Marketing Magic

14 Ways People Screw Up Focus Groups

Common Focus Group Mistakes By People Who Don’t know Better, and by those who do, but make them anyway.

Because sometime doing great work is first an understanding and preventing the ways it can go wrong.



1. Bringing qualitative tools to a quantitative fight - If you want to know how many  
people will like  something, focus groups are not the tool. If you want to understand why
they will like it, they are.

2. Treating research as an expense not an investment - yeah, I know it goes on the expense side of the ledger. But you have to make the “go” decision for research fully expecting to get a return on your investment of time and money. If you can’t understand how research will either a) save you money or b) help you spend money more effectively, don’t do it.

3. Thinking moderators have to look like the target participant group - (Black moderators for African American groups, female for women, etc.) Participants will talk a lot more if they think there is a high likelihood the moderator might not “get it”. And the great moderators will play up that perspective.

4. Trying to moderate your own groups. You can’t be objective about your own organization, or tell the CEO he’s whack when it comes to including questions that are irrelevant to the objectives. See this post to understand what a professional moderator can bring to the table.

5. Using the Moderator as a vendor rather than a partner. Most experienced moderators have been through the mill a few times, and have seen your problem or situation before. They will have some insight regarding the way the groups should be organized to help you get the most from the process. They will have recommendations as to types of questions, ways to dig deeper, and questioning techniques no one in your organization has ever heard of. You don't hire a doc and tell her how to do the surgery.

6. Using the same moderator for every project - sure the wonks in engineering are comfortable with him, but as much as I hate to admit it to my faithful clients, fresh and diverse moderating perspectives can mean more useful results and better marketing decisions. They will make you think and evaluate in different ways.

7. Going with the low bid - This is especially prevalent with companies that don’t have a lot of experience with focus groups, and have a hard time understanding the difference a moderator can make to the overall success or failure of the project. You will pay more for the better moderators, who charge more because they can, sort of like the best surgeons. They bring more value and more experience and will do a more complete job. All the great moderators will admit they a) broke into the business by charging less, and b) were nowhere near as good then as they are now. If you hire an inexperienced moderator, make no mistake about it, you are paying for their training. Be careful. It takes more training and certification to become an Equine Sports Massage Therapist than it does to become a “moderator”.

8. Trying to do too much with the groups. The temptation is always there. While we have customers in the room let’s ask them what they think of our website! Don’t do it. Stick to the project objectives, and go deep, not broad. You’ll get much better understanding that way. Give the participants time to go beyond the initial, top-line answers.

9. Not allowing time for spontaneous discussion. Sometimes the participants know better than you what you need to be talking about. Listen. Don’t try to control every second of the discussion.

10. Too much diversity - Who can argue against diversity? I can. Sometimes you should NOT mix disparate groups. If you are a college and you want to understand what high school juniors and seniors are looking for in your website, you will not want to blend those two groups of students together in one group; they are at two separate points in the college decision process, and you need to understand BOTH positions.

11. Not enough organizational diversity in the back room. The people viewing the groups need to come from all over the organization marketing, customer service, operations, information technology - getting a variety of perspectives and experiences. They will all hear different things during the groups, and the ensuing reconciliation of ideas and brainstorms can be richly rewarding. Note: if the CEO comes you'll have a lot of people there looking serious and taking notes. Encourage that.

12. Not taking advantage of the energy in the back room following the groups. Yeah, I know it’s 10:00 and everyone wants to go home, chill and watch Leno, but take 15 minutes and list the top clarifications, confirmations, surprises and insights derived from the groups while the information is still fresh. Then get together early the next morning and talk about it some more.

13. Depreciating participant opinions because they a) aren’t consistent with yours, or b) come from someone who is wearing stretch pants that could cover the state of New Jersey. Listen to what the participants are saying; don’t discount their opinions because of their socioeconomic status, because they don’t look like you, or because they frequently dangle modifiers.

14.  Trying to quantify the findings - if you catch yourself saying “well, half the group said they would buy...”, lie down until the impulse passes. Instead, seek to understand what triggered that decision, and how you can induce more of them.

While these are some of the common mistakes, there are many more uncommon ones that can be just as devastating to the efficacy of the results. In fact, the biggest mistake companies make is never doing focus groups at all, because they a) don't understand the value that can be added, or the insight that can be derived, or b) don't want to spend the money. This is no less foolish than the General who wants to rush to the attack because he doesn't want to take the time and energy to look at the aerial reconnaissance photos of the enemy position.

