New Creative Approaches to Focus Groups?

Interesting article in the NYTimes the other day about how Focus Groups are being treated more creatively these days.

Like at least one commenter said, I was using some of these techniques (music, food, adjustable image boards, symbolic objects, etc.) over a decade ago. They were both fun and revealing in many ways, since projection techniques often get people past the traditional responses one often gets in focus groups.

Some are saying these days that focus groups should never be used. Focus groups still have a place, but most often from an idea generation or concept exploration perspective in my experience. More importantly, especially in focus groups, respondents often need to be challenged in some ways because they will (often unconsciously) tell us what they think they should say, versus the real truth. The trick is often to create disruption. (I have some interesting case studies around this). There are different ways to do this depending on the objective and the respondents. For instance it may be finding ways to trip-up or catch respondents in a contradiction - and explore this with them to find where the real truth lies.

Very different techniques that some people advocate, like hypnosis or working with the unconscious mind, are approaches likely to continue to be limited to really brave clients. There are other less threatening ways to work with both respondents and clients. But what these techniques point out is the importance of the actual interpretation of interactions with consumers - or not always taking things at face value. This can be the difference between a good moderator and a bad one, or useful versus simply check the box results.