Archive for the ‘qualitative research’ Category

By Robert Relihan, Senior Vice President

Since my blog post on becoming better storytellers, I have been thinking quite a bit about metaphors. Having the ability to think metaphorically is crucial to our understanding consumers and brands. We ask consumers to talk about their experiences in metaphors because it enables them to give voice to feelings that might otherwise remain hidden. As marketers, metaphors enable us to encapsulate the many facets of a brand in a single image.

But I am not always certain that we understand metaphors and their power. Or, perhaps, what may be more the case is that we fear that power because it cannot always be controlled. So, it’s important for us to understand that power.

We all know that a metaphor is a comparison. In its traditional definition, a metaphor does not use like or as — that’s a simile. It’s also important to know that metaphors are figurative, not literal. We feel a metaphor; we sense the connection. It isn’t telegraphed to us.

A way to understanding metaphors is to consider two ways in which they are misused or underused.

• We, as researchers, often ask participants in focus groups to express their feelings about a brand or activity in terms of something else — to create a metaphor. We believe that this activity will force them to take a fresh perspective and unlock perceptions they had not considered. But that is not what happens. We ask a classic qualitative question: “If Brand X were a dog, what breed of dog would it be?” Here is where things begin to go wrong. The respondent thinks, “Well, I like Brand X, and it makes me feel good. Golden Retrievers are friendly and make me feel good. Therefore, a Golden Retriever feels like Brand X.” Rather than expand her vision of the brand, the respondent has simply expressed a single dimension in different words. There is no expansion of meaning. But here is also where we go wrong. In the press of time, we let that pat answer stand. What we need to do is engage the respondent in an extended discussion about Golden Retrievers. There may be a meaningful metaphor there after all. What were the individual’s first memories of Golden Retrievers? What is it like to walk with a Golden Retriever? To sit with one? All of these answers enrich the respondent’s vision of a Golden Retriever and, through the logic of the metaphor, enrich our understanding of the brand.

• As marketers, we often make the same mistake as we think about our brands. We want metaphors that capture the essence of a brand in a single, memorable image. That metaphor can energize and give focus to the brand team. So, after much research and brainstorming, we decide that our brand of ketchup or soup — or whatever — is a ‘hero.’ It rescues consumers from humdrum meals. It helps them conquer the adversity of routine meals. We use the metaphor in a limited, self-congratulatory way. It becomes static, but a metaphor is always active. Every time we return to it, it should enrich our understanding of the brand. This is possible only if the metaphor is specific. If our brand is a hero, is it Odysseus? Robin Hood? Jack Bauer? If we reflect on any one of these heroes, we might discover different qualities in our brand. That is the power of a metaphor. It does not express what we know; it illuminates what we do not.

That’s how to use metaphors. A good metaphor reveals insights, and it does so repeatedly. At C+R we are committed to helping you discover the metaphors that give life to the essence of your brands.

By Robert Relihan, Senior Vice President

You are at a party, standing in the kitchen with a small circle of friends. Someone is relating the latest bit of gossip.  You listen with rapt attention.  You are at once surprised and knowing.  You are shocked and involved.  At the end, you feel changed and in possession of a new vision of your friend, the subject of the juicy…story.  Yes, you were listening to a story.  Now, compare your feeling from the kitchen experience to that of reading the typical research report or listening to the standard presentation.  Ugh!

We are being told to be storytellers.  In fact, storytelling is everywhere.  Storytelling has evolved into a model for how a brand relates with its potential consumers, even business consumers.  There is even a “theory” to storytelling.  But, when we sit in the trenches with a mound of data and are asked to be storytellers, we may shutter.  Sometimes it feels like we are just being told “don’t bore me.”  How do I become a storyteller and not just a mere presenter?

First you need to recognize that there are different stort types — mysteries, sagas, romances, etc.  Heroes overcome and triumph, sometimes by guile, sometimes by strength.  And then again, sometimes a story isn’t so much about a hero as it is about a group that comes together and forges a new identity — sometimes a family, sometimes a nation.

