A Feeble Minded Hipster, Focus Group Junkie and Murderer Walk Into A Bar...

Why did you watch that ad, buy that silly fixie or commit that murder? Understanding your own motivations for your behaviour can be…difficult.

I’ve never murdered a person, but I would imagine it would be quite a ‘high involvement’ task. Even the most brazen and seemingly spontaneous murder would require a degree of thought and planning. However, put a murderer in a room and ask them why they did it and, well you may as well run a focus group and ask them why they liked a particular ad on TV.

It occurred to me when watching a police interview with a recent murderer (there are loads on youtube) the police had no idea what questions to ask this chap, and this chap had no idea what to say to explain his behaviour.

Police: Why did you feel the need to kill her?

Murderer: I don’t know

Police: So why did you feel the need to kill any of the girls?

Murderer: I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.

Sound familiar? Done any qualitative ad testing lately?

How about this? On Twitter (@adamferrier) I asked the question “Why would anyone buy a Fixie (a bike with one gear) other than to be cool? What I got back was hilarious.

Hipster 1: “You feel closer with the road.”

Hipster 2: “You feel more at one with the machine.”

Hipster 3: “It wont break down.”

Hipsters everywhere trying to grab at anything other than the truth – they bought it to be cool, and fit in with all the other feeble minded hipsters. The murderer and the Feeble Minded Hipster (FMH) have a lot in common. They don’t have enough insight or motivation to tell the real reasons for their behaviour for self-report measures to be accurate.

So in truth, we rely on self-report measures in marketing not because they are accurate but because they are easy – they are available. Now lets look at ad testing:

Moderator: Why did you like that ad?

Focus group junky: I don’t know….it was funny.

And so we learn that we need to make the ad funny. It’s not that the ad needs to be funny – its just the only thing the consumer can say when asked to analyze their own behaviour “I like funny things”. Frankly they don’t know. This is captured beautifully in this clip that has people analyze and “improve” the iconic Apple 1984 TVC.

What’s the alternative? It’s tricky. It involves understanding the causal relationship between the piece of communications and the behaviour change you have in mind. Any thoughts on how to do this would be greatly appreciated.

So let me finish this rambling little piece by saying I’m a huge believer in research, and a massive supporter of focus groups – but only when they are used for the right purpose. We ran focus groups in the prison, to help inmates talk about particular issues and uncover insights used to develop behaviour change programs. Same goes for qualitative research. Do it, but do it up front in the process not when you’re evaluating stuff. Self-report is a lousy research tool when the subject matter is murder, it’s even worse when it’s about what cereal tvc will make me buy more cereal.

This article appeared in the latest issue of Adnews

Adnews Article: Jan 2011. The need to rationalise our behaviour

So here’s something we all need reminding of, ‘nobody wants to see themselves as a monster’. This was never made more clear to me than interviewing sex offenders for court in a previous occupation. Sex offenders do not want to see themselves in a bad light and will therefore distort their own cognitions to make sense of their abhorrent behaviour. “I loved that child, it was important she learned about sex from me, and not someone out there’ was typical response to the ‘why did you do it line of questioning.

The reason their responses were so earnest, and their defence of their behaviour so steadfast was because it was important to them, that they didn’t loose face to themselves. They saw themselves as good people, and to face the fact their behaviour was so harmful to others would be extremely confronting (it’s also why so many offenders seem so convincing when protesting their innocence on TV).

So why talk about these sex offenders and their distorted cognitions? Because we all do it. We need to. Humans have a natural desire to keep their thoughts, their feelings and their behaviours aligned. We need to be able to see ourselves as ‘rational’ people, and be able to make sense of our own behaviour. For example, if you go to the pub and drink a beer someone may ask ‘Why are you drinking that beer? You cannot (and will not) say ‘Because I loved the advertising’. This will paint a picture of yourself (to yourself) as a feeble minded human, susceptible to advertising. You will need to defend your behaviour in a way that makes sense to yourself (and if they ask others too.) Beer marketers call this ‘the barroom defence’; it’s just about my favourite expression in marketing.

If you don’t have a barroom defence (or the equivalent for your category - no matter what your category) you’ll be at risk of doing donut advertising. Woolly overly emotive imagery that doesn’t give consumers a concrete reason to justify their purchase. I’m surprised by how much advertising (mainly that advertising yearning to seek an emotional connection) fails to fill this fundamental objective, give people a reason to purchase. It may not be why they purchase it, but without a reason they wont be able to justify the purchase and therefore wont purchase at all. Get me?

We all need to justify our behaviour and have a ‘because’ ready in our heads somewhere, something that makes sense of our own behaviour. Something we can latch on to so we can justify why we are doing the things we do. There are a number of things I learned whilst working in prison. This year I’ll drag up a few other parallels between forensic and consumer psychology