Two weeks ago I received an exciting letter from a marketing agency working for a manufacturer of premium cameras. Would I like to attend a focus group to discuss the company’s products? And would I be interested in receiving £50 for my pains?
Yes, yes, I replied. Always up for a chat and the opportunity to trouser a few quid.
Then I completed a long questionnaire which went into great detail about my (non)use of the manufacturer’s smartphone app and my (un)willingness to share pictures immediately on all manner of social media. My confidence began to ebb; perhaps I would not be seen as prime research material.
This is what it’s all about these days, folks. It isn’t enough to take a batch of photographs and then return home to process them quietly in Lightroom. Too quaint, might as well disappear into the darkroom with the glass plates and an egg timer. No, our masterpieces must be edited and shared instantly with a world glowing with anticipation.
Then they asked my age. It did cross my mind that they might not be interested in the views of such an old blogger. Nevertheless, I felt that I could represent many Macfilos readers who often share similar, rather traditional views of what to do with an £8,000 camera (answers on a postcard to The Editor, Macfilos Towers).
Which day would be convenient? I had a choice of Monday to Wednesday this week. So I said I could manage any day, not wishing to provide the slightest excuse for rejection.
I am still waiting for a firm invitation. Thinking charitably, perhaps it is in the spam box and the marketing company is thoroughly disappointed not to have had the benefit of my radical views.
Yet I can only assume that my age, my thoughts on social media or my reluctance to embrace instant editing, have conspired to rule me out at first edit. I suppose I have nothing to say that would interest the manufacturer, although I do own a bank account that is regularly plundered to keep them going.
I didn’t mention anything about the APS-C format or, even, wandering focus points. Didn’t want to get into too much detail before the opportunity to get face to face.
Would have been nice, nonetheless, to get a rejection letter: Dear Old Blogger, you are a thorough Luddite and we wouldn’t have liked your views in any case. Goodbye.
What do you think? Would you be interested in attending a focus group and receiving £50/$50/€50 for your views? What would you tell them? Would they be interested?
News update: The rejection letter came in a few hours after posting this article. “We had a large number of respondents and only a limited number of spaces during this round of research and could not invite everyone. We appreciate your response and would like to contact you for the future research sessions.”
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I’ve never had much success with focus groups, that said from having been on the participating end or from the commissioning side (ie, paying for the service).
It looks like the effort is a camera manufacturer trying to find a tenuous path forward in the age of smartphones. In other words, how to survive in the age of zero patience.
I’ve previously mentioned in these hallowed pages that my 36 and 40 year old progenies would never lift a real camera. Too heavy and cumbersome. And all the other bothers- SD cards and imports, software packages, editing learning curves and the ultimate export JUST to share a fleeting photo. Printing is not in the wheelhouse. Phone image quality is good enough if one can get the general idea of what it is one is looking at. The bar is pretty low.
I think it’s fair to say that the smartphone camera form factor can’t suck enough.
So….
What if a real camera saved a RAW and a watered down JPEG. What if said camera was ‘small’ and had a fair to passing zoom lens. And what if the software hurdle could be overcome- bouncing the image to one’s phone for posting is a non starter. The camera would have to contain a contact list, likely imported from the phone to keep it synced AND in the camera ‘menu’ itself. The camera should set the contact to keep the user engaged with the camera. The camera would need wifi/cell access. Again, I think an image bounce to the phone would be a non-starter. However, it would be fair to have an always on link to using the phone as a hotspot (why pay for another cell connection service). I mean really innocuous- NOT like the Leica Photos dance. The phone would buffer the JPEG in the background and send it to the contact sent by the camera. It has to be utterly transparent.
So…
– Would that encourage the attention span challenged crowd to pick up a real camera?
– Once engaged with a real camera, would the form factor advantage over a phone become apparent?
– If the from factor can seduce the user, would said user then (gasp) actually consider the import / software / edit / export cycle?
– Would quality actually become a thing again? Or is ‘good enough’ the new normal?
– Would that increase sales and thereby ‘save’ camera manufacturers?
Beats me.
But I think I get WHY a camera manufacturer beginning with the letter ‘L’ might actually pony up the cash to do a focus group, as flawed as it is.
I think that you had a lucky escape!
50 quid tells me how much they value the input.
Making £50 for participating in a focus group would have no attraction whatsoever for me, nor for, I suspect, most readers here. There are quotas in all of these things and, for political opinion surveys, I am often asked my age and when they discover what it is, I am usually told that ” we have enough people in your age category already”. Leaving aside such surveys there may be an element of choosing the people who might give the right answers when asked. There is the hoary old truism among trial lawyers that one should never ask a question unless one has some idea of what the answer might be.