There may be different types of stories, but they all have beginnings, middles, and ends.  A presentation often feels like a collection of discrete arguments, each slide meant to prove a point.  But a story is like a river, connected at all times — through themes, through characters — to both the beginning and the end.  Storytelling is about discovery; storytelling is immersive.

For those of you who were not raised as storytellers, here are a few specific tips:

• Remember, whatever you say connects what came before with what comes next.  Telling stories is all about transitions.  In telling a story you are not making an argument; you are taking the audience on a journey of discovery.
• Stories have a focus, a main character with whom the audience can relate.  So, give your data a character that moves from the beginning to the final insight.  The audience should always be aware of this “character” and her place in the story.  Sometimes, this means personifying the consumer, the brand, the positioning, or whatever.  And, it can mean personifying the audience, casting them in the role of a hero on the quest of insight.
• Leave room for surprises; no story is exciting without it.  An insight is simply a finding made new and exciting by a sense of discovery and surprise.
• The corollary of surprise is anticipation.  Tell your story as if there is always something better, more interesting and valuable around the corner.  When you reach the “end,” would you rather your audience feel they have been presented with a logical conclusion or experienced the explosion of a new insight?
• When I talk to consumers, I encourage them to find metaphors within themselves.  Metaphors give voice to truths and bring richness to the experience.  Moreover, a great metaphor is memorable.

We can all become better storytellers by being attuned to our culture.  Stories are the ways we all tell the truths about ourselves without realizing it. And, just as in society, stories are what connect the reality of consumers to the needs of marketers.

By Robert Relihan, Senior Vice President

When I began my career in marketing research as an interviewer, I assumed that I would be leaving my academic training behind.  Of what use would my knowledge of manuscript hands, scholastic philosophy, and Anglo-Norman devotional literature be when I was talking to ten-year-olds about the latest iteration of microwavable pizza?

So, it was with a good deal of interest that I read a recent post on the Anthrostrategist blog about the lessons to be learned from effect of the stained glass windows in gothic cathedrals for the design of retail space.  It points out that the windows of the gothic cathedral were much more than a new architectural technology.  They served to educate an illiterate congregation.  But even more, they created a sacred space that insulated the people from the tribulations of the outside world and primed them for worship.  The church itself elevated the experience.

The retail environment must do the same.  It must do more than simply draw the attention of consumers to the features and benefits of products.  The store should draw shoppers into the ethos of a product and prime them for the total experience in which a product participates.

An impressive analogy.  I am sure it is possible to get there without a knowledge of Abbé Suger, but it sure helps.  So, I remember the first time I realized my academic training was not useless.  I was behind the mirror in a focus group facility listening to a brand manager rail about the stupidity of the consumers I had just interviewed.  They refused to recognize the benefits of his new product — qualities he felt were obvious and should be manifest to everyone.

With a certain degree of temerity — I was rather new then — I suggested that my respondents were merely looking in all honesty for what they saw as the benefits in the product.  They were not willfully ignorant.  In the back of my mind was a vague recollection of St. Augustine’s stricture about sin, that people are not really evil.  Rather, “all people seek the good.”

The lesson in all of this is larger than the utility of gothic architecture or medieval philosophy to understanding shopper behavior.  Insights, or at least the ability to perceive them in consumer actions and statements, are often the product of our ability to bring a new frame of reference to bear upon familiar evidence.

It is not simply academic pursuits that can be useful.  To be sure, what you may have learned studying history, or geology, or French literature can provide you with a set of mental frameworks that will compliment what you have learned studying marketing.  But, so too will the experience creating schedules for Little League, coordinating a Girl Scout Cookie sale, or organizing your MP3 collection.  The more structures we have in our mental quiver to layover what we observe, the richer the insights we will see.

