there's no bail because before they go out and like you know invest there are real audience in this they want to see you have a place and so it's not it's kind of line to focus group so that idea is that you're giving you're getting a real feedback some honest feedback from people who aren't trying to make you feel good who aren't you know enabling something I'm not saying any of you guys are I've ever tried to have ever fantasized that your idea was better than it actually was but it's really hard to get perspective from yourself and work for your friends or your mom or people have a vested interest in making you happy so it's important to get in front of your audience and to just you know get out of the bubble so that's really what if what a focus group is really all about you get well how this is why is this doing this wow you got authentic feedback when I arrived I was looking at this everything was on the same line you can have two anyway get authentic feedback and look and just as important you gals entik language and then as a copywriter somebody who writes you know marketing it's it's it's its goal to me to hear the actual way people talk about something and focus group is unique in that you hear people talking as long as you ask any questions unanswered but they talk to each other too and they start to have a conversation about your product and there's gold in there there's gold in there for your product or there's also going there for your marketing because the same product when we demonstrate that in a few minutes the same exact product is either great idea or a crappy idea depending on how to market it can be okay and that's that's that's really where my passion comes in because yes of course you know you can test for all kinds of these things you know functionality and things like that but you can have the exact same physical product and you talk you tell people one thing about it and they don't care you tell them something else about it and suddenly it's the greatest thing ever so hope this movie will help you figure that out it's important to make a distinction here between what's called qualitative and quantitative research I'm not research expert áthisá this is a very kind of basic thinking about most of you probably already knows but it bears repeating a focus room is not going to tell you what your ideas gonna sell or not and it's not going to give you a conclusive idea it's not forth of business because you know what qualitative qualitative is focused regional announcer eats profits and any kind of clinical anecdotal we call it anecdotal and quantitative quantitative is if you're you know if you do things like surveys and polls in your statistics what you get from from qualitative research is why people feel a certain way and how they feel about it and their language and the things I said before what you get from quantitative research is big numbers like you can see like 95% of the people said this 45% of the people said that you have enough people being surveyed that those numbers have some meaning where the focus group you're sitting around with 8 people and you can find multiple focus groups you get a little bit more you know sure about things but it's really kind of more to get nuances not to decide is this about is this a viable idea or is this not a viable idea but it can be included it's good confirmation also if you think you're on the right track so obviously the wrong product cost money you know for the time you spend all your time and effort and all the other stuff that you have to do to create the product and all of this worth less witness here so it helps to know what you're doing if something if the product is wrong or something I thought the product is wrong not just the whole idea but there's one little thing about it that couldn't change and you might not even see it if you don't ask people the people who are going to be you know your consumer and also the wrong message cost money and the wrong typeface will go on to the next line that makes us it make your slides completely illogical especially when you switch from Matt to PC which is what I think what I think just happened so beautiful slides when they were this morning so you're given you know every little thing about your product you have designed it you've thought about it you've lived with it you know every single thing if you have a curse of knowledge you know too much and the people that you're going to be putting it in front of they don't know anything so that's one of the things that makes a focus groups so valuable because you understand absolutely everything about it and why it's awesome but do they do they get it to the even understand it at all on why or what is this for right do others see why it matters do others see what's great about it and why it matters and doesn't solve the problem and here's the most important thing isn't even a problem because I see a lot of now I don't know how I light up hat solves a problem except it's like you want to have more fun and you want to have more team-building and you want however but you know so it's something fun to do to wear at night like some I can see that but a lot of times people just make something they do they just think it's cool or awesome or whatever and people are like why do I need this what is this for and that's really where the problem comes in so this is this is where I go into my little spiel my little story and you know this is how close you've saved my career out of the entire product category so there were these a little war story for my advertising years so I worked for an ad agency it was it was young enough account at the time our client was quote named Palmolive and Procter & Gamble was the big dog and they made a product called Cascades you've probably heard of because they still make it it came in this powder box or in fact was in fact dishwashing detergent so in your dishwasher only came in powder form you couldn't get other than anything else at the time in cascade was the big by far the big reader so Colgate Palmolive in their wisdom decided that they were going to compete with Penske by coming out with their own dish automatic dishwashing detergent they call the common all about dining and they made it in a liquid form now they thought this was a good idea because for years and years and you probably remember this if you're old enough years and years they had a liquid dishwashing liquid dishwashing detergent they still being it that had this long-running camp even mathematic yours oh it's so gentle you can soak your fingernails in it and the idea is oh my god I can't believe you're soaking I'm soaking in the dishwasher but you're not don't worry it's Palmolive it's gentle on your hands and butts top of your dishes but gentle on your hands the whole like is it's gentle so you can if you can imagine how people felt about the