How to be a human lie detector.

Several years ago, my friend Jack, who’s an FBI agent, described himself as a ‘human polygraph.’ When I asked him how he did it, he said, “there’s no magic. I just pretend I have a terrible memory.”

It’s easy to over-focus on getting truthful responses from research participants. Not to say that truth isn’t important, but it’s good to remember that sometimes it’s valuable to let people lie to you. When they provide dishonest answers to your questions – whether deliberately or unintentionally – instead of describing the world as it is, they’re describing the world as they would like it to be, or telling you how they would like to see themselves.

This is particularly valuable learning when dealing with sensitive topics. People can be reluctant to tell you how they really feel about things, and instead tell you what they think you want to hear or what they think is socially acceptable. In other words, they’re providing clues about what embarrasses them, or compromises their self-esteem, or makes them uncomfortable. This can be key to uncovering hidden motivations.

So, when conducting research and analyzing your data, it’s important to be able to distinguish truth from falsehood. Over the course of my career, I’ve identified three invaluable techniques to tell if research participants are being honest. To be clear, these methods aren’t perfect, but I’ve found them to be pretty reliable

1)  Ask the same question repeatedly.

This is the one I learned from G-Man Jack. To determine how truthful an answer is, ask the question multiple times and in a variety of ways. When people are telling the truth, they have no difficulty sticking to their story. But when they’re dissembling, their replies can be inconsistent, and the story tends to wander closer to the truth the more you press them.

Sometimes I’ll ask the question exactly as I asked it in the past, sometimes slightly differently. Such as:

• Why do you use Tide?

• What are your reasons for using Tide?

• Why do you think so many people use Tide?

• Why don’t you use Gain?

• Why do you love Tide?

• What is the best thing about Tide?

• What are three things you like about Tide?

• How would you describe people who love Tide?

• What do Gain users not understand about Tide?

• What don’t you like about Gain?

• How do users of Tide differ from users of Gain?

• And so forth. (I can do this all day.)

Don’t be uncomfortable asking a question multiple times. If a participant calls you on it, own up … “yup – you caught me!’” Then explain that asking a question multiple times is a common research practice.

Pro-tip: Put your question variations in your moderator’s guide. It’s also a good idea to manage the expectations of your client: make sure they know that you’re going to use this probing tactic. Otherwise, they might think you’re not paying attention to the participants’ answers.

2) Pretend to forget.

Deliberately misremember what respondents have told you earlier in the conversation. This gives them the opportunity to correct you.

“You mentioned earlier that you don’t care for Tide. Does that mean you prefer Gain?”

If the participant doesn’t correct you, you just learned something. If they do, apologize and ask them to remind you of their previous answer, and see how closely this answer matches the earlier one.

3) Biometrics

A few years ago, I was conducting research among endocrinologists, exploring the idea of active patient involvement in treatment decisions. When we showed the doctors concepts for tools to increase patient participation, nearly all said they were highly interested in the idea.

However, we didn’t just have to take their word for it. We were also capturing biometric data during the interview. Specifically, galvanic skin response and facial coding. For some of the participants, the GSR showed a surprisingly strong physiological responses to the descriptions, and the facial coding showed a stew of negative emotions—specifically anger, fear and contempt. So the biometric data was in stark contrast to what those participants were saying. The big insight: while some doctors might dislike the idea of patient involvement in medical decisions, they may not feel it’s socially acceptable to say so. This led the client to take a decidedly different approach to marketing the patient involvement tools.

One additional thought—you can use these techniques in your personal life as well. Significant others particularly enjoy being questioned this way.  And your kids will love it too, although they might resist being wired up to biometric equipment.

Continue reading→

The Underrated Power of Oversimplification. 

When I left consumer packaged goods brand management and started working in qualitative research, I received a crucial piece of advice from my uncle. He had asked me about my plans. I gave a detailed explanation of the kind work I planned to do and the type of client I intended to pursue. He nodded and said, “that sounds great. But you need to come up with something much shorter if it’s going to make an impression.” “How short?” I asked. “Ten words,” he replied. I pushed back, saying that such a short description wouldn’t do justice to my abilities. He replied that this was unimportant. What mattered was giving people an explanation that they could easily understand, remember, and see as relevant to themselves. “So what if it’s oversimplified? That’s your problem, not theirs.” In fact, he added, if it’s not oversimplified, it’s probably too long and too complicated to be effective.

So, taking my uncle’s words to heart, these are some overly simple ways I describe myself to people outside the world of marketing or market research:

“I get people to talk to me about stuff.”

“I help clients see their business through their customers’ eyes.”

Here’s another thing I’ve learned; it’s a good idea to describe yourself in comparison to ‘something familiar. People need to be able to categorize you easily—put you in a box—even if you don’t precisely fit into that category. You have to let them think about you in terms that are relevant to them, not you. With that in mind, here are some oversimplified ways I describe myself to people inside the world of marketing and market research:

“I’m a focus group moderator.”