Better marketing is always achieved by those who first take the time to understand. 

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Perception is Reality

We have a saying in marketing research that "Perception is Reality".

This means that in the world of marketing, perception is everything, even if it is wrong. People make purchase decisions everyday based upon what they "think" or what they "know" - which is their interpretation of the world around them, through their lens. That it may be factually incorrect is irrelevant, and may be costing YOU their business.

Which is why it is always important to test regularly the perceptions of clients and customers against the reality that you know, and bring the two into reconciliation.

But, as we can see in this video, sometimes the testing process can be a little painful.

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Marketing Research - Cool?

As far as I know, this was the first time in recorded history anyone used the words, marketing research" and "cool" in the same sentence. There apparently is a move afoot to make marketing research "cool" within the agency world, a  world that for years have given only grudging acknowledgment that research is something other than a profound pain in their creative arses.

How do you make something cool? Either it is or it isn't. "Cool" cannot be conferred by agency creatives upon research wonks anymore than college jocks can confer "cool" upon chemistry geeks. As anyone who is cool will tell you, "cool" comes from within, not without. And people who are cool absolutely never worry about being perceived that way.

And marketing research is cool.

• It is absolutely cool to discover what jazzes and what frustrates buyers of your product, and then make changes that give customers more of what they like and less of what they dislike.
• It is cool to hear the way your company is described in the real marketplace, and to discover relevant ways of influencing that conversation.
• It is profoundly cool to hear the excitement as customers and prospects discuss a new product they believe will have a positive influence on their lives - especially if it's YOUR new product.
• It is undeniably cool to provide the underpinning of understanding that agencies use to build creative that connects consumers to a product.

So if marketing research is cool, why aren't marketing researchers?

• Because we bicker about which methodology is best
• Because we turn simple projects into convoluted, expensive ones
• Because we write about research in ways that would put an insomniac to sleep
• Because we think that making marketing research abstruse makes us look smart
• Because we get caught up in approaches and forget the real reason for doing marketing research is to provide insight - to help clients make informed decisions.
• Because we do not build research plans to address the marketing objectives
• Because we are more concerned with getting the project than in providing real value

So if we marketing researchers are ever going to make it to the exalted state of "cool" - we are going to have to do it ourselves - not wait for the Agency creatives to vouchsafe it upon us.

And we'll do it by facilitating the connection between communicators and customers better than anyone else. By providing the better understanding that leads to better marketing.

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Marketing Research is Easy - Really

Marketing Research is simple, really.

I did my first marketing research project when I was in the 7th grade. You probably did too.

There was this terminally cute new chick named Rebecca in my class, and I knew nothing about her, other than that she made my 13 year-old knees knock together with an audible clacking. I really wanted to ask her to the school dance, so with the desperation of the painfully bereft, I went on an information quest:

• I found out where she lived. Where she had gone to school before 7th grade.

• Did she have a boyfriend? How big was he? Hmmm...

• What were her favorite subjects? What did she do after school?

• What did my friends think? Should I ask her? Was anybody else thinking of asking someone?

• Who did Rebecca hang out with, and what did they think? Did she even know who I was? Would any of them run interference for me? If I paid them?



I could have just walked up to her and mumbled an invitation, but if I was going to put my precious and meager supply of ego capital on the line, I was going to be pretty damn sure what the answer was going to be before doing it.

Welcome to the world of marketing research.

Simply and unprofessionally put (which is something researchers hardly ever do) marketing research is the process of learning as much as you possibly can about your target audience in order to reduce the risk of making decisions that will come back and bite you in the ass. Decisions that cost you ego capital. Or a lot of money.

Despite attempts by marketing researchers to make the subject so abstruse that you believe only they can understand it, most marketing research falls into one of three camps:

1. Quantitative: Broad not deep. A LOT of interviews. What detergent do you use? Whom would you vote for? Predictive. 

Obama will get 48% of the vote, plus or minus 3%.

2. Qualitative: Small number of interviews. Deep not broad. NOT predictive, but connective. What does buying that detergent suggest about you as a mother? Tell me what you think will be the basic differences between an Obama presidency and a HRC presidency, and how you think that might affect you?