By Walt Dickie, Executive Vice President

C+R does a lot of online qualitative, which means we use a lot of newly designed research platforms and try even more. We’re also very interested in using DIY survey tools as a means of giving our analytic staff a shorter, faster, less expensive path to fielding a client’s project. So, again, we’re constantly looking at new tools.

There are a lot of new tools and platforms entering beta or being rolled out, and they’re increasingly attracting investment and developer interest. There’s a huge amount of variation across tools, of course, but their designs have a lot in common, too. All of them have given a fair amount of thought to how to design an interface for the supplier/user, the people who are going to conduct a project. They have also thought a good deal about the respondent interface. But the interface for the end data – often dominated by a “report” that can be exported to PowerPoint – doesn’t seem to have received the degree of thought given the others.

And this last interface – which should be designed around the needs of the client, and should have been designed with the awareness that every client is looking for at least some insight and maybe an actual working plan – just regurgitates data in shiny graphic form, delivering “Marketing Research” rather than “Marketing Insight”. Why didn’t the smart engineers and web design people think more about this?

The main reason, I think, is that they’re listening to research providers, not the clients who buy the research and ultimately pay the bills. Either that or they’re just not watching very closely to see how the business is changing. Even if we allow that the model of the research report– delivered to the end client by a firm that conducted the nuts-and-bolts research, analyzed the data, and wrote the report– will be around for some time to come, we should also recognize that it’s already under siege. As time frames compress, team decision making grows, and the quest for insight replaces the delivery of data and analysis, team working sessions replace presentations and reports.

C+R frequently works this way especially for community-based, social, online qualitative projects. It’s also our standard approach for clients using Interactive Query powered by Invoke, a real-time, interactive, collaborative platform that offers surveys with statistically solid base sizes combined with the flexibility of on-the-fly questionnaire changes and one-on-one respondent interaction. Invoke is the only platform I’m aware of that is based on a model of a collaborating team interrogating the data being collected in real time and leaving at the end of the day having achieved consensus on its meaning. Kudos to them for their vision, but I want more, and I think our industry should, too.

So here, in no particular order, is my wish list for tools whose back ends are designed as decision support systems so a team of clients and research suppliers can have tools at hand for getting past the data and on to the decision. Some are pure flights of fantasy that I have no idea how to realize. Others are grounded in currently realizable technology (I think), given sufficient determination and resources.

• The “back room” team should have the same kind of information-sharing and messaging tools that we give the people in our marketing research online communities and that many corporations provide for their day-to-day operations. Every team member should be able to start discussions, join groups, and upload their thoughts and notes for comments or votes. Simply conceiving the team as a group and providing that group with the kind of functionality that we find in many corporate social networking platforms would be a huge advance. It goes without saying that the team should be able to assemble in virtual space, and should not have to be physically together at one site.
• Every team member should be able to independently, or with a group, explore whatever data the platform is collecting and working with. Everyone should be able to keep private notes with the ability to post ideas publicly to other team members at will.
• Team members should be able to tag or otherwise annotate items of interest in the data or produced by other members of the team when they find them especially insightful or meaningful. This is especially crucial in qualitative projects, but could be equally valuable in many quantitative projects. When a team is looking for insight, revealing items and ideas need to be marked as they are discovered so they can be quickly retrieved and easily shared out and discussed further.
• Functionality for data analysis specialists will have to be available. A coding team should be able to code/tag texts or media with the results then being posted for the team(s) to utilize. Video specialists should be able to retrieve tagged segments to compile “highlight reels” for sharing. The team should be able to tap statistical specialists, text or data analytics professionals, or other kinds of specialists as needed.
• Every team member needs access to information beyond the boundaries of the immediate project. This means access to the internet, of course, but the platform should make it easy to bring in information from corporate data stores and libraries, or from supplier data repositories. Being able to retrieve previous work or supplementary data is a key aspect of making good decisions– no project stands alone.
• Teams are often actively led by facilitators whose job it is to help the team move the process along. Tools to help expedite the process like voting and sorting tools that let groups work through piles of ideas to identify areas of interest and consensus would help.
• Displays of the results of the team’s discussions should be designed so that they are, in effect, self-reporting: the final state of the display should reflect the result of the team’s effort. Ideally, someone viewing such a display should be able to drill down into the top, final state to see more of the underline processes that led to the final display state, the “result,” “conclusion” or “decision.” The requirement of producing a PowerPoint “final report” should be left behind for a more powerful metaphor.

