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I had already been in the dark room for 3 ½ hours, a bowl of peanut M&Ms in front of me, observing various women explaining their beverage consumptions habits through a two way mirror (that felt like something out of CSI). Observing focus groups was a common practice for Coca-Cola brand managers. We were always striving to understand our consumers better so that we might find a way to connect with them. You see, our ultimate goal was to give folks like the ladies in this room a reason that they would purchase our brand vs. the hundreds of other options available to them in consuming the required 64 ounces of daily liquid that their bodies physically needed to survive. But as I was observing yet focus another group, I was thinking to myself, “How much of what I did on a daily basis at the world’s largest soft drink company, trying to meet the needs of a finicky consumer base with some creative new message or compelling product improvement was complete and utter nonsense?” Did consumers really care about these brands? Was I just doing my part in creating an illusion that was built on little substance? Looking around the observation room, I saw 6 or 7 colleagues in various stages of engagement – the assistant brand manager taking copious notes that would ultimately summarize our findings to our senior management, the agency account rep trying to show off and infer something brilliant from something that was said, and the marketing research manager looking at the research guide to ensure that the moderator on the other side of the glass was covering everything on our checklist. All waiting, observing, listening for anything that we could use in developing next year’s marketing campaign.
But then one of those "a-ha" moments occurred. It crystallized, at least to me, exactly what we needed to be doing and specifically how we needed to think about marketing our brands to consumers. It wasn’t terribly grandiose and, on the surface, seemed more like “just another crazy focus group moment” that we were so used to in our line of work. Most folks in the room would think nothing of it beyond it being yet another story to put in their array of focus group anecdotes, but for me it completely changed my perception about how we as marketers should think about brands and the role that they play in our consumers’ lives. In short, it radically altered my perspective on how marketers should engage with consumers. The eight women sat around the overflowing table of colored cans and bottles that represented the various brands of soft drinks. They had just completed what we term a “sorting” exercise in which the women group soft drink brands in groups based on some organizing principle that they were to develop. I don’t remember how they organized the 40+ brands that day, but what happened next stuck with me. Susan, a petite woman in her late 20s, picked up one of the cans and said to the focus group moderator, “I drink 8 of these a day. It is always with me, no matter what happens. It was there when my boss gave me my promotion last week. It was at my side two months ago when my cat died. It got me through it. I start and end my day with it. It’s never lets me down. I can always count on it. To sum it up, it’s my boyfriend…Diet Coke."
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