A journalist's eye view of the focus group process.

By Lesley Daw

Every day in this country, marketers sit in the dark, hoping consumers will show them the light.

From darkened rooms behind one-way glass, vice-presidents of marketing, marketing managers, brand managers and their ad agency partners eavesdrop on groups of consumers talking about their company, brand or advertising. Moderators keep the groups talking, usually by asking "Why?"; "How do you feel about that?"; "Tell me more about that."; or "What makes you say that?"

While many readers of Marketing have probably spent many hours behind that one way mirror and listened to what consumers have to say about them, the editorial staff at Marketing rarely get that chance. So we asked Toronto-based research company Plunkett Communications Inc. to conduct a series of focus groups for us to see the process in action. And we used the opportunity to delve into how consumers feel about advertising in general and how people in the business feel about it. Marion Plunkett, PCI's president, has provided an "executive summary" of her company's findings. This article is more of a journal's-eye view of the focus group process.

PCI is a Toronto-based qualitative and quantitative research company founded nine years ago by Plunkett, who before that spent 20 years in the research division of Ogilvy & Mather in Toronto and New York. PCI's client base includes financial services, automotive, packaged goods and telecommunications companies operating in Canada, and their ad agencies.

In any given week, Plunkett and her associates might run a dozen or more full focus groups or a series of one-on-one interviews. These could be in a variety of regions. During the first week of May, for example, Plunkett moderated sessions in Nova Scotia and Montreal as well as several groups in Toronto.

The Marketing focus groups took place in the facilities of Consumer Vision, located near Bay and Bloor Streets in Toronto, one of approximately 170 focus-group facilities in Canada listed in the Profession Marketing Research Society's paid listings. Consumer Vision is a 15-year-old company with has seven focus group rooms and usually hosts about 50 groups a week.

The room behind the glass could comfortably fit a dozen or more people. One of our editors' instant reaction was that it reminded him of being in a Skydome Skybox. It was dark, of course, but surprisingly luxurious, with a raised area back from that mirror that was furnished with two couches, two easy chairs, end tables and a coffee table, and, on the lower level, a row of chairs at a counter right behind the mirror. There were fresh-cut flowers on the end tables and a bowl of candy on the coffee table.

A vestibule side-room was consistently stocked throughout the sessions with meals and snacks--salad, Dijon Apricot Chicken, rice, rolls and a dessert plate if we were there over lunch, and chips, pretzels, popcorn and a veggie tray during our evening session. It also contained a mini-bar stocked with wine, beer and assorted juices and soft drinks. (Plunkett observes that very few of her clients ever actually have a beer or a glass of wine, probably out of a feeling that they are at work during the sessions--we journalists weren't as shy.)

While it seemed a bit lavish at first, by the end of our six-hour session on Saturday April 18 we really appreciated the comfortable seats and the space to move around a bit.

We held seven focus groups, two with marketers, one with ad agency folks, and four with consumers--men, women, girls 13 and 14, and boys 16 and 17. The industry folks were invited based on an attempt to include a cross section of sectors and ad agency disciplines. The consumers were recruited by Consumer Vision from its database of 45,000 people. (Each of the consumer participants were given a $40 "incentive" for their approximately two hour sessions. For the industry participants, donations were made in their names to ABC Canada or another charity of their choice.)

Consumers are typically screened three times for the sessions, says Consumer Vision general manager Phyllis Friedman. The screeners ask things like whether they, or anyone in their families, has ever worked in advertising. They were excluded in our case if they had ever been to a focus group about advertising before or if they had attended any focus groups in the past year or three or more in the past five years. That information can be found in a list put out by the Professional Marketing Research Society. Each month members of PMRS send in lists of the individuals they have used in focus groups with comments about the topic of the focus group and notes about any participants who were not co-operative.

Each group quickly developed its own personality. The teens were obviously more used to doing things in group situations, something which became very evident when they were given the pile of images for the picture sort. With the teen girls the session worked very much like a classroom, some of them even put their hands up before they spoke and they all brought their "homework" (a copy of or description of their favorite ad and of an ad they found effective) neatly written. They were very aware of advertising and knew what they liked and why, giving reasons like many ethnic groups were represented in an ad, or the use of humor kept them watching the ad until the end so they'd see the price. They were pretty media savvy and a little skeptical about advertising and the motives of advertisers.

