Focus Groups: Bad Business, Good Television

In general, I'm not a fan of focus groups. They do very little to give you any kind of relevant or usable data, and provide you with nothing more than the opinions of a group of people who had nothing better to do with two hours than talk about some random product for $50. Today, Seth Godin has a post expressing his views on focus groups.

One thing I thought was funny was how during some of the last few episodes of American Inventor, focus group sessions were conducted for most of the final 12 products. All of them seemed to be negative, and provided a great deal of heartache for the inventors.

Each episode showed basically the same thing. A bunch of group participants providing negative comments about the invention, then the inventor getting all bent out of shape. The first thing that occurred to me was that the focus groups provided the show's producers/editors with exactly what they needed: some negative feedback to create a sense of drama in the show. So the contestant made it into the semi-final round (this product must be good) then had the focus group (oh, this product must be bad) then went through the development process (will they finish?) then finally ending with the next round of judging.

Without the focus groups, the producers wouldn't have had some negative footage to use, to establish the suspense and drama. Which is probably why there were focus groups for almost every product in the semi-finals.

It's debatable whether a focus group serves a useful purpose in general business, but when it comes to reality shows about inventions, few things can provide the dream crushing footage you need like a focus group can...