A cautionary tale about focus groups

I’ve done a lot of focus groups in my past. You know: those meetings when you get a bunch of people in a room and start jotting down their thoughts on a flip chart. It’s kind of a poor man’s survey, but it can be quite useful if directed, controlled, and otherwise done right. Sometimes these things have a brainstorming vibe to them, and you start writing down everything that people say. This is to encourage the free flow of information, and you can always go back later and separate the wheat from the chaff.

Sometimes, though, some clown will throw out a big chunk of chaff just to be funny and to lighten the tone. He’s say something like “Hey! Let’s build chemical weapons that magically turn our enemies gay and Irresistible to each other!“. And like good note-taker, you’ll write that down on the flip chart, IN INK. And then TEN YEARS later it’ll all hit the fan as bloggers, messageboard enthusiasts, and more than a few mainstream media outlets assume that it was a serious idea and received forty billion dollars in funding.

So remember: If you’re doing a focus group and someone comes up with something so stupid that it makes you go blind for a minute, don’t write it down. Just laugh, shake your magic marker at him, and move on.