3. Secondary: demographic. How many people live within a mile of this location, and what is the average value of their homes?

Which of these three is the most important?

None. It depends totally on the decision and the stakes. A bank President considering a new branch location will have a different set of information needs than a tired brand looking to reconnect with customers and become relevant again. How much information do you need to become comfortable that your decision will be an informed and profitable one?

So while the basics of marketing research may be easy, what's hard is knowing where to start and when to stop. There are a million different types of projects: Political polls, advertising research, ethnographic research, new product development, and so on... Which one, or which combination, is best for you and your decision?

The trick? Finding the balance - the comfort zone on the continuum between the points of “no information at all” and way too much information”. Consider what is essential to your decision, and what falls merely into the category of “nice to know”.

Everyone thinks research (or knowledge) is important. But not everyone is willing to pay for it.

Even if your budget is nil, do something. Get out into the stores and ask questions.

Learn to ask “why”, then “why” again, just like a 5 year-old. Be endlessly curious, and don’t be afraid to look stupid. Don't assume you understand, ask. You never know what might turn out to be important. Talk to the people in your organization who speak with customers daily. Get online and look at a competitor’s website. Try to put yourself in your customer’s place - to look at your business and the purchase decision as they do.

You’ll notice that people in your organization start turning to you when they’re wondering what your customers are thinking - when they want the voice of the customer. You'll notice that you start making marketing decisions from a different perspective, one that reflects what is important to your audience as opposed to what is important to your agency.

So what happened with Rebecca? After a thorough investigation of what I thought were all the relevant questions, I finally summoned enough courage, called Rebecca and asked her to the dance. Despite my research, I was still terrified - but she said “yes”. We went and had a great time.

She dumped me later for a Lyle Alzado lookalike who was playing varsity football and shaving at the age of 14. 



Hmph. Should have done more competitor research! 


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Are You Listening?

Marketing starts by listening to customers.

Take a look at these questions, then check out the YouTube video posted below.

• Can you quote your latest customer satisfaction numbers? Do you know what percentage of your customers would recommend you to a friend, and what makes that percentage grow or shrink?

• Do you regularly do focus groups with customers to ask them how you could serve them better? To find out which of your competitors they also use, and how you compare in key satisfaction areas?

• Are you regularly spending time in stores talking to customers? Looking in their carts and asking about choices?

• Do you have a web site and/or blog that offers the opportunity for customers to post suggestions  and ideas and criticism without censorship?

• Do you know the top ten questions customers have about your product or service? And do you have an answer for each one that addresses the needs and wants behind the question, not just the basic question itself?

• Do you have regular conversations with your line employees to discuss the questions, complaints and feedback they get from their customers?

• Do you seek out customers you have not heard from in awhile to ask them why?

• Do you make it a regular practice to interview customers of category competitors? To ask them why they buy from the competition? What the competition is doing better than you? Or what the competition is doing that is new?

• Do you know what basic needs your product satisfies? What psychic needs and wants? What descriptors affect those evaluations?

• Do you know how your customers make money? How you help them make (or save) money so that they get to keep more of it?

• Do you know what keeps your best customers awake at night? What new opportunities excite them?

• Do you know what your customers are reading? Watching?

• Do you know what key words customers use when describing your products, or when searching for them on the web?

• Do you know what you are doing that make it more difficult for your customers to spend money with you? What hurdles you could eliminate to make it easier to do MORE business with you?

The Break UP

There are a LOT of marketers who are way too caught up in themselves and their own messages now. You don't need to get fancy, or to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars. We're talking basic human interaction. And with all of the opportunities to listen, it seems many organizations are wanting to talk more and listen less.

Are YOU listening?

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Focus Groups - Part 6 $$$$

You knew I was going to say, “it depends”, or “call me for a free quote today!”.

Straight answer: Usually between $6000 per group for the easy ones, and up to $10,000 for the extremely difficult, like say, surgeons. There are three main subsets of charges for focus groups: 1) the facility fees for recruiting and hosting, and incidentals such as food, 2) the Moderator fees for pre-group consulting and planning, making the arrangements with the facilities, leading the group discussions, and preparing the report/summary of findings, and 3) the participants’ incentives.