“I’m a qualitative researcher.”

These descriptions go directly to concepts that are familiar to this audience. While my expertise with qualitative research tools goes well past just conducting focus groups, ‘focus group moderator’ is a convenient shorthand that’s often used to describe my profession. Similarly, while I certainly am a qualitative researcher, the type of expertise and insight I provide to my clients goes far beyond just qualitative research skills. But, again, ‘qualitative researcher’ is a well-understood frame of reference, and so it’s a good place to start.

So, the point here is that mere simplicity, while laudable, may not be sufficient by itself. Over-simplification might be necessary to make messages memorable and effective.

This principle also applies to branding and marketing challenges. It’s common to encounter product concepts or advertising prototypes that are overly complicated, and it’s no secret as to why they test poorly. But I’ve tested research stimuli that were simple and straightforward and still didn’t resonate. Only when we oversimplified the message did the respondents react positively. For instance, I once tested concepts for a new high-fat baking chocolate. The first concepts – which were fairly brief but fully accurate descriptions of the product – were greeted with confusion; the participants couldn’t grasp the idea. However, when we showed a concept that said “it’s like chocolate mixed with butter,” the respondents became extremely interested. This really wasn’t an accurate description of the product at all, but it offered the participants a familiar and appealing frame of reference, which made them want to learn more. The oversimplified description was the one that resonated.

Something that makes this principle of oversimplification challenging is the fact that marketers and market researchers tend to be highly rigorous thinkers, and oversimplified messages make us uneasy. So, embracing this concept may require you to go against your nature.

One more thing: an emotional component to a message is crucial to engagement and memorability.  The simpler a communication is, the less people have to work to understand it, and the easier it is to find an emotional hook. In other words, the less you have to think, the more you can feel.

So, go ahead—put yourself in a box. Get comfortable with over-simplification. It’s often the path to the most effective messages.

I once heard a historian remark that maps are like campfires: everybody gathers around them because they bring simplicity to the complex, and show us how to get where we’re going.

There’s no shortage of wisdom on the basics of qualitative research guides, but there are a few concepts that rarely get discussed. Regardless of the type of qualitative being conducted, ‘the guide’ is the roadmap. Depending on the methodology, it goes by different names: moderator’s guide, discussion guide, topic guide, interview guide, or activity guide. No matter—the same principles apply. So here are a few little-thought-of, but crucially important, ideas that must be understood and kept in mind when creating effective guides.  Keeping them in mind can lead you to breakthrough insights.

The guide must allow key topics to surface organically. I once conducted research for a new brand in an existing medication category that wanted to address the problem of needing water when taking tablets. The ad agency proposed starting the focus groups with the advertising prototypes created for the research, with no time spent discussing the participants’ category experiences and attitudes. The research team pushed back, believing that some initial discussion around category pain points could be enlightening. Fortunately, that’s what we did, because the big finding from that part of the discussion was that needing water never came up on its own. When I finally prompted for it most participants agreed it was a bit of an issue, but that was as far as they were willing to go. Ultimately, the client realized that their upcoming marketing program was oriented around a problem that barely existed, and they were able to revise their approach.

The point is that when and how discussion points arise can be some of the most valuable learning gained from qualitative. So it’s good practice to allow things to come up on their own whenever possible. This will allow you to observe when something arose, whether it did so with or without prompting, and, if unprompted, what led to the topic arising. What vocabulary did the participants use when bringing it up? If it had to be brought up by the moderator, do the participants have any thoughts as to why? Clearly identifying topics in the guide that will not be prompted will allow these conversations to happen, leading to key insights.

The guide must be created collaboratively. The purpose of market research is to mitigate business risk and to guide decisions. To do that effectively, all stakeholders must be involved in designing that research. This could include internal and external researchers, the brand team, R&D, various creative agencies and senior management. All stakeholders must fully buy into the research objectives and approach, meaning they must have input into the guide. The creation of a guide is often an iterative process in which the researcher gains understanding while clients are able to focus and refine their thinking. Sometimes clients go into research with a fairly good idea of what they want to do, but it’s not fully fleshed out. There’s nothing wrong with that, but the process of collaborating with the moderator to write the guide is the perfect opportunity to figure all that out. The irony here is that, if this process is fully collaborative, by the time the research arrives, everybody knows the guide so well that nobody, client or moderator, needs to look at it very much.

The guide must be adaptable. As researchers have been saying since the beginning of time, ‘it’s a guide, not a script.’ This means more than simply that the moderator isn’t going to read every question exactly as written, and in the order presented. While the guide must include all of the issues to be explored and provide a rough plan for how that will be accomplished, it must also allow for a good deal of flexibility. Topics will not necessarily come up in the expected order, some questions will fall flat or confuse the participants, some exercises will not be successful and unexpectedly interesting new topics might surface. Therefore, the guide should provide a variety of potential approaches for the discussion, not all of which might be used, and should allow the researcher to adjust depending on the flow of the discussion. It should also provide alternate orders for the various guide sections.

