The Great Pretenders

Baldwin Louie — Mon, 11 Jun 2001 15:00:00 -0700

There they were, expert market researchers, poised with their clipboards behind a two-way mirror, prepared to record the ever-more-sophisticated data they covet, divvied up by age, income and consumer preferences. But there was one problem.

"I didn't believe it at first," says Brad Pivar, creative director of Clarity, a company that produces advertisements and trade-show exhibits. As Pivar and his colleagues watched the group of self-described "busy executives" convened by a Redmond, Wash.-based software giant that shall remain nameless, the dynamics were obvious. "As soon as they started filing in, it was more women than men, and they were dressed to the nines, full makeup. And you could see right away they were angling with each comment. If a guy - especially a good-looking guy - said something, all the women jumped on the bandwagon to show how much they agreed with him. It was just ridiculous. By the end of the session, we were laughing so hard that you could hear us through the glass," Pivar says.

Comic relief notwithstanding, it's a problem when the lab mice start gaming the system. "Know thy customer" is the mantra these days. Big companies are spending billions to install fancy customer relationship management software, generate detailed surveys and fund focus groups to plum the psyches of the people who buy their products. But as the volume and intensity of market research expands, so too do the opportunities to skew the data. People perform for market researchers. They perform for each other. They perform for themselves. Multiple agendas come into play, and not all of them are commercial.

As the focus groups continued, a pattern emerged. Eyelash-batting and verbal footsie were rife. "We saw it a lot in San Francisco. We saw it in Washington, D.C. We saw it in Atlanta," Pivar says. "Looking at the list of what people said about themselves, you saw a 'high-level executive' was actually a receptionist, and you realized that, to get into the group with the kind of people they wanted to meet, they fudged. At one point, the client made the decision to start doing one-on-ones. They didn't feel like they were getting accurate data out of the groups."

Human beings are fundamentally social creatures. What we say about ourselves is geared to pack formation. The question is whether our social tendencies help or hinder the corporate agenda.

People are not interested in forming tight, one-on-one relationships with companies. But they are extremely interested in comparing themselves to other people. They're curious about how they stack up against their peers, and they'll ape the behavior of groups they want to join. Amazon.com's purchasing circles (such as the top 10 books ordered by employees of General Electric) are perhaps the starkest case of monkey see, monkey read. Far from detracting from the research agenda, the sloppiness of human behavior feeds the research machine. Who knows if people actually read all those books? Who cares?

On the other side of the continuum, you have data-gathering tactics that implode on contact with human nature. Companies that offer free magazine subscriptions in exchange for survey information are sitting on a landfill of garbage data, because in the questionnaire universe, everyone is a senior executive with the power to approve millions of dollars in hardware, software and consulting services. Cubicle workers may not have money, power or prestige, but they're getting the same junk mail as their bosses.

The more detailed the registration form, the more aspirational the profile becomes. Anyone who's filled out the warranty for a youth-oriented product lately has experienced demographic tooth-pulling that almost dares the consumer to create a warranty persona who could star in MTV's Real World.

Recently, I registered a candy-colored electronic gadget the manufacturer of which demanded not only my name, age, sex, ZIP code, income and interests, but also asked which high school I attended (a pop-up menu of Manhattan schools was conveniently provided). Feeling vaguely creeped out by this, but also curious about what services I and my "classmates" would be receiving, I virtually enrolled myself in the Fiorello H. La Guardia High School of Music and Art and Performing Arts. If I'm going to be bombarded with spam, I might as well be lumped in with people who can leap into musical production numbers about it. And somehow, the invasive shakedown is mitigated by the fact that, as far as this manufacturer is concerned, I'm one of the Fame kids.

Anytime a company puts strangers together, physically or virtually, those people will try to figure out how they're being sorted. They'll jockey for status. They'll play games. The trick is to know whether those games are pushing your product - or screwing your data. Does it help you when your customers connect in ways you can't control? Is peer pressure on your side? If so, it's your party. If not, on the other side of the two-way glass, it's ladies' night.

J.C. Herz is the founder of Joystick Nation, a consulting firm in New York.

The Industry Standard - The Great Pretenders - Comments

The Great Pretenders