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Big controversy.  Is testing worthwhile or worthless?  The great brains in the industry have locked horns on this issue.  According to an AdWeek article from last fall (Why the Traditional Focus Group is Dying) MasterCard and Procter & Gamble are copy testing junkies while Alan Bogusky says “more often than not testing is pretty destructive”.  They can’t all be right – can they?

The truth is they’re both right – and wrong.  Testing is not a panacea.  Some of the most meticulously executed research will fail to predict a product’s success, and yet research has saved companies millions of wasted dollars by eliminating ill conceived creative.

One of the major flaws inherent in many a research situation is that the consumer is asked for their opinion. That’s risky.  Because, as human beings, we answer questions differently for a variety of reasons.  “Today I have a headache so I think the color of your packaging is ugly”.  “I think the interviewer is cute and I want to impress him/her with my vast intelligence – so I won’t admit that I watch those stupid sitcoms”.  And frankly, we don’t even realize we’re doing it most of the time.  Tempe Grandin has written a fascinating book about her career as an animal behaviorist.  Tempe makes the following statement about working with rats in a lab “What animals do in a lab is nothing like what they do in the wild—so what are you actually learning when you do these experiments?  You’re learning how animals behave in labs.  Finally people started doing things like letting a bunch of lab rats out in a courtyard and watching what they did.  Suddenly the rats started developing complex behaviors no one had ever seen before.”  Testing human beings is not all that different from testing rats – when you create an unnatural condition you get data that does not reflect reality.  And there’s certainly nothing “natural” about test conditions.  So what can we hope to gain from testing?

The AdWeek article is quick to point out that testing eviscerated the Aflac duck.  “While many participants found the duck funny, others found it “insulting”.”  What enabled KTG to save our funny feathered friend from the rubble heap was the fact that, when tested against other creative, it blew the roof off of the awareness score.  So someone’s gut instinct sensed that initial testing was not relevant and subsequent testing made sense – and an institution was born!

Until we find a way to tap into the subconscious mind testing will always be a crapshoot.  But there are some ways to make it more effective and there are some times when it will save your butt.  One of the complaints about focus groups is that they allow the dominant to dominate – even pontificate.  It helps to find ways to control these situations better.  One is to segregate people into smaller or like groups so that the meek are not dominated by the bold.  Another interesting move is to challenge assertions that are made as opposed to letting attention grabbers ramble on just to hear themselves talk.  If your research tells you that your new product is the next pet rock – don’t head out for the bank just yet.  Maybe you need to find a way to come at your questions from a different angle.  Find a way to argue against yourself – look for the down side and really push your subjects to defend their approval.  It’s possible that you’ll learn about some negatives that you’ve never considered.  They’re worth exploring.  But above all, don’t take any of this as absolutes.  At most testing is an opportunity to set up the next level of testing/checking.  Because in this business, going from zero to 60 can be a lot more costly than going from zero to 10 to 30…