Ask or not to Ask?

I've just found on YouTube a great example presenting how dangerous asking people to express their opinions about advertising can be. Participants of the focus group were asked to judge the famous Apple commercial "1984", that by the way was called to be one of the best ads ever. There was shown animated version. What was result? They were pretty dissatisfied with the ad and came up with a couple of improvements and incredible comments presenting the complete lack of understanding of the concept. The video shows the risk of asking people to evaluate whether the commercials are good or not. We ask people to be experts and they want to live up to our expectations. They do their best to rationalize, have meaning on every aspect of ad and sound professional - they want to help us from the depth of their hearts. However, it is not exactly what we want out of focus group. We don't need people expertise, we need to gain knowledge of what people feel when seeing ad, how deep it touches them and which effect it has on their emotions.

 

Here is the original version of Apple ad.

So don't ask your focus group for advice how to change the ad or your product. Talk to them about their feelings, associations advertising / products evoke in them - it gives you a lot of insights to work with. The better you understand the people, the better ads / products you can make. And never forget your gut feeling, that can often guide you to the right solutions.

Tags: research, ad testing, Apple, focus group