Brand Confessions: when your focus groups don't go quite to plan!

Everyone knows how important focus groups are when you are launching a new product but when you’re starting out, it’s hard to know which jobs you can do yourself and when you need to employ a professional agency to help you. I decided I could run my focus groups myself – how hard could it be? In reality, harder than I thought it would be…

I launched Futliit in 2022: we make LED backpacks that use LED lights to make you properly visible when walking in the dark. Our story started when our eldest daughter started secondary school and had to walk to and from the school bus. As the nights drew in, it soon became clear that walking in the road in her navy school uniform, she was practically invisible to drivers. 

We really struggled to find a backpack that would pass the visibility test but also meet teenage style requirements so I started to think about whether I could design my own light up backpack with integral lights.

I split the discussions into two parts: branding and product design and specifications. The adults were all brilliantly helpful with very sensible suggestions about the sorts of design features they would look for in a backpack, brands they liked and why, their budget expectations and the quality level they would expect. So far so good. 

Then I talked to the kids which was where things started to get interesting. Firstly, we discussed which brands they liked and why. One of the younger kids was insistent he didn’t want any sort of branding on his backpack and after explaining why I needed to put a logo on the bag, his face fell. He had thought I was going to make a bespoke backpack just for him and was giving me instructions for exactly what he wanted. Tears had to be averted with a hastily produced chocolate bar.

One of the older teens was very insistent that he never wore or purchased any clothing or accessories with overt branding on. He showed me his current school backpack which had a massive logo emblazoned across the whole of the bag which caused much hilarity with everyone else and left him red faced.

I had a very clear demonstration of why device sleeves need to be padded on the bottom as well as the sides when one lad showed me his current backpack and dropped his laptop into a non padded pocket with an awful thud causing a big lecture from his parents and a sulky child. 

As the mother of girls, I then had an unexpected insight into life in the local boys school. Apparently, water bottle pockets need to be deep and have elastic round the top to hold them in securely. Seemingly the favourite activity of the older boys is to steel the younger boys’ water bottles from their bags as they walk past in the corridor and refuse to give them back… 

But the highlight came when some of the kids were discussing why they wanted the shoulder straps to be adjustable. This was nothing to do with comfort but all to do with being able to make the straps as long as possible so that you could swing the backpack in a huge arc and use it to bash into your friends, all accompanied by a pretty violent demonstration!

The focus groups were really good fun and my friends and their children were extremely kind to help me. However, if you were looking for serious and detailed feedback on a new product, you would be better to employ an agency with experience not just in your product area but also with the age group that you are aiming at. 

Be specific about what you want to achieve but not necessarily about how you want to achieve it. We used an agency to help with naming our company and to come up with the brand and visual identity. The agency, Zut Alors, had a huge amount of experience that we could call on and came up with ideas that we had not even considered. We were open to all suggestions and although we were clear about the deliverables, we went into it without any preconceptions; we trusted that they would translate our values and ideas into something that would clearly appeal to our target market. 

And let’s face it, no professional agency is going to launch a backpack at your head mid way through the meeting!

Thank you Laura for sharing your story! If you're a small brand looking to run some focus groups then why not enlist an agency partner to help?

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