"What kills a skunk is the publicity it gives itself" - Abraham Lincoln.
We came across this front cover from Research Magazine. It is from the period just before Rover was taken over by the Phoenix Consortium in 2000, five 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 is a brave or a failing brand that boasts 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.
Perhaps the problem was that the only people who turned up to view the groups were the creative team. Client "couldn't make it"? Seriously, the issue for many is that they listen out for what they want to hear. The rest is just so much noise
Posted by: Anthony | March 08, 2010 at 03:36 PM
It's an interesting issue. Should the client put up a 'two fingered salute' to research or not, especially when highly successful examples of those which do just that, continue to exist and thrive, e.g. Apple? Do consumers really know what they want or does the client know better? It's an interesting irony that the Rover eventually went the way of the Homer Simpson Bubblecar, (and firing its 700 UK marketing executives).
Posted by: Lina - http://justwhatisit.co.uk | April 28, 2010 at 11:34 AM
Thanks for comment Lina. A difficult one. Apple are a pioneering, clearly differentiated brand and have gained such 'loyalty beyond reason' they can't seem to do wrong (for the moment). So why research indeed? Rover however, seemed to have the opposite to Apple and needed to research; but (by all accounts, they didn't listen. But how long will it be till the Apple bubble bursts? Perhaps sooner or later, they'll being buying research like the rest of them!
Posted by: Simon | April 28, 2010 at 05:21 PM
It certainly is an odd one. Having worked inside Apple, their whole attitude is focused on market sales data, sales of competitors' products (collected from Gartner) and comparing it against their own sales data, believing they know better than their consumers. Certainly when the netbook rush happend, they stood back and waited to see how competitors' consumers took to it before doing anything. But, as you say, how long is this luck going to run for?
Posted by: Lina - http://justwhatisit.co.uk | April 29, 2010 at 09:56 AM