Focus Groups and Contexts

Lately I’ve been thinking about focus groups and context. These thoughts have mainly been fed by some stuff in my blog-bubble.
This this article by Vicky of Naked communications in NY and this film made by Roger Baldacci and Lawson Clarke of Arnold.



Now if you don’t mind I’ll add my tardy piece to this context scented jigsaw puzzle.

I really have to agree both with Vicky and her excellent view on context and with Roger and Lawson and their view on focus groups (although the choice for 1984 seems a bit, well, outdated). I think that the views of Malcolm Gladwell and his spaghetti sauce talk at TED and the view of Kevin Roberts in his book Lovemarks strengthen this view as well.




They say that focus groups, old school style, or the 'answers' theses groups give are not representative. Either by providing the wrong context in which the questions are asked or by asking the wrong questions all together

In my opinion context and focus groups are two inseparable things where context often has too much influence on a focus group. Often due to the context factor, focus groups provide a pale representation of how a situation actually is.
Now how could the factor context be used to make focus groups (or whatever you want to call them) more realistic/efficient/meaningful/representative.

I think the answer lies in the fact that you shouldn’t go to a consumer but let him/her/them come to you. Answers and opinions should not be ‘forced’ from a focus group they must have the option to be given at any time and any place.
I think that social networks provide a major opportunity here. Create a media where questions, opinions and answers from consumers and companies can flow freely in all directions without f-ing with their context too much.
Do think outside of the facebook / myspace context as well. They are off course decent starting points and some brands already have their facebook profile (most of the time sadly to communicate in just one direction) but the words social and network provide much more possibilities for companies to start from.

Social networks provide a big opportunity to minimize the influencing factor of context to a bare minimum and they can be a worthy replacement of focus groups.
So to get valuable information let’s focus less on groups and try to be more social in networks (get it...)