I would love to hear suggestions about this topic. Do you work in collaborative teams? What kind of collaboration tools do you have available? Are you using any tools or platforms that have incorporated a “back room” for your team, and, if you have, what do they provide?

By Robert Relihan, Senior Vice President

The use of MROCs is burgeoning.  They enable the researcher and the marketer to immerse themselves deeply in the lives of their consumers.  The experience is incredibly rich.  We can hear consumers in their own voice; we can peek into their homes.  They can show us the things and images that are meaningful to them and their families.  And, they still are able to talk among themselves in ways that make the most sense to them.  It’s an embarrassment of riches.

How do you make the most of these riches?  MROCs are qualitative research.  Right?  Yet, unlike a focus group or an individual interview, they don’t come at us as a simple, single stream of information.  Rather, they give us different types of information, both synchronous and asynchronous, and they give us tons of it.

As we have mastered the operational aspects of this approach, we have also developed principles for maximizing the learning it delivers.  Here are a few rules to follow if you want to get the most out of your MROC:

• Get your team organized and focused.  More so than with traditional qualitative research, it is important to assure that all team members understand the goals of the project and the specific details of how those goals will be achieved.  This is essential because most MROCs are built with a range of discussions, stimuli, and projective exercises.  There are lots of little pieces to keep straight.
• Give everyone on the team a research buddy or two.  Rather than ask every member of your team to pay attention to everything happening in the MROC, assign each member of the team one are two of the participants.  Have the team members follow everything that just their “buddies” say and do.  This makes the task of following the community much more manageable for each team member.  Moreover, by immersing themselves in the experiences of just one or two participants, team members will feel the consumer experience much more deeply.  In your meetings, they will become advocates for their research buddies.
• Use the technology platform to communicate questions and comments among the team members and with the community leaders.  It may be tempting to e-mail, text, or simply grab someone in the hall to talk about the community, but using the technology platform will allow everyone on the team to see every comment and serve as a repository for those comments when the project is completed.
• Hold a “study hall.”  It is important that the team not let the rush of information get ahead of it.  Therefore, we have found it essential to bring the team together almost daily to share the current state of its learning.  Since everyone has a research buddy, the regularity of these meetings is less onerous than it sounds.  We all want to give voice to our new friend.
• Give the team a framework.  While the study hall is great for collective sharing, we also find it useful for the group leader to send almost daily, but brief, summaries of the three or four key insights of the day.  Not only is the information valuable, but these insights focus the observations of the team members for the next day.

Following these simple rules will assure that your team gets the most from its MROC experience.

By Robert Relihan, Senior Vice President

I was talking with some young men several evenings ago.   Yes, it was a focus group, and I was the moderator.  The topic was something of general interest, so I had also been conducting groups among older men as well as younger and older women.

The group began well with a bit of the typical bluff you expect from younger guys.  Then something interesting happened, something I had not seen quite so strongly.  A couple of the guys began alternately posturing and complaining about their incomes and job prospects. Suddenly, from that side of the table, every topic was dismissed as too expensive, or worse still, a rip-off.  At the same time, there was another guy who bragged about his recent activities, with a tone that approached condescension.  A gulf has split the group which I spend a good deal of time trying to heal when I should have been drilling down on the topic at hand.

