So you think you know what you like? Hm. Think twice.
The real nightmare of a marketing department starts the moment when the campaign is ready to set off. Before the launch, experienced and not so brave marketing gurus turn to conventional methods of gathering people’s opinions about the prepared campaign. Will they love it? Will they buy more beer if we sweat that glass off and make that girls cleevage sexier? Will they hate it? The questions are endless.
Some companies do a brief survey, some of them just sit around for hours and discuss the possible opinions and others turn to focus groups. Aha! Focus group, that is a great idea! (?) Let’s hear it from our future customers, let’s see what they say about it!
And then they call the agency which gathers volounteers who have nothing better to do than be labrats. And they sit behind the mirror in their comfortable executive chairs, drink champaign and eat peanuts (or watch live on conference video) while focus group discusses their lates ads. Each member of the group, guided by the moderator says their opinion. The results are gathered, data is calculated and in a short period of time you get your conclusion: green light or red light. Launch or determine, as simple as that. Is it?
Watch this ad:
The ad is for Cheetos, famous Frito-Lay chips. As you can see, the little devil Chester the tiger whispers to the girl „Felicia, those are her whites in the dryer…“. Oh yes Felicia, put a little Cheetos in the dryer, color her whites in orange, you know you want it. Bad bad girl Felicia.
So, Frito Lay gathered a focus group and the answer was NO! The labrats didn’t like the ad, they said it was offensive, mean, disturbing and… well, they just simply didn’t like it. „The customer is always right“, said HP, but Frito Lay thought twice. Thanks God someone thinks twice!
They hired Neurofocus, agency which does miracles. They connected the labrats to EEGs and miracelous thing happened: They liked the ad! Frito Lay decided to listen to the machine results and they launched the ad. It rocked!
You know what, the focus group did not neceseceraly lie. They might have said the truth. They thought they hated it, but they had no idea what happened in their brains. So, how can Electroencephalogram (EEG) tell the true reaction? Because it measures subconcious. It catches the things that you had no idea that you were feeling. It cathes all your primal instics, your suboncious fears and wishes. It catches the real you.
Would you like to look at the list of the Neurofocus clients? Yeah, me too. You can google all you want, you won’t find it. You’ll find traces, like I did and you’ll find the fabulous line on their webpage:
„NeuroFocus clients include Fortune 100 companies across multiple categories …“ . It says it all. I rest my case.