Focus groups or in-depths?

Why is everyone suddenly so in love with in-depth interviews and so out of love with focus groups?

It is not at all because focus groups have stopped being an effective tool. It is, first and foremost, because conducting focus groups either requires years of learning (back in the day, my junior moderators needed at least a couple of years working in tandem with me on projects before they could fully work with a client on their own), or delegating them to professionals for relatively big money (for little money, you will get complete garbage). On the other hand, anyone with common sense and a baseline understanding of marketing can conduct an in-depth interview themselves

But in reality, the role and value of in-depths and focus groups are very different, and a researcher should have both in their arsenal

It is the philosophy of 'bothism' in action: not one or the other, but both. Because the world is not black and white, and goals and tasks can be very different

An in-depth interview is a dialogue with a single person, at their own pace of thinking and talking (especially if it is online), where we try to guide them along a logical path from rationale (Kahneman's System 2) to emotion. A classic example is Laddering, where we move deeper from each important attribute all the way to the emotional benefit for the consumer or even a more global life value. Or, by taking long turns around that same buyer journey, we try to catch the unconscious motives, drivers, and barriers

All of this is very important and valuable when we are working either with relatively small brands or on the short-term component of a big brand's strategy - one that is aimed, for example, at a specific, quite narrow, and highly defined target audience segment, with the goal of convincing them to buy one specific SKU with its specific features in the near future

Usually, however, when we work with the strategic tasks of major brands that are aimed at, I am not afraid to use this word, everyone (because you love the lord of penetration, Byron Sharp, don’t you?), in-depth interviews either make no sense, or you could conduct them until the end of time because you need so very many of them!

A long time ago, I had a Japanese client. At the brief stage of a project, he called and said, ‘I counted 82 groups, isn’t it too many?’ 😁 As a result, we shaped and did 14

Imagine that a single brand has a quite large portfolio of different products aimed at different target segments, each performing different ‘jobs’ and possessing several CEPs, with different consumers taking a different path to each of them (take Gillette or Roshen, for example…)

Such a brand needs to be ‘managed’ as a whole, not just in pieces. It must have a single positioning, distinctive assets (by which all SKUs in the portfolio are recognized), and a clear architecture - not a bunch of random things that were generated, named, and pushed out

This is work on the long-term strategy of building a brand in a three-dimensional space, not in a black-and-white world. Its goal is to skillfully manage a whole complex structure, noticing in time when and what to start paying attention to, and developing effective paths for the gradual evolution of brand architecture, portfolio, DNA, visual identity…

For such projects, we might need users and buyers, regular and situational, loyal and occasional, new and lapsed, our own and competitors' (where we distinguish between direct and indirect competition), and so on

For these purposes, in-depth interviews make no sense. This is where focus groups work

Why? Not just because of a highly clustered target audience, whose representatives can be smartly combined into a single group

The main reason is that a major brand manages collective associative networks, not individual secret desires (hello, Byron!)

Let’s return to Kahneman. A big brand works at the level of System 1 - in the zone of fast, automatic, almost reflex-like consumer reactions. Think of yourself in a supermarket - do you stand there for a long time deliberating and choosing every single product? No, of course not! You buy what first came to mind, caught your eye, or triggered certain positive associations - meaning it received approval from your brain's System 1: ‘take it, it’s fine, remember…?’​

And this "approval from the brain" doesn’t just happen on its own; it comes from the painstaking work of building a brand. We need to regularly track a whole range of aspects. Does our brand trigger the exact associations that were embedded in its positioning? Is our brand architecture working / are sub-brands, endorsements, etc., playing their roles? Which marketing activities strengthen and which, conversely, weaken our brand equity? Is our DNA (the positioning of the entire brand), our assets, and our architecture still relevant today? How and where is the category moving? What are the competitors doing? How is the target audience changing? And much more...

At the explorative stage, all of this is work specifically for focus groups. And, what is critically important - specifically live, offline focus groups. And, what is even more than essential - in close interaction with the Client

Because this is a process where there are no right or wrong answers, simple frameworks do not work, and ready-made, unambiguous answers or solutions cannot be stamped out. This is the stage of searching for real insights, which, believe me, are hidden very, very deeply - otherwise, one of you would have found them a long time ago :)

The moderator's task in such a focus group is not to unpack everyone’s childhood trauma, but to artificially recreate society in miniature: to launch the dynamics at a Presto tempo, to reveal spontaneous associations, reactions, and emotions; to clash opinions, to understand how people think, what they desire, what catches them, why they argue, how they convince each other, what they feel, how they decode, interpret…

Great focus groups are a seasoned expert's jazz improvisation on the foundation of fundamental marketing science. That is exactly why it is complex, long, and expensive

By the way, during the focus-groups, we often simultaneously uncover those same ‘jobs’, ‘CEPs’, etc., which later form the basis for product positionings. Because, to be honest, you don't always need 20 in-depths for this - sometimes a few words in groups are enough. The moderator and analyst just have to know how to catch them and unfold them to the brand's benefit. But that is a whole different story :)

If we talk about a methodologically correct approach, in-depth interviews can come into play precisely when quite narrow marketing tasks are set based on explorative research, and you need to dive into details in one specific direction. For major brands, this is the time to work on the short-term component of the strategy - meaning, defining key priorities for the upcoming year (rather than 5 years, as in the case of a long-term brand strategy), shaping tightly targeted STPs, and defining product positionings and their communication

In summary, working on a brand means constant and extremely close contact with the target audience, from a broad explorative scope (focus groups) to fine-tuned adjustments (in-depth interviews)

Though, to be honest, I personally prefer groups at both stages. I only do in-depths when we have to go online, have a very sensitive audience, or face a highly specific task

And while everyone is chasing quick and cheap pills, which are hung up like carrots by hyped-up ‘gurus’, allow yourself to stop, break away from the work routine, come over for a visit, and let’s talk about your brand and its more global needs… Though that will have to be after my vacation 😊