Of course, in designing the project, I “knew” that group dynamics and commonality of interests dictated that I separate men from women and younger participants from older participants.  Being attentive to lifestage is crucial to developing a meaningful atmosphere in a focus group.  But, as one often does, I was willing to accept a “mix of incomes.”

I mention this incident because of a new report from the Pew Research Center on the perceptions Americans have of class conflicts in the country.

“About two-thirds of the public (66%) believes there are “very strong” or “strong” conflicts between the rich and the poor—an increase of 19 percentage points since 2009.”

“Not only have perceptions of class conflicts grown more prevalent; so, too, has the belief that these disputes are intense. According to the new survey, three-in-ten Americans (30%) say there are “very strong conflicts” between poor people and rich people. That is double the proportion that offered a similar view in July 2009 and the largest share expressing this opinion since the question was first asked in 1987.”

What is even more remarkable, this is a larger percentage than those who perceive conflicts between the young and old, or blacks and whites.

Now, this does not say that there are actual differences in outlook and beliefs between the affluent and the less so.  Although common sense suggests there are certainly behavioral differences.  But, if those of us who conduct qualitative research are going to engage groups in meaningful conversations, perhaps we need to think just as seriously about constituting separate groups on the basis of income levels as we do splitting males and females or younger and older respondents into distinct groups.

By Robert Relihan, Senior Vice President

Traditional qualitative research methods like focus groups and individual interviews have often been conceived as a first step.  I need to explore a new category.  I need to develop hypotheses.  Even, on a more rigorous and technical level, I need to pre-test a questionnaire.  In all of these cases, qualitative research served to point a brand or product team down the path that led to a new product, positioning, or campaign.

Over the past few years, we have seen growth in methods that put us in immediate contact with consumers.  Often consumers are in the moment of the experiences and behaviors in which we are interested.  So, we have seen the mining of social media, the creation of online communities of users, and various forms of mobile data collection.  All of these approaches have engaged marketers and given them exciting pointers to the future of their brands and products.

But these activities produce a wealth of observations and data.  They are capable of stimulating a mound of hypotheses.  It is possible to mine through the comments on a brand’s Facebook page or listen to days of Twitter feeds and come away with directions going various ways.   Now, what to do?  How does the marketing team get the targeted direction it needs?

The answer may well be several well-designed focus groups.

• The focus groups will permit exploration of each of those directions with consumers in real time.  It is possible to hear how they view the strengths of each and the problems they see.  The brand team is right on the spot with the moderator crafting rejoinders and alternatives, pushing the consumers to a place they might not have taken themselves.
• While there can be a ton of conversation in social media, it may not focus on areas that are of most interest to the brand team.  Focus group can force conflict and debate among the participants on those specific areas that can grow the brand or create the positioning.
• And, ultimately, hearing all of this discussion face-to-face from consumers “in the flesh” will galvanize the brand team like no other exercise.  In fact, when focus groups are conducted at the end of the process, there is much less need to observe the research niceties.  Why not have the consumers and the brand team face off in the same room?  Focus group steel cage?

So, savvy marketers will re-think how focus groups can help can help them in their development processes by saving the best for last.

By Shaili Bhatt, Senior Analyst

Projective questions from in-person interviewing flow smoothly into online qualitative activities! Nancy Hardwick gave a wonderful presentation on projectives at the 2011 QRCA Conference in Las Vegas, and here we explore how these activities work well online.

Most, if not all, of my favorite projective activities in new qualitative research are derived from traditional qualitative research methods.

Online discussions or communities feature an extended interviewing phase (multiple days, weeks or months beyond traditional 2-hour focus groups), which essentially provides researchers with a welcome abundance of time to harvest and probe an always-impressive incoming flow of information. How can researchers effectively utilize this time to engage online participants and immerse them in the topic at hand?
For the time being, quick “top-of-mind” free association exercises are just as important as creative projective questions, requiring online participants to reflect for a few moments (or days!) to capture a particular feeling or experience in a thoughtful post or activity page.