idea of a dish was something that goes in your dish water that's gentle you know first of all isn't even gonna work I mean so and everything is but like my partner and I would give them for the task to to make judicial white a commercial achieve a holy campaign with lots and lots of money and we're eager to go on or me even do what do we write about this there's no reason for this product they thought we'd come up with a different form and because they have this heritage and liquids that that was going to be something that people are going to want you can see it in a minute they've never even thought about whether a single person would want this product and we're sitting there staring at this annoying I you know kept on trying to come up with commercial ideas and they were all like so lame you know I was dancing with cascading everywhere all kinds of things trying to make oh why does a liquid fantastic it's like well who cares right so in desperation I decided I'm gonna go sit in the focus groups creative people in that macchesney beasties do not like this in the focus groups it's really for the research people right we like to sit we like have fun and play nerf basketball and things like that it was really you're sitting in a dark room this this is not this is not I didn't take a picture we're not even cool with me to do that this but this looks exactly like better than I was sitting in and that word did my head but I don't think we were looking through a one-way mirror they couldn't see us you can see them you need kind of creepy and we're sitting there for hours and hours men who got their brutal come in we kind of pounds of M&M and identify probably watching these women all say everyone went after another I want this cascade a33 you know why why do we need anything else besides cascade my partner Milan oh my god fire of every be able to help with anything is gonna work to sell this product is it's a job and so the moderator the person monitoring the focus group was so desperate you know she just kept trying to get them to say anything she couldn't get me to say anything finally in exasperation she said okay I get it you don't really know I'm not really interested in this you love cascade I don't know but if I have to I was going to pay you a million dollars and you had to tell me one thing that you don't love about the way you're doing your dishes right now what would it be and we've got quiet and one woman said well it's probably because I have an older dishwasher so she still would blame the product because they were so loyal to their breath that's stuff what you want right here it's probably because I have another dishwasher every once in a while you know I'll run the dishwasher and I'll open it up and the powder got stuck in a little cup in the door and these little pieces of dishwasher powder all those are the tissues and the dishes aren't clean and then even didn't work and all the other women started to sing oh yeah yeah yeah oh yeah I happen to be too and everyone's and suddenly there was like a little bit of a of a different mood in the room and moderators like oh this is interesting so she started to me she started to ask them you know like it was well how does it make you feel because before you know they we were telling them that while we have this liquid in there and you ready words you never want to hear as a partner and that's this so I but then when we started to talk about this this is very seldom moment when they're five wasn't perfect suddenly you've got this reaction I hate when that happens they all agree every single one of them this was not Baltic this was not quantitative research this was just like women once all the drama top eight women who launched cascade 5 minutes ago what when the brothers up and suddenly eight women were saying that sometime he died I hate when that happens I hate that we want my partner I was so excited there were a good moderate got sighted and she said you know you know what sorry so why is that a bad thing oh well you know I was I thought I was done with my work for the day and and and and I know it's not finished Janet my husband and I gotta fight because I'm because he thinks I'm finished but on finish again it's just roots my whole thing and yeah I wouldn't say yeah I hate that and so so you know the vote might be said well then you know how does it what does they make you feel like doing well woman said it makes me to be on TV all my dishes and just throw them out the window yeah me too so five minutes earlier nothing could stop nothing to try there cascade out of their cold dead hands and now five minutes later we're looking at pitchforks and torches that terrible we hate this product but it does this to me that's ruins my life eludes my marriage it ruins my day and and so um you know I said to my partner well there's a commercial so if we walked upstairs and about five or ten minutes you know I wouldn't look seriously in half an hour we had this commercial rhythm you know next stop Hollywood you know we would off to you know we show the client the client liked it you know everybody the consensus and the hook it was so strong we thought we have something here and it was easy to say yes because was all we had it was all we have we have another idea that's it so I'm going to attempt to actually show you I found on YouTube this is a vintage vintage TV commercial I'm going to attempt to show you this thing I'm going to see if I can make this go after 25 years people have had it with this one for powders all over the dishes unfortunately you're about to get a break from powders introducing hallmark automatic a revolutionary new liquid mega just for automatic dishwashers because it's a liquid it dissolves faster a rinse clean with no powers and so you can get on with them break away from powder okay so so that is that is the best ads at my focus and that's because it was exactly what they said makes you feel like taking my dishes and throwing out the window so we have this move out the way through against the wall we that opera music people but you know it's definitely not you know going to they're going to win any creator award so this is this might have to be still - in case we couldn't make the good make the video go but it did when what's called an Emmy Award and an Emmy Award is for advertising effectiveness because this is a product that I supported I swear to God until I saw that focus group this was going to be discontinued no one's gonna buy it right they could not keep it on the shelves they did not make it fast enough it was it was it was to selling out over and over over again but eventually and we did a few more commercials just like that one and people loved it whatever but eventually the company Colgate called our agency and said we're gonna have to pull the campaign off the air and run why it's working great this is yeah it's