Some of the teenage boys, on the other hand, were downright cynical, one referring to advertising people as "shysters." They said they thought there were laws that advertisers couldn't lie outright, but they did "twist the truth" by using small print and other "misleading" tactics. And they sounded like they knew what they were talking about, speaking in terms of "target markets" and "image advertising." The guys were a bit less formal than the girls and more likely to get into heated debates about the business practices of this company or that. Four of the five were very vocal and confident of their opinions, while one, like in any group, sat near the back and only answered questions directed specifically at him.

The women were very polite, not interrupting one another and trying not to disagree too strongly with each other. Overall the women had fewer negative comments about the advertising industry than the other groups, although they did have some specific complaints, including the use of sexual innuendo and nudity when it isn't necessary or appropriate. And although one of the women mentioned sexism early in the session, when they were given the opportunity to talk about prejudice or stereotypes in ads, sexism wasn't mentioned.

Compared to the women, the men were very blunt in telling each other that they didn't agree. The aggressive dynamic may have been pushed along by one chippy know-it-all who, given the chance, would have dominated the whole session. But the other members of the group were quickly put off by his manner and kept him from taking control. Plunkett, simply by telling him to let others talk, managed to offend him enough to keep him quiet the rest of the session. He refused to even participate in the photo sort.

The industry groups probably aren't representative of what most focus groups are like, in part because they knew up front exactly who the sessions were being conducted for and in part because so many of them have had extensive experience on the other side of the glass. Indeed, several made comments about how strange it felt to be sitting in front of the mirror fielding questions.

Plunkett in action during the photo-sort disussion with women 25 to 49

They behaved like a group of colleagues chatting over drinks after work, sometimes playfully teasing as they were discussing each other's ads or businesses. Both the agency folks and the marketers, many of whom didn't know one another, maintained a high level of respect throughout the sessions.

While these sessions were all very different, there were some constants. There were some ads that were mentioned by almost every group. That old adage about putting dogs in ads certainly works on the people in our groups--Microcell's Fido ads came up in almost every group, as did Taco Bell's current ads with the chihuahua.

Many of the same images dominated the picture sort as well, although they didn't always show up in the same categories. Plunkett gave the groups a pile of about 65 pictures and asked that they each choose one picture that represents to them banking, politics, what consumers think of advertising and what the advertising industry thinks of itself. Plunkett and her colleague Stephanie Nicholas stressed to us that it isn't the images that are important but why people choose them, but we couldn't help but notice some of the common images--the ostrich with its head in the sand, the too-wide-eyed-to-be-natural child, and the slick looking guy with his cell phone and sports car.

Our sessions, while typical in format to the usual focus group project, were atypical in a number of important ways. To begin with, Plunkett noted, we were asking generalized questions that were a lot less focused than a company with a particular product or positioning in mind would be asking. As well, the seven groups would really only be a beginning for a major marketer. They would generally be followed up by more research--usually in other regions of the country if it were a national marketer--and probably some one-on-one interviews and quantitative survey research. (As it was, a set of sessions like ours would normally cost between $15,000 and $25,000.)

Throughout all the sessions Plunkett asked the same questions, albeit tailored slightly to each group. She was more casual with the industry folks, some of whom she knew personally or professionally, but she spent most of her time asking variations on the same question: "Why?"; "Why do you think that is?"; "What makes you say that?"; "How do you feel about that, Jane?" One of the male consumers at one point blurted out in mild exasperation. "All you ever do is ask 'Why'." To which she gently replied, "That's my job."

In fact, it struck us journalists that in a lot of ways, our job is quite similar to that of market researchers like Plunkett. We too ask a lot of questions--especially "why"--in an attempt to probe for answers that go beyond the initial surface response.

There are, of course, also big differences. And perhaps the biggest is in how the findings and conclusions are pulled together and analyzed.

While journalists do try to produce stories that reflect the "reality" of a situation or subject, the needs of "story telling" inevitably lead us to put emphasis on the dramatic, and unusual. But Plunkett stressed several times during our sessions that she always cautions clients not to focus too much on the most dramatic or extreme comments. Those points of view are often out of sync with the big picture. The point is to see the forest, not the tree. (It has been instructive to see the differences between Plunkett's summary of the groups and the moments we remembered most.)

Indeed, as we sat in that darkened room through more than 14 hours of conversation over a three week period, it became clear that there is nothing inherently dramatic about focus groups. They weren't boring exactly, but there were few sudden epiphanies or revelations. But the slow and steady shedding of light on consistent patterns and themes was fascinating to behold.