Trading Places

Do you invite stakeholders along to focus groups at viewing studios, but then find that they don\'t always fully participate? Perhaps they are more focused on the food and drink than really engaging with the people they are watching!

 

If you are looking for a new way of involving an internal team with a key segment or target market, try Trading Places. This was used to great effect by a financial services client who wanted to engage their Marketing team more fully.

 

The internal team was aware of the current customer segmentation, but didn’t really seem to be taking it on board. The Insight Manager therefore invited them along to watch a focus group, but asked them to arrive an hour beforehand. When they did, they were invited into the studio to play the roles of people in the segment they were about to meet.

 

Each member of the internal team was given an identity and simply asked to pretend to be that person for a while. There was Mary, the dinner lady with a large family; Julie, who had young twins and worked part-time in Tesco’s; Peter from a call centre; Mike, a forklift truck operator etc. They started tentatively, but soon became really involved in acting out their roles.

 

After a short break, they resumed on the other side of the glass, and the real group then entered the studio. Much to the surprise of the internal client team, they found that when the respondents introduced themselves, they were the real Mary, Julie, Peter, Mike etc. Furthermore, the team then found themselves listening to very similar conversations.

 

They became very animated, saying things like: “I knew she took holidays in Spain!” and “Yes, I knew he would be into football and video games!” As a result, the internal team was able to identify much more closely with the customers, and was also more ready and willing to listen to what they said and to get to grips with their needs. Instead of thinking about food, their minds were focused on the members of the group and their issues.

 

The session was therefore a huge success, and the Marketing team had become fully engaged with that particular key segment by the end of the evening.

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