RADAR 10 - Fashion
Publication Date: April 14, 2004
Everyone’s money is green... An Interview with Jay White

What do you do here?

There are two basic types of research. One is quantitative, which is the rigorous statistical analysis. The other is qualitative, which is the opinion, behavioral, attitudinal end of it, and that’s what we specialize [in]. What we attempt to do for our clients is help them segregate emotional behavior from rational behavior. We as consumers and particularly Americans, we have a tendency to think rationally, but act things out emotionally. For example if you were going to buy a birthday gift for a parent...you might have the idea before you leave home that you are going to spend twenty-five dollars. That’s a rational decision. You get to the point of sale and you can’t find anything you want for twenty-five dollars. You make an emotional decision to spend twice as much. I think that’s pretty typical in the buying process.

So the marketing community realizes that’s how people make decisions. It could even be a physician. Let’s say a physician is treating someone for cough and cold. The physician has a formulary in their mind. They may work with three or four decongestants and antihistamines. If you are the patient going in and you describe your symptoms, the doctor has options. The doctor may make an emotional decision. They may have a relationship with a particular pharmaceutical sales rep. Maybe the rep was just in and they like that person. So it’s on their mind. [In a case where] it’s only symptomatic relief, there’s no clear product of choice, so that doctor makes an emotional decision. We [also] see a lot of [medical] advertising that appeals directly to consumer’s emotions. Patients come to their doctors armed with this emotional message that’s been communicated through television...

Because we service many industries we see continuity, some thread of activity between industries and that goes across all boundaries. Take what we’ve learned to political research: if you like the Republican candidate, you like what he says... If you’re a big supporter of the Democratic party, you’re going to like what that candidate says. People hear what they want to hear. In the case of politics we’re now about to embark on a pretty emotional jaunt here, when in fact all this hoopla and shared voice from both candidates is actually targeted at ten to twelve percent of the population. That’s the swing vote, the people who don’t vote straight Republican or straight Democrat. But for the people that have already made up their mind to vote for President Bush or John Kerry, it’s just noise on TV. There’s nothing that can be said to change their minds... So it’s what creative platforms ring through to the public. Is it the war? Is it the economy? That’s the type of thing we help people understand.

From our vantage point, the contradiction in all of this is that we say one thing and we do something else. Here’s a very simple example. We can put twelve mothers of toddlers in a room. You listen to every mother and she doesn’t give her children sugar-coated cereal, or this or that, because she doesn’t want her peer group to think she is a bad mom. When in fact, when you sequester the children and ask them what they are eating, they’re eating Fruit Loops, Captain Crunch. Consumers say one thing and do something else. People say we’re hemorrhaging jobs in this country. Manufacturing jobs are leaving. This is true because we are such ravenous consumers, we have this irrepressible appetite for purchasing stuff. Whether you are a consumer that shops every weekend at Target or Wal-Mart, or you’re going over to Bloomingdale’s and Neiman Marcus, we all want to buy stuff. The problem is we establish price elasticity and we don’t want to pay a lot of money. Your typical Middle American consumer who shops at Wal-Mart doesn’t want to pay more than five or ten dollars for a shirt. Well, guess what, folks–you can not manufacture that shirt in a mill in the United States for five or ten dollars. That shirt is going to be made in a factory in Taiwan. Get used to it! Factory workers in America want to make the same income as people with Master’s degrees. We see the contradiction: people are very upset about losing jobs, but they don’t want to pay the price for American-made goods...

People feel that it is their birthright to buy a loaf of bread, a dozen eggs and a quart of milk for under a dollar. And yet they can go buy a Volvo station wagon for $36,000 and that’s perfectly all right. Well, guess what? You don’t have to have the highest-priced, safest station wagon in the world. The irony is that food is the most important thing, the cheapest thing, and we don’t want to pay for it. But we will gladly fork over tens of thousands of dollars for electronic equipment, cigarettes.

My impression is that advertising during, say the Fifties, often appealed to people’s sense of duty, their sense of patriotism, or efficiency. Does advertising now appeal more to people’s sense of entitlement?

We do a lot of advertising testing here. And as much crap as we see on the airwaves, there is some science to it. Subliminally, with advertising, there is a promise that’s made, of a happy life, a better tasting this, a prettier that, a smoother ride. That’s the promise. And that advertisement in thirty or sixty seconds has to tell you how they’re gonna deliver on that promise. You could be the squarest, least hip, least attractive person on the planet, but if you do what advertising tells you to do, you can become the complete antithesis of what you actually are... We are a nation of people that are basically dissatisfied with our lot in life. We want to modify our looks, where we live, what we drive. All of this feeds the economy and keeps ratcheting it up... Most people, unless they’re in show business or something, can not afford to spend the absolute most on everything. Very few of us have enough disposable income that we can buy the $5000 watch the $2200 Zegna suit. So we all make choices. One man might go to the kind of barbershop that charges twelve dollars for a standard haircut and yet buy a $5000 prestige, Swiss-made timepiece, put it on his credit card and take three years paying it off. Another guy might wear a Swatch but spend forty-five dollars or more on every hair-cut. Understanding that is what marketing’s all about.

It sounds like what you are describing is not just a mental disconnect but a national mental illness. I noticed on the website for the Look-Look agency in Hollywood they offer their clients something called "pure viral peer friendship" and used other medical terminology...