fine everyone loves the product already they already know how their product they like it the problem is we're getting letters from some from women saying my child is so in traditional yeah so I mean that we've made our point right so so what we did was you see what we did we took what was bad about the father the first thing a warning were so what about it that was a liquid that's why you won't have the problem if you have them the other thing and then we've all got it they said come up candy can't get stuck in the cupboard mind getting feel like it like you know because it's a liquid that's I'll never have that problem again that all the problem that I need so that's what that's that's how the book you've saved my bacon and and and now you know there's all category cascade makes a liquid for the dishwasher I don't think they ever learned done that except for this right so one of the kinds of things that you can learn above the screws I mean it's not besides just what is your product a good idea you can test price but also just features of a product well thousand features of liquid you know what the colors you know you know things things do that which is new functionality and how many colors does you have to come in and doesn't black this black because things let me talk about those things messages like what kinds of things would you say about the product because we didn't just said was liquid a liquid liquid so cows came home until we contrasted it with what happens with the other guy it wouldn't care you know what other benefits could your father have what are the use cases like yeah like it's it's a clean work in corporate could work in concerts could work in campaign it working you know Halloween Christmas you know some of the other ideas that you come up with room kind of cool some things that you just buy it not a flawed especially since you've been working on so long you're kind of too close to it to have anything new to say right so also you can give me your business card so we also do these slides because I stopped trying to be pretty huge spike in the money pretty anyway and I just put with a bunch of upwards down here but if you want to know what kinds of questions to ask here are some good questions kinds of questions so I'm going to read them off but the the first one what are you doing now to solve whatever problem it is the juice that this products awesome let's look what are you doing now so you know something if you're making something that's like a pet product or in a medical problems with power left you've got this issue that you may even spot a for what are you doing now to solve it you know and then see how they're talking about about that you and what what do you like the least what do you like the most what are you like at least about how you're doing it now that's kind of how we ended up with the commercial you know so you can see how these questions would would give you infinite of good information and you know he was just asking like who's this for what do you think this is for who used this would give you some ideas because you think you know it's who's for but they might say oh I could totally see you know expectant mothers using this because they could do this or that the other thing with if you never thought of that you might not use all of it but you know you might you might be some of it you know um why is it you know this thing I'm showing you now why is this better than what you're already doing what what what how is it how is it a step up how does it a thousand upgrade just hear what they say how would you just wasn't these are good how did you describe it to a friend or a colleague I actually stole some of these questions I got I got picked to do a ride-along I went thru drive through invisible asses on the other night with little epithet trapped where my eyes were going but a bunch of people from some research company and they I still some of the questions that it has to be if this pot course pork butts work but it babies like going through college guys it was a sport what was for but it is like what sport you like like like golf because I have to strategize that where I'm valued like anyone was kind of interesting it was an animal it was person or a superhero and so just it's interesting to see when people will say sometimes something will come out if you just want to expect that here are some important tips to keep in mind make sure that you you know when you put together your group I'm telling you give you a few tips about that not expert in that I'll give you a few tips about how to get started together a group you want to focus your target as well on your topic you don't want to ask them absolutely everything there is to ask about every single aspect of every single thing and you also don't want to ask just anybody obviously right you want gather and try to keep it all one room you might decide you want to ask both perspective users of your product and also you know you know well for example if you're using if you're doing medical if you're doing something with medical you might want to have a group of end users like who might actually use your product and also maybe a group of doctors that I think will prescribe the product so that's kind of a business-to-business case you wouldn't want to mix up in the same group the doctors and the patients that make sense because you wouldn't because they're very talking to each other and then you want them to be able to bring it over each other about you about your style um try not to leave the witness try not see I try to ask questions in a way that allows them to express themselves a lot of any idea of what kind of an answer you're looking for obviously if your product they're going to know that you don't want your good things so they so lots of people try to please you that's gonna happen anyway believe it wasn't more trying to lose anybody in that room they wanted them to like the products they didn't like it um they watch out for the further for the you know the attention Hawks there's always sometimes one person who just thinks that there are any matters more than anybody else's and they domini the entire conversation everybody else go like you can see that they're just not contributing and so you just have to kind of shut them down in a nice way so I really like to thank you so much Mary for that very hoping a very generous response but I'd really like to hear from you know from everybody so we have time here from everybody something like that it's really good to have somebody else with you not to go by yourself but else with you to take notes just serve drinks to run the recording thing or whatever you're not doing all of that yourself because it's just too much to you'll be able to pay attention to what you're doing most of the time you need to offer some kind of incentive to get people to come and do it unless