Focus!
I was invited to participate in a focus group yesterday on, of all things, advertising and marketing. Given my recent fascination (read: obsession) with advertising of the print and commercial variety this was a field day for me. I was invited and paid to express my opinions in a panel of friends for 2 1/2 hours. What did we find? Well, I’m glad you asked. There’s a few things going on, as well as some things that weren’t touched upon during the group but I’d be happy to shed some light.
We spent some time talking about the current State Farm campaign – you know, sing the jingle and your agent shows up to save the day – there were some mixed emotions from the panel. On the one hand, they succeeded in getting us to talk about the ad whether we like it or not, but on the other and maybe more important hand, none of us in the panel are in the market for insurance that they’re selling. What’s the upshot of this? I feel pretty strongly like the ads are going only so far as to impress their slogan and jingle upon us but not translating directly to sales. I personally don’t know how to measure how valuable that is to a company, especially one so large as State Farm since obviously somebody is buying their insurance either on the strength of these or previous advertisements. It was most interesting for me to hear how some of my peers felt about it and discovering that these ads are in fact reaching people.
We then spent a pretty good deal of time talking about beer and the way they sell their product. There’s a respect in which you might say that beer sells itself. To whatever extent it does (and it does), that would be shortchanging the extreme lengths these beverage companies go to in order to insure that we (the royal we) will be ordering their product when we go hang at our favorite watering hole. We explored the tactics of Coors Light, Bud Light, Miller Light, Corona and Corona Light among others. I have reason to suppose that Coors Light was at the helm of this focus group, though I can’t be sure. One way or the other they got by far the worst reviews from my panel which I found somewhat humorous. From the “love train” commercials to the mountains turning blue, there was a serious lack of impress on the part of my group with Miller Light taking the top spot for efficacy. Their most recent set of ads (European speedo, skinny jeans, sunglasses at night, etc) telling us to “Man Up” left an impression with myself and my co-viewers. Also, though not a domestic light beer, Dos Equis and their Most Interesting Man In The World scored very well.
It was agreed upon that attention to detail, as well as humor and ability to relate to a character was important when being sold to. Beyond that, having someone to emulate, admire or aspire to made the group feel much more comfortable. After some pretty extensive analysis it also came to pass that the race, age, and gender of such characters were not even that crucial to an eventual sale as long as there was some common ground, something a viewer of any background could relate to. This of course left open questions as to whether the results of the same line of questioning in a completely different market would have turned up similarly. I have reason to suppose not but all the same continue to find it fascinating that thirty second commercials can provide such fodder for conversation while either ruffling feathers or thoroughly impressing their audience, target or not.
Peace Love and Vocal Harmonies