I think that’s just romancing their brand. People wordsmith. They want to create their own private nomenclature. They all want to be Faith Popcorn. She’s the women who coined the expression "baby boomer" and the "echo boom". I think there are people in the marketing business that want to distinguish themselves from the competition. So part of their shtick is how they come up with special vocabulary...

What does Baltimore have to offer your clients?

Demographically we’re very rich. If you look at the African American community as a segment of the population, we have everything from socially prominent African Americans who have a high level of disposable income to people on welfare. So people flock to places like Baltimore.

What kind of marketing research do people do on the poor?

When we have a medication that is prescription only, say it’s for heartburn, and it goes to over the counter, that product needs to meet certain FDA requirements. One of the things we can test for is label comprehension. "Do you understand how to take this medication?" For people like us who read and write that’s not a problem. For people who are illiterate, who did not go beyond the eighth grade, that’s a problem. If you look at a homeless person with very poor dietary habits they can develop heartburn... We don’t want people OD-ing on medications. If you have a severe headache but you are ignorant you may take all thirty-six pills...

Everyone’s money is green and everybody’s vying for everybody’s dollars. Poor people spend money. People spend money on poor people...Everybody just wants to know what triggers [spending], how to get to it. It doesn’t matter if it’s cigarettes, food or clothing...health and beauty aides...You’re not going to ask people that make less than $5,000 a year and are on welfare, "Gee, what colors do you like for your BMW?" Let’s get real. But you could ask them what would make life easier transportation-wise... A lot of projects that relate to the poor have their roots in the federal government...

What are ethical concerns when dealing with a less powerful group, such as children?

It’s delicate. What is the age threshold to research things using children? I’ve never seen anything under three [years of age]. The ethical concern is that you are treating children with respect and that they have been recruited for research using the proper channel, through whoever has parental supervision... Out of the mouths of babes- children have a tendency to be more honest than adults...Research is intended to gather opinions. It’s not intended to sell something. So when we approach children and we say "Which color do you like for this hula hoop, or this toy?" we ask them to point to [the one they like]. We don’t say "Don’t you like the green better than the blue or the hot pink?" We accept at face value, particularly from juveniles, whatever it is they say...If they’re effusive and animated enough, hopefully they are, we will ask them "Why did you like this package over that package" and they will tell us in their uncomplicated language why they liked it. We’re just gathering impressions. Our clients have to live with the results...

In a focus group do you look at things like facial expression or social dynamics? Do you quantify body language?

Absolutely. When you are studying people body language is very important. Some people are very animated–they’ll say "Hey, I do not agree with that person. " But other people you know from their facial expression that they don’t agree. And it’s up to the moderator to say "I’m getting a vibe from you that you don’t agree with us. Can you express yourself?" They say "No, I don’t have an opinion." You know what you say to that person? "Hey you’re sitting in this room. We’re paying you sixty-five dollars to have an opinion. You have an obligation. What is your opinion about this?" We force people to have an opinion. Some people are more articulate than others. Some people are very belligerent. They want to swim upstream. You have one person that will disagree, and it’s just for the sake of disagreement. Well that person is polluting the group and their opinion doesn’t count. They’re a jerk. I mean you don’t tell them that, but it’s the truth. If you can imagine you put ten, twelve people in a room, some people establish themselves as the dominant person. They want to be the alpha figure. Other people are more submissive, they acquiesce. You’ve seen the movie Twelve Angry Men. It was a murder trial. Eleven people thought the man was guilty. Henry Fonda thought the man was innocent. Throughout the movie he convinces those other eleven people to his way of thought. When you are facilitating a focus group you can’t have one person trying to convince the other people. You have to give everyone an opportunity, whether expressive, amiable, a driver personality or an analytical personality. Everyone’s opinion counts. In a focus group someone expresses some vestige of a concept and you lob that concept across the table to build it into something more structured.

How does technology at the facility help push your goals forward?

We have every amenity that you can have in terms of research. It attracts the customer. Whether it’s digital video, or a T1 line for their computer so they can capture all the verbatims...

Capture the verbatims?

Yes, when people are sitting there, they are behind a one-way mirror. Some people want to capture every[thing said] verbatim, like a court stenographer. They need to go on-line to do that. You’ve seen the show Who Wants to be A Millionaire? They use the classic audience response system. Every person in the room is given a wireless keypad similar to the remote on a TV. We have that system. We can put seventy people in a room and present them with a stimulus, ask them what they think, and they can punch in a number. It’s what we call "walk-away research". The data is automatically transferred. There’s no group-think. It’s a solid statistical analysis with a margin of error. You’ve got seventy people in a room. Sixty-eight people liked it. Here’s who liked it: you’ve got the males, the females, the African Americans, the Caucasians. It’s all segmented. More sophisticated clients may use that.

Do the respondents know they are being observed?

That’s right. They’re informed. "You’re in a focus group. I want to apprise you that we are being audio/video recorded. This is for informational purposes only. You’re not going to see yourself on TV. The reason we are recording this is so we can write a report of our findings." If anybody doesn’t agree to that they don’t have to participate. They also don’t get paid. Leave. Bye-bye.

Do people eventually forget they are being observed?

Yeah, absolutely. You don’t know… Have you ever been in a focus group or done one? We should probably give you a research candidate form when you go.

Miriam DesHarnais