Facility fees

Facilities earn their money. They recruit and host the focus groups, making sure participants are qualified and that they show up at the right place on time. This might mean making 100 phone calls; it might mean 25,000. It's easy to decide you want to talk with Vietnamese Cognac drinkers; it's quite another thing to make it happen. Once the initial recruit is done, they have to confirm by snail or email, re-call and confirm within 24 hours of the group, send directions to the facility, and replace participants who cancel at the last minute.

Facilities arrange for the diverse food needs of clients, and are always ready to run out and pick up a vegan meal because the moderator forgot to tell them that the new VP of Ecological Footprint Reduction was coming. Most facilities can bring in food ranging from gourmet to deli trays, depending upon the needs and budget of clients.

While the moderator and product managers are busy incorporating the CEO’s last minute changes to the outline, the facility is replacing cancellations, checking in participants, and making sure recruits are provided refreshments and informed of the “cell phones off” policy.

Facilities also provide a neutral location, helping clients to get out of their office away from distractions, and providing participants with an objective location where they will feel safe to say whatever comes to mind.

Facilities assign a "hostess" or "host" for the client, who can take care of last minute sundry details, such as changes to the outline, bringing in an extra table to the conference room because there are more products to display than originally thought, making sure all participants have pads, #2 pencils, post-it notes and glue-sticks for the brainstorming project.

Moderator fees

Moderators earn their money, for all of the reasons enumerated earlier. They constitute the linchpin for the success or failure of this project. For their fees, they should:

• Secure the facilities for the dates agreed to by the client

• Write the screening questionnaire that ensures the participants will be the ones the client needs, and provide that to the facility following client approval.

• Follow up with the facility to ensure they are making adequate progress with the recruiting

• Pay the facility in advance for ALL expected incentives, and one-half the estimated recruiting fees

• Report to the facility any special food or other needs of the clients

• Consult with the clients to refine the objectives, determine the group locations, secure and communicate with those locations, decide upon the right number of groups, and create the moderator’s guide, all the while communicating with the client and making it as easy as possible for them.

• Conduct the groups

• Prepare a top line summary of findings pertaining to the objectives of the study.

• Make recommendations for action that address the objectives

• Present the report and recommendations to management if necessary

• Help the client look as good as possible to all of the management team in attendance.

Participant Incentives

Respondents must be paid. For one thing, it ensures they show up instead of no-showing when something better comes up. It also means, psychologically, they have to play by the rules set up by the Moderator. If we are paying for their time, then we get to set the agenda. How much participants are paid typically depends on who and what they are. Everyday joes and mere mortals get around $50 to $75 per group, depending on the market. Since participants in bigger cities earn more income, and must be enticed out into traffic and vehicular mayhem, they usually command more than participants in rural groups. Captains of Industry, physicians, opinion leaders and influencers can command up to $500 per session, depending upon overall market size and how difficult they are to recruit. (More money usually makes the job easier.)

And if you scrimp on the fees, you end up paying more to the facility, because they have to work harder and make more calls to fill the groups. Listen to the facilities here.

Bottom line? Check with a couple of qualified moderators and have them provide you with 1) a recommended approach, and 2) an all-inclusive fee to get the groups done. Then use the moderator as a partner - draw on their expertise to help you get the groups set up, and the thinking process organized. You'll have to pay more that way, but the results are thousands of times more likely to pay off BIG for you.

Recognize that as the moderator is selected and gets involved, the objectives and specifications of the groups are likely to change, but at least by then you’ll have a handle on the way the whole process is packaged and priced.

So, bottom line, expect to pay between $6000 and $10,000 per group, depending of course on whom you need, where the groups are located, and how fast they need to be turned around.

Wow - how do you get your boss to sit still for this, given the fact that corporate has been chewing his tail all month about expenses? Good question. Next, we'll take a look at my most frequently asked question in my "Introduction to Focus Groups" presentation:

How in the world do I get my boss to do this?

Focus Groups - Part 5

In What kind of questions should you ask? In one hyphenated word? Open - ended Following are some general principles of focus group questioning:

• Warm up with innocuous conversation that lets people begin to establish rapport and get used to talking in a group

• Start with general questions, and move to the specific

• Spend the most amount of time on the project’s central issues. Think in terms of, “if I had to come away from these groups with only one answer, what would it be?”

• Don’t let the agenda get sidetracked by having to cram too many questions into it. When this happens, the moderator ends up having to choose between accepting the first answers or leaving out questions.

