Focus

I spent two evenings this week listening to focus groups of lapsed users of the fancy yogurt place. I am always fascinated by consumers and what makes them tick...especially when they aren't too clear on what they buy or why.

I watched Murphy Brown back in the day and one of my favorite episodes involved the cast sitting behind the 2-way glass in a viewing room for some network focus groups, listening to viewers criticize their performance. Murphy, in her aggressive, bold fashion has enough of the commentary and goes crashing into the panel room, yelling and swinging at the open-mouthed panelists, shocked to have her coming after them.

There were a couple of consumers in each of the 4 groups that had me rolling my eyes. While we are certainly expensive, fancy yogurt, some of the snotty comments seemed pretty unnecessary and were hard to not take personally, especially when accusing the brand of being over exposed in one statement, followed almost immediately by a statement that they would come more often if we built a store closer to their home or work.

Crashing through that door would be pretty fun.