So, to sum up, if you want maximize the possibility of uncovering groundbreaking insights, make your guides organic, collaborative and flexible.

Note:  If you would like to read about even more basics on creating effective guides, a comprehensive list can be downloaded in the article contained at the link below.

Thanksgiving this year is going to be memorable, whether we like it or not.

I noticed the other day in the New York Times food section an article about making Thanksgiving dinner for two. Who saw that coming a year ago? I certainly didn’t. Just last week, I was conducting a webcam focus group, and during the introductions, all three participants agreed that they’re not really looking forward to Turkey Day. In another group, before the conversation started, a couple of participants glumly shared thoughts on making Thanksgiving for one. This all made me a bit sad, but I can’t say it was surprising.

Almost nobody is going to have the kind of Thanksgiving in 2020 they would have wished for. The thing to remember, though, is that it also will be a Thanksgiving we’ll never forget. So, it’s up to us – being that we’re going to remember this Thanksgiving vividly no matter what – we can make the best of it or we can wallow in self-pity. Having spent a fair amount of time feeling sorry for myself this year, that’s not something I recommend.

Also, it’s important to remember that, no matter how difficult circumstances might be right now, the list of things for which we can be thankful probably hasn’t gotten much shorter.

And, here’s something of a blessing in disguise. Thanksgiving this year will afford us even more opportunities than usual to devote at least a part of the day to sharing our blessings with others. No more than 30 seconds of Google research will provide pages and pages of opportunities in your area to help those who are desperately in need. Aside from being an essential thing we should all be doing, these experiences can create precious memories that will last a lifetime.

As for your Thanksgiving dinner – whatever it turns out to be – embrace it. Eat too much. Have another slice of pie. Break open that 25-year-old bottle of port. Tell the people you love how important they are to you, whether they’re right there with you or someplace else. And talk with your mouth full. Because life is short, and time really is precious.

There’s no skill more underrated than that of being able to work with difficult people, particularly when it comes to qualitative research.

Years ago, when I worked in CPG brand management, I witnessed this exchange between a brand manager, whom I’ll call Bill, and the SVP who ran our division —let’s call him John:

Bill: “We need a different R&D manager assigned to our brand.”

John: “What’s the problem with Jakub?”

Bill: “He’s just really difficult to work with.”

John: “How well does he do his job?”

Bill: “Fine. His technical skills are excellent. But we can’t stand the guy.”

John: “I just want to be sure I understand exactly what’s going on here; is Jakub doing anything inappropriate? I mean, should HR be involved in this conversation?”

Bill: “No, nothing like that, he’s just really disagreeable. Every conversation with him has a way of turning into an argument.”

John: “Then, no. Sorry. Jakub’s your R&D guy, and it’s your job to work with him. The fact that you personally dislike him doesn’t matter to me, and shouldn’t matter to you either. Get past that and do your job.”

Bill:  Grumble, grumble, grumble.

I remember this exchange as clearly as if it had just happened because this experience made a huge impression on me. I resolved – at that moment – that I would strive to work with anybody, no matter how difficult they were.

It would be great if we liked everybody we worked with, but that’s not how things generally go. Some people we encounter are very different from us, and it’s hard to find common ground. Some are just grouchy and unhappy. Some might suffer from a challenge like anxiety or depression or be on the autism spectrum. Regardless of the root cause, we don’t always get to choose the people we encounter professionally—and we have to work with them regardless of whether we like them or not.

This is certainly true for qualitative researchers. The research participants with whom we interact are not always pleasant. I’ve particularly noticed this when conducting healthcare research among patients—people who suffer from chronic, debilitating conditions can (understandably) be grumpy. But it’s my job to talk to them no matter what, and I have to meet them where they are. And I’ve always been wary of recruiting participants who are especially cooperative and communicative, as that carries the risk of skewing the findings in unpredictable ways.

But, if you merely grit your teeth and endure working with difficult people, you’re missing out on the larger opportunity. You must embrace and relish the challenge. The ability to work with anybody is an invaluable skill, and a key factor to success. In the course of my career, some of the most competent and gifted people I’ve encountered have also been some of the most contentious. The fact that I managed to work with them enabled me to achieve results that otherwise might have been unattainable.

So here’s my philosophy on this issue in a nutshell.

• Seek out the exasperating people. They might be the ones who have exceptional skills, extraordinary knowledge and an inspiring level of passion for what they do. They may enable you to do things you didn’t think possible. Make them your secret weapon.

• People you don’t mesh with might have a very different outlook on life and the world. This difference in perspectives is part of that thing we call diversity, and diversity is a key to success.

• Approach these individuals from a place of compassion, remembering that adage attributed to Ian Maclaren: “be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about.”

• Learn to love people for their idiosyncrasies, not despite them.

Every brilliant diamond starts as a rough stone that doesn’t look like much. Likewise, amazing people sometimes come wrapped in a prickly exterior. Learning to look beneath that surface will enable you to realize that they’re worth the trouble.