• Stay away from questions that allow “yes” or “no” as a response.

• If there is anything in the subject matter that may make participants uncomfortable, save it for later in the groups once the moderator has had the opportunity to help the groups establish a comfortable flow and rapport with each other.

• To prevent "groupthink", make participants write down answers first, then defend those responses in the discussion.

• Defend and encourage disagreement; pay attention to body language and probe when it appears someone may be disagreeing with others.

• Probe, probe and probe some more. Do not accept the first answers, or assume you know what they mean. Ask - play dumb - or just look confused and stay silent - it opens them up.

• Encourage stories - just be sure it’s on point, and that there is a “moral” at the end relevant to the objectives. Like, “tell me a story about one time when you received exceptional service.”

There also are so traps you should take care NOT to fall into:

• As my wife is fond of saying, don't try to fit 10 pounds of stuff in a 5 pound sock. Except she doesn't say "stuff". You know what I mean. Don't try to cover too much ground with the questions - you need to be able to give the participants time to think and answer the questions, as well as respond to the thinking and answers of the other participants.

• Quantification style questions are fine as long as they lead to qualitative explanation. "How many of you prefer..." should lead to "what about that do you like?" and other probing questions.

• Don't get into a habit of asking questions that allow a one-word response with no explanation - this will lead to the respondents' thinking that is all you want from them.

• Don't allow a completely tangential line of questions "while we have them in the room" - such as "While we have them thinking about advertising, why not ask about our pricing?"

Focus Groups - Part 4

Part 4 - Who should actually lead the discussion?

Nothing you do will have a bigger impact upon the success or failure of your focus groups than the decision you make here. Make it carefully.

Think about this for a second. If you take your car to a mechanic, and he does not fix it, your car will not run properly. In comparison, the focus group moderator could completely botch your groups, and you might never know it.

There are NO barriers to entry to becoming a focus group moderator. There is no certification process. No license to get. I have seen people with no experience or training decide, after watching three or four groups, that it would be the perfect job for them to don after their baby was born. Start up expense? Business cards.

Focus group moderating can be lucrative, and leading groups looks fairly easy to those who fancy themselves to be good with people or are easily conversational - just like Tiger Woods makes it look easy to hit a golf ball straight down the fairway. (But in golf, if you land in the rough you KNOW it was a bad shot - it’s simple to quantify good vs. the bad - NOT so with moderating.)

There are atrocious moderators out there who are completely comfortable in the knowledge that no one can ever PROVE their response or approach or moderating style was wrong. They are safe in their incompetence, because there is no safety net to protect clients from bad advice. I have seen moderators do a terrible job in the discussion room: lead respondents, put down disagreement, show favoritism, ignore body signals from people who want to talk, and be intimidated by dominating participants, only to have the client sing out “nice job!” when the charlatan came back into the viewing room.

The truth is that it is pretty easy to lead a lively group discussion. It’s a little harder to keep participants on subject, to keep the discussion moving, to bring out the people who are not participating, to inhibit the dominators, to bring people back to the subject when they stray, and to move them along to the next topic when they run out of productive discussion, all the while keeping the project objectives in mind.

You may be tempted to use a newer moderator because she is almost certainly cheaper, she may be available quickly, or he may be a fraternity brother. Or you may have heard that Bob in the PR Department has experience leading his Society of Young Republican discussions every week. He’s willing to do the groups, and he would be lot cheaper. And who knows, each of these may even do a decent job. But if they don’t, how will you know? And what will you trade off by having them do the groups?

Experienced moderators can be a godsend to clients who want an informed and objective perspective on various marketing issues pertaining to the project. Many of them have direct experience in the product category, speak the language, know which facilities are the good ones, and aren’t afraid to take a stand when it comes to projecting an opinion that may be politically difficult. (You know, the one where someone has to tell the CEO that his nephew’s idea for mass marketing tin-foil hats truly sucks.)

Focus group moderators are paid pretty well to know what is important and relevant to the objectives of the study, to understand implications of verbal and body language, to interpret ambiguous or incongruent behaviors, to conceive and develop strategies for getting the answers necessary to reach a successful conclusion, to generate and develop new ideas, and to use qualitative methodologies to project behavior. They not only have to be practiced psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists (disciplines from which most of the best moderators come), but they first and foremost must be superb marketers.

