Feedback. Not what it’s cracked up to be
In this guest post, Peter Miller warns of the dangers of listening to consumer feedback.
I’m not sure whether or not it’s fashionable to undertake 360 degree reviews any more but here at Adstream we persist. I have long been of the view that it’s the only feedback I can trust, though not the only feedback I can use.
Anything I find unthinkable and insulting I dismiss as a statistical error or vileness, thus rising above it. Any finding that rewards I consider commonsense and a credit to my hiring skills.
I dismiss the poor scores from my direct reports on the basis that they are paid a lot and don’t deserve happiness as well. It helps if you can consistently wander around in a blind haze of self deception.
Peter! are you suggesting that the answer to this is ……(Gulp) Hard Work?
How passée can you get? we want instant answers to vague questions these days, not hard won honest answers to concise and focused ones. But since you insist, I can tell you that your talk back radio analogy is flawed. First (and be ashamed) why Tradies? anyone with a limited horizon might well respond in the same way, and how do you know what their hair cuts look like? radio has no image outside the one in your “mind’s eye” composed of pixels from your own mental codices, and reflecting endemic opinion and prejudice. On talk back, the Jock always has the ultimate power; infinitely more talk power via the Silver Neumann and the transmitter, than any poor bugger being monitored via a phone line in. Ultimate power to cut the caller off entirely, and, usually a combined rating scale, and producer, who will guide the tenor and propriety. This slight admonishment aside, I agree with you all the way.
I also have a very strong leaning to the belief that we shout too loudly and aim way above the target most of the time where marketing and advertising are concerned.
Pears soap does the trick nicely, a product shot and a rosy cheeked child with a very clean face and knees, brand name in the top billing spot and never a word spoken. Hang and illuminate the prints from days of yore, cast them on screens, post them on the net, they shout out without making the slightest sound. I remember award winning TV commercials from yesteryear, shot in brilliant 35mm, that failed to lift the market or sell one more unit than the pre campaign average. Masters and Johnson thought they had a breakthrough, and in some ways they did, but it took years to discover that many men had lied to inflate their egos and many women had lied to either cover their personal embarrassment, or boost their perceived inadequacies.
I voiced a soap commercial once that failed in trials on account of having a male voice where a female voice would be less offensive, given that the visual component depicted a naked woman (how else do you bathe?) using the product.
It turned out that the majority of the audience on a night of poor attendance was a lesbian feminist group. Hey I got paid anyway, and I don’t give a rats either way, but this was hardly an accurate view of the soap buying public.
Henry Ford once said “if I asked consumers for feedback on what they wanted they would have told me a faster horse”.
More topically, my favourite Steve Jobs quote:
“It’s not the consumer’s job to know what they want”
god it really shits me when people quote Henry Ford and Steve Jobs as justifications for dismissing market research, launching ‘build it and they will come’ products, or just arrogantly justifying the primacy of their own ideas and views
the ratio of genius-led, innovative products which succeeded despite involving no consumer feedback to those which have flopped because they failed to do so would be about 1:1000
to all the creatives out there who take mortal offense at the views of the great unwashed: pretend for a moment that the millions of bucks about to be invested were your own, then tell us again how disinterested you are in basic due diligence
Great article Peter. As you say there is a pretty big self-selection bias in online feedback.
Presumably however if you question the value of online feedback you have to question the value of some measures of online ‘engagement’ as they are effectively the same thing i.e. do comments on a social media campaign mean a brands customers were engaged or that the loud minority were engaged.
Miller,
You are right. I would add that some feedback can be malicious or designed to skew results.
The recent revelation about Chrissie Swan’s nominations for the Logies show how easy this has become.
It is correct that products can be a success despite failing in research, as the Sony Walkman did.
In the majority of cases it is the well researched ideas that win.
James
very happy to discuss it with you mate – drop me a line 😉 FX
Or possible deliberate obsfuscation by dissenting commenters?
Deliberate obfuscation? Is there any other kind?
Couldn’t agree more Peter. There has and always will be a significant difference between asking people what they do/intend to do and observing what they actually do. You’ve got to have the ability to do the latter in a highly granular way in order to be able to fully understand action – the very thing most marketing monies are invested to impact.
Happy Easter
I like the thought of a self amplifying feedback loop of idiots…