"What kills a skunk is the publicity it gives itself" - Abraham Lincoln.
We came across this old front cover from Research Magazine the other day. It is from the period just before Rover was taken over (for the last time) by the Phoenix Consortium in 2000, 5 years before Rover's demise.
It is ironic that although Rover is not around, 'focus groups' are. There were many reasons for Rover's decline: poor product development and strategy, greedy board members and lack of state intervention (to name but a few). But it can be read as symptomatic of a poorly performing brand to boast about not listening to the public.
The ad is meant to suggest, "ordinary people don't like the Rover 75; but you can make a discerning choice by buying this extraordinary car". Putting the Rover 75 / discerning / extraordinary together must have made sense to some planner somewhere.
The subtext is a two-finger salute to the research world by client and ad agency. It says we can judge for ourselves what the market needs. Research Magazine look to have backed the wrong horse too, judging by the copy line and lead article inside ('what future for focus groups?' quite a good one, actually).
And what does "rejected by focus groups" mean anyway? What elements of the Rover 75 were 'rejected'? If the research were so clear cut, it takes something to ignore it and tell the public you are ignoring them.
Maybe the idea was to echo what Henry Ford said: "if I had asked my customers what they wanted, they'd have said a faster horse." The trouble is, the headline rather reinforces the unintended message that Rover as a marque is unpopular and 'rejected'. Didn't they also say, you're never alone with a Strand?
So while Rover has disappeared (or as the entry on Wikipedia puts it, "the marque is considered dormant"), research and 'focus groups' continue to grow and develop.