And what makes a superb marketer? Study and experience. Before you can know or be able to predict what REALLY moves people to act, you have to have lived through a hundred or so new marketing campaigns and new product launches. You have to have experience with failure as well as success, to develop a sense for what BOTH look and feel like.

And what about companies doing their own focus groups with their own moderators? We have already mentioned the obvious problems with objectivity and internal politics. That said, people on the inside have an in-depth knowledge of the product, company vision and strategy, and current marketing and advertising that outsider consultants can rarely equal. However, unless they also have experience leading groups, and unless they do focus groups constantly and practice these skills, they are unlikely to have the level of professional expertise that is necessary to do a first class job.

Other guidance and benefits that may be offered by a professional and experienced moderator:

• Help clarifying the objectives of the research and sharpening the focus of the discussion guide, to prevent “while we’ve got them there, let’s ask...” thinking (this can tremendously dilute the effectiveness of the groups)

• Providing and objective perspective from the project beginning through the final analysis - they have no corporate objective or axes to grind. They can even help you see through that stuff.

• Stay focused on clients' bigger marketing questions, to ensure the research findings are relevant and actionable and actually address the objectives.

• Provide external credibility and clarity to internal politics when necessary. When you need someone to present the findings to management, especially when they are likely to argue about the findings, the professional researcher can come in very handy.

In short, a professional moderator can make you think in different ways, explore divergent points of view, challenge the corporate perspective, destroy groupthink, undermine political gamesmanship, and find better, innovative ways to market the company. She or he can also make you look very good and very smart to a dubious C-Suite of executives who all want to second-guess every marketing decision.

So BE CAREFUL. Investigate the experience of the moderators you are considering. Ask them how many groups they have done. Ask them to explain some of their techniques for establishing rapport with respondents, and for handling defensive or quiet participants. Ask them how they know they are getting “real” answers in the groups. See how quickly they “get” the marketing issues, and ask their advice regarding how your groups should be set up. Ask them for references, and call the references.

For more information, take a look at the website of the Qualitative Research Consultants Association. (www.qrca.org) This is a very well-informed group of professional researchers who spend most of their days thinking of ways they can do a better job improving their clients’ profitability.

Next topic: What kind of questions do we ask?

What Are You Looking For?

Many of you are very focused on your customers. You survey them regularly, careful to note a .4% fluctuation in your "exceeds expectations" percentage, or the slightest indication that your organization may be veering off of the strategic path. Before you send out your net customer satisfaction survey, take a look at the video below. It's so easy to miss what you aren't looking for. Are you asking the right questions? Are you listening for intent rather than just getting the *basic* response?

Focus Groups - MISapplied!

Someone posted this video of a focus group discussing what is widely perceived to be the greatest commercial of all-time - Apple's 1984 Super Bowl Ad . Admittedly, they are discussing a 24 year-old commercial, and talking about a product that is much better known now - although the participants do not appear to be the savviest of techno-geeks. Still, that does not prevent them from having an opinion on advertising, like everybody else on the planet. Check it out!

In the video, these participants are asked for their reactions to the creative work, and asked what might be done to make the commercial more effective for them.

The ensuing inanity led the poster to conclude (from the evidence?) that focus groups are "dumb", and are dying as a research methodology.

No wonder advertising agencies HATE focus groups; dumb in - dumb out. There are so many things wrong with this depiction of focus groups that we don't have time to list them all. But here are some of them:

First of all, focus groups should never be used to assess the worth of creative. They are no more capable of doing that than they are assessing whether a new product will be a hit. As a methodology, focus groups are a terrible tool for getting people to look at new ideas and judge how good or cool or worthwhile those ideas are. Most people just cannot do that in a two hour session. What they can do is give you a glimpse of their lives and help you decide HOW a new product might be best applied or used or might make their lives better or easier. Groups just aren't going to give you cutting edge thinking, and it's ridiculous to expect them to.

Second, if you are going to test a new product or new idea in groups as a means of REFINING, for goodness sake, do it with a potential target audience. You would not test a new skateboard product with country girls and you would NOT test a cutting edge computer concept with the general public (which is obviously the make-up of this group).

All this video does is show an excellent example of the ways that focus groups are misapplied every day in the marketing world - and the real crime is NOT the expense of the poor effort, but the opportunity cost of what might have been had the groups been done right. In a real-world situation, the moderator would know better. Right?