Moving on, as a percentage of all the photos taken in the world, the number that have been subject to faffing around with Lightroom or Photoshop is very tiny. We had a book launch at our gallery this evening by a very respected former press photographer who said, with something of a sigh, that most press photographs these days are ‘from public sources’. He said this in the context of a discussion on street photography, photo documentary and photojournalism, concepts that may not seem to be very relevant in 2022, but should, perhaps, be more relevant. Discussing putting photos on social media should not be sneered at, as they are today’s equivalent of ‘going with the flow’. The ‘we don’t do that here’ approach would be a pathway to oblivion for any imaging company these days. For what it is worth, I put a daily post on Instagram and I have the grand total of 560 followers, but I can also put anything that I want on the LHSA Instagram account which has 14,800 followers
This website (Macfilos) is read in Wetzlar, as is the Leica Forum, where I also participate. I’ll be in Wetzlar in a couple of weeks and I will meet all of the top people. I can say anything I want to them, but, being me, I probably won’t be talking about digital sensors and the like. I will be inviting the top brass of Leica to Dublin for the LHSA Conference next October, which I will be chairing. If any readers here attend I would be delighted to introduce them to the folks from Wetzlar
There are very few manufacturers in the world where it is easier to meet with and communicate with the top brass than Leica. People may not like the market decisions that are made about various matters like the CL camera, but I am sure that , like me, Mike you have Stefan Daniel’s email and that you can write anything you want to him about Leica cameras. He will probably already know your views, as I am sure that he reads Macfilos, or has people to do that for him.
The path to the future for Leica, also includes having a much more diverse group of purchasers and that also involves the subject of the ages of users and how they might use their cameras or, dare I say it, their imaging devices. Only a person who has spent the past 10 years in a deep dark dungeon, would not know what happens to most photographs taken in the world today, tomorrow or the next day. The evidence is there for everyone to see. What the survey you mentioned above is probably doing is to engage with the younger cohort who produce and consume a vast number of visual images every day.
My wife has a saying which she uses often when I complain about something on TV which goes ” but you’re not the target market”. I suspect that fits the present case perfectly. The 50 quid offer gives the plot away.
William
I’m not that hard up that I’d be willing to trek halfway across London for £50… I was, of course, writing very much tongue in cheek and you shouldn’t take my comments on social media as gospel. They were intended to be a caricature of grumpy-old-mannishness. You are right in your general assessment, t’were only a joke!
I think you had a lucky escape! Unless the practitioner is well qualified, focus groups are usually a cluster+#@k, with too many respondents and a discussion guide that has to be read at the speed of a Kentucky Auctioneer to meet the usually 90 minute standard. There is no discussion usually, and negative responses are “discouraged”. It’s poor performance art with cheap sandwiches for clients who really want to know the truth.
Sadly most clients don’t know how to use focus groups properly and the agents don’t know how to run them properly.
There are better more entertaining ways to make £50.
Agreed. I knew what the reaction would be.
Dear Mike,
I can fully understand your disappointment – and it’s probably not really clever of the maketing people. Everyone knows that the silver generation is an extremely interesting target group especially for expensive goods. Probably they just not yet realized that blogging is not just something for the unter thrites. If, however, their topic really was the issue of instantaneous publishing of images, I would have been wrong in the focus group, too.
My pace is normally slower and will continue to be more considerate. With my contributions here on Macfilos and on http://www.messsucherwelt.com I still think I have become a relevant voice concerning Leica photography. The fact that I never got any invitiation of the like you mentioned does not disturb me at all. I am rather happy that I can work in all independence.
Let’s just continue what we are doing. The echoe from all the great Macfilos readers matters so much more anyway.
JP
Hi Mike,
I think the vetting process is quite common these days but each may differ in how they treat their clients.
I bought a new German car last December, not a cheap one but definitely not very expensive. I filled out a customer survey form after that and I stated, inter alia, there was no sense of occasion when taking delivery of the car because it took place in a cramped parking lot in front of the showroom; it was definitely much worse that my previous 3 occasions of taking delivery of new cars from them. I also criticised, amongst other complaints, how poor the body structure was because the tail gate was rattling. Anyway, to cut long story short, I was invited to join their selected group of owners who receives 10% discount on goods and services for 12 months….etc.. I like the car and I am old enough to accept there’s no perfect things (LOL).
Please keep us posted if you have further news.
Thanks, Joseph. I wrote this piece very much tongue in cheek. I’ve done many focus groups on different subjects over the years and I know that the initial vetting process is designed to produce candidates who are interested in a particular subject. I suspect they had too many prospects and probably used criteria such as age, and model ownership. But why spoil a good story with too many facts!
I am equally frustrated on hearing your account of what happened. I love the products but NOT the company. This makes me feel better.