Updated Sunday morning, Oct. 11, at 07:30 EST
Cover for today’s Bild Am Sonntag: October 11, 2009
Obama’s grandma reacts to news of her grandson winning the big prize in Oslo
Noah Becker picks his first girlfriend
A conversation about erotism, always a timely topic with Bild Am Sonntag readers
Photo of the day: irrisistible
Jacky has picked two “PEOPLE” related stories today. In one, President Obama’s grandmother, Sarah Obama, of Kenya, reads about her grandson’s Nobel Peace Prize accolade. In another story, Boris Becker’s son , Noah, begins to flirt with girls—-like father like son. A double page spread appealed to Jacky as well today: Let’s Talk about Erotism, reads the headline.
Finally, Jacky looked for and found the “animal” story of the week, a staple of Bild Am Sonntag: here is this dramatic and rare photo of a snake, almost staring at the readers.
Who is Jacky?
Jacky belongs to Frank Deville. The Luxembourg-based pooch is an “avid reader” of the German newspaper, Bild Am Sonntag. Every Sunday Jacky picks stories and interesting graphics in Bild Am Sonntag , the German newspaper.
TAKEAWAY: The focus group is that one tool that continues to be a constant in most projects. I always say that focus groups keep us from making an embarrassing mistakes. I am happy to see that today’s modern managers are not so attached to results of focus groups. In some projects, there are NO focus groups. This is progress. ALSO: Jacky’s picks from Bild Am Sonntag
“Tell us what you think!”
I must have sat through more focus group sessions than Broadway shows. This will always rate as one of my life’s great regrets.
Not that I don’t think focus groups serve a purpose (they offer you a first glimpse of how audiences react to your creative output); however, I have seen wonderful ideas thrown out because two members of a focus group simply went after the idea and beat it with a hammer and a rock.
You want a fatal combination? Try a focus group populated by one aggressively frustrated designer or journalist (“isn’t this too much sans serif for an opinion page?”), a timid publisher, (“our readers really know our product well, and we must abide by their preferences”) an overenthusiastic marketing director (“I have been doing research for 30 years, the focus group is the best indicator of a project’s direction”).
There you go. I have heard these lines hundreds of times. But focus groups, as a tool, are probably more resilient than the products that are tested through them. They are still around. I am very happy to read that focus groups are not as popular with some as they used to be.
Tim Brown, author of that highly recommendable book (of which I plan to write in this blog) “Change by Design”, writes about the focus group:
“…traditional techniques such as focus groups and surveys, which in most cases simply ask people what they want, rarely yeild important insights.”
And, one extremely important key point from Brown:
“The tools of conventional market research can be useful in pointing toward incremental improvements but they will never lead to those rule-breaking, game changing, paradigm-shifting breakthroughs that leave us scratching our heads and wondering why nobody ever thought of them before.
I think I know why. Someone in a focus group rejected the idea, a chorus of passive fellow focus group followers reaffirmed the thought and the timid publisher left the room saying: “Oh, they will never be ready to accept that. We look for another way.”
Another way translates as business as usual.
The role of effective managers is not so much to cater to what readers WANT, or THINK THEY WANT.
Their role, and the job fulfilled by good focus groups, is to let people articulate needs they may not even know they have.
Example (and this applies mostly to those big American daily newspapers):
1. Who says we need four section Monday thru Friday newspapers?
2. Who says that we have to separate content according to such traditional headers as nation, world, politics, etc. I am a strong believer that the news of the day can be combined, as people are likely to know so much of it already. Break down the departments, concentrate on the hierarchy of stories. Some of my current projects already do that.
3. Who says that Sports cannot coexist (and very well, thank you) with Financial news or even Lifestyle?
4. Let the content flow be the first part you rethink.
And, whatever you do, don’t go and ask a focus group made up of traditional readers if they like the idea.
In today’s environment, good managers use instinct, insight, intelligence and move forward with progress.
Pure Design download: my 2002 take on focus groups
Font Bureau publication in Spanish
Those of you who read Spanish, you are in for a treat. The Font Bureau prepared a special publication, which was distributed at the recent Society for News Design conference in Buenos Aires.
The 12-page promotional piece from Font Bureau, Interlínea, offers great examples. In fact, the visuals are so great that you don’t need to know Spanish to enjoy them and get inspiration from them. Some highlights are Roger Black’s front page article on what killed the (newspaper) dinosaurs, samples of new Font Bureau typefaces (including several that have not yet been released), case studies of some recent newspaper and magazine redesigns (including Garcia Media’s L’Equipe magazine!), and two articles by Cyrus Highsmith on the em square and how we read.
Go here:
http://www.fontbureau.com/news/2009-10-07
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TheMarioBlog post #393