they're all your best friends look if you want to get other people in this room to help you out but maybe they would if you're an EF group or something like this then you might be able to to get some people to volunteer but it's nice you got sandwiches here tonight so you know you have to have something some people will offer you know an Amazon gift card something like that they'll see you'll see authors of this kind of thing all over like our Craigslist and stuff and you know make sure you get it you get out of release you can just download a standard release on the internet that is pretty good pretty good you want to record it you know because you're not going to be able to be present that you're on be able to take notes perfectly just record it and just and that people you can review it later and you can get what we call bravados actually no like it would be phrases that you'll be able to pull out to be able to use in your marketing or or to show somebody there's a cares what people said about this right and how you can get those revisions well there are fantastic transcription companies now this is one goal of calm that will transcribe audio for a dollar an audio minute and with 99% accuracy nice back to you in a couple of hours pretty cool if the recordings are really super clear they have a new version of the exact same thing and we charge 10 cents in audio a minute but I think their focus groups you'd probably need a more expensive service because it's 2d horses to me and a lot of you can't guarantee the quality but then you have a transcript of everything that everybody said written that you can edit that you can copy and paste things out of it's really amazing it's worth it's really worth happening so I always tell them a little bit about this I feel a little research of my own it's not and it's not my expertise but you know you can you can get people to be in your in your focus music I enjoyed online forums by people looking for words both both physical and online bulletin boards you know isn't an interesting way you can decide to it to start a Viacom to to do this I see a lot of offers for the focus of your attendees on Craigslist I mean the thing is when you put stuff out on the Internet people will say that they fit your criteria just because we won yet you know what $20 Amazon gift card stuff so you have to kind of be prepared for the fact you're not gonna get the best most you know perfectly vetted people you can email your friends and do word of mouth but there are also these professional firms obviously that cost money to have them facilitate this entire thing for you but you get a much better a much more pure result because you because they do that people they through application process and they don't let anybody into your into your surveyor focus for you unless they really fit the criteria but you know even if you can't do it perfectly even even afternoon informally and cheaply hope you can see that it's still better to go and kind of you know tap the you know that the resource that is the objective use of your audience because really at the end it's really not about you your product your invention your baby it's really not about you it's about the people's and your that you can make it for and people that can watch enjoy it and buy it and so they need to defame you they need to love which you've created and they need to understand how you're explaining what you've created so if you wanna meet and if you okay how do you select well actually it's specific that's your your job is a lot easier you can you I mean you could do if you wanted to depends on how much money you have I just went along invest you can advertise for respondents in a in a company newsletter or in a industry newsletter you could ask if you could ask you know an association and kind of speak in an association or have large an association I think it's more specifics are better because you know those people will accommodate in a certain in a certain place they might have they might need in groups or Facebook rooms I didn't mention that here to be able to to get in front of those people so what you want to do is find maybe a couple of centers of influence people who have access to a large audience of those types of people and ask them to to disseminate that for you oh you do a divider like a moderator or something no I mean you can see here's the way we're working up in a big company and when I was doing the advertising business I didn't run the focus groups I would just we would hire a company that did focus groups to to you know create you know to invite these people to have two meetings to lobby the discussion to present their findings to us basically here's what we thought here's what we heard people saying they think most people liked this they didn't like that we heard a lot of people sitting there even more people saying that and they would give us this this information and then those of us that the agency wouldn't go okay now you know hearing what these people said is there anything that falls out of that on marketing that feels like it's true resonates you know then we all we also put sometimes have quantitative research that would say you know that would give us some more some more insights and some I know but no I mean the focus group person is not usually gonna be the person who's going to give you any kind of advice about how to use the information they're just giving you yeah they'll keep they'll give you the data and they will also often give you their interpretation here's what we think this means but then okay now that I know if this means what oh how do I got with that and armed with that knowledge now how am I going to talk about the product right you know that's that's that's the job of the marketing person or the advertising person or you the focus tree person basically is just you know they've collected the information and then given their interpretations and you don't have to agree with them because you'll have those four Vedas you can read everything everybody said you can say you know I know the moderator said this but I actually see this other thing also coming out live rather I think that we have a better we do that a lot we sometimes see like like like the winning argument was not necessarily the thing that we spent most time on they said you know this other thing is over here that seems like it's also like like runner up runner up kind of thought babe you look so split explore that and then test them against each other [Music] you

Channel: SDInventors

Views: 200

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: inventors, inventors help, inventors and inventions, applying for patent, patent, patenting, patenting an idea, patenting a product, agile manufacturing, marketing

Id: VEhZ_hxLv9Y

Length: 34min 55sec (2095 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 03 2018