TheCollectiveIs theFocusGroup

RevolutionizingROI Through“Return on Insight”

David Armano VP Experience DesignCritical Mass

Products/BrandsThe CollectiveInsightsIndividuals

As far as marketing goes, there’sa tried and true model, whichhas been in service for manyyears—it’s called the focusgroup. The premise is simple:create your product or marketingcampaign and get it in front ofpeople who you think representa mid section of your intendedconsumer. Do it in a lab typesetting where you can observeand document the reactions.Then, generate a report whichinforms the initiative as it movesforward. Initiatives that “test”well are the ones that getsupport. Theoretically, thesehave the most promise to de-liver a “return on investment.”The model does work—butit’s increasingly becoming lessrelevant in a fast paced digitalworld. In this world, a “massaudience” doesn’t really existand brands that deal in

niche

are rewarded.Which focus group could havepredicted the rising success ofa platform such as Twitter?Could they ever have guessedit would empower individuals tocommunicate during the recentMumbai attacks in India or en-able new behaviors such as the“retweet,” which users leverageto spread content virally? Howwould YouTube have fared in alab setting? Would it have gottenthe backing required to createwhat was eventually sold forover a billion dollars in 2006?What if Facebook held a focusgroup to determine the viabilityof every new feature theywanted to try out? The problemwith hyper-focusing on ROI as akey indicator of future successis that it limits the quality ofinsights, which can be obtainedwhen an initiative is launched ina

real environment.

This is wherethe collective comes in. In arapidly changing digital world,the collective is the focus group.

David Armano, VP ExperienceDesign

The Collective Is the Focus Group

Revolutionizing ROI Through “Return on Insight”

by David Armano

There’s probably been no better time than now to ask the question “what’s the returnon investment?” for a particular initiative your organization may be contemplating.Given the uncertainty of economic times, it’s understandable. Right now, companies

who have served as pillars of nancial growth, are nding themselves in situations wecould have never predicted years ago. This points to a aw in the predictive model—

that it’s not easy to predict a likely outcome, and yet we try to predict the return oninvestment for initiatives to determine what gets funded and what doesn’t.

Take for example, the “Motrin Moms”example which gives us an insight intohow quickly things move on the Web. Ifyou hadn’t heard about it, the case studygoes something like this. Motrin launchesa new ad targeted at Moms, whichreferences carrying babies in slings as“fashionable” butputting a strain onthe body. The adgoes over well inmainstream focusgroups, but monthslater a fury eruptson the Web fueledby a small butconnected groupof mothers active across social networks.Dubbing themselves the “Motrin Moms,”they quickly organize and voice theirdissatisfaction with the tongue-in-cheektone of the ad. They cause such a hugePR ripple effect that Motrin decides topull the ad,resulting intheir web-site beingdown fornearly a full day.Focus groups failed to provide the insightthat on the web, people like the MotrinMoms exist, and they have the means to

inuence things like search engines, not

to mention the press. This insight meansyou need to be prepared for scenarioslike this. The key takeaway is that whileyou can’t predict a scenario such asthe “Motrin Moms,” you do have tounderstand the dynamics of communitiesin the digital space, because ultimatelythey can put you in a defensive position.What’s the ROI on being able to handlesomething like that?

“In a rapidlychanging digitalworld, thecollective is thefocus group.”

Motrin.com was

temporarily takendown so theadvertisementcould be replacedwith a formalmessage.