Written exercises like storytelling and other creative activities like collages, when used at opportune times, can be the key ingredients to insightful and interesting new qualitative research. No stimuli are required, and natural dialogue helps to tie it all together. Nancy Hardwick of Hardwick Research presented, “Projectives in Practice,” a detailed compilation of projective techniques at the 2011 QRCA Annual Conference, which was held at the luxurious Venetian & Palazzo Resort in Las Vegas.

Hardwick encouraged the audience to interact and build upon the listed activities during her in-depth, power-packed presentation. While the focus of the presentation highlighted “what works” with in-person interviewing, the ideas and energy in the room quickly catapulted this to a presentation that refreshed my perspective and sparked the most NewQual inspiration in my notebook.

(As you may know, projective techniques are subjective questions that researchers use to elicit the underlying emotions or subconscious drivers that influence choice, as an alternative or complement to asking direct questions. Many of these techniques originally stem from projective personality tests in Psychology, which were designed for people to respond to fairly nebulous, ever-inconclusive stimuli, presumably uncovering hidden emotions and internal conflicts in the process.)

Throughout the presentation, Hardwick included a steady stream of projective techniques, resulting in a compilation of audience favorites in several important categories:

• Written Exercises
• Photo/Drawing Exercises
• Sorting Exercises

The variety of projectives serve as a reminder for how many of these time-tested exercises can be incorporated into online research.

Written exercises transition smoothly into the online world.

A few of my favorite activities are as follows (sans embellishments):

• Famous Owners—Pick a favorite/popular celebrity, and describe 1-2 thoughts about who they are. Then, ask what this celebrity’s version of (insert client’s product/service) would be like? What would it look like? How it would perform, and why? Note: This is a great technique for exploring an existing client’s products or services as well as innovation and co-creation.
• Storytelling: Describe a specific experience from the last time that you…(insert scenario). What Did You Think? Say? Feel?
• Tribute/Eulogy—Pretend that (insert product/service) no longer exists. What did it accomplish? What will you miss most about it? Describe all that you feel and want to say about the product, even if you are viewing it in a new light. Note: variations on the theme, such as a “Lifetime Achievement Award” can be more attractive for certain products/services, particularly category leaders.
• Picture Your World—Pick a picture/color that represents how you feel about (insert product/service). How does this picture/color represent how they feel, and why?

There’s no need to reinvent the wheel.

Very often, writing a discussion guide for online research is about applying techniques that are already available and crafting projective activities to capture the level of insights you can hypothesize…and then some!Hardwick advises to begin with a written exercise “early on” in the discussion, which also works well with new qualitative –even if it’s typed; this early activity serves to challenge the participants to think independently and also allows them to “own” their ideas and suggestions. A well-executed written activity that provokes thoughtful posts is also a great way to encourage insightful group discussions.Online discussion guides written like quantitative-type surveys, with numerous objective questions, can certainly be cringe-worthy. Please do not be afraid to ask creative in-depth questions: the online medium suits that well!

Leave room for the unexpected when writing questions and avoid mechanical dialogue. Don’t be overly repetitious.

When using projectives, encourage honesty and spontaneity while asking for details. I like to throw in a few natural quips at the end of questions, for example, “It could be anything!” (As in, “What’s your favorite part about ______? It could be anything!”) It is interesting to note how such a brief invitation can lead to a wider variety of posts. Treat it like a conversation, because it is!

By Robert Relihan, Senior Vice President

If you have conducted focus groups, or even observed them, you have probably noticed that the energy level can vary over the course of a day.  I have always taken this as the normal course of events. But, it turns out there is a rather interesting explanation for this ebb and flow — decision fatigue.  A recent article by John Tierney in the New York Times, “Do You Suffer From Decision Fatigue?,” describes the research surrounding this phenomenon in great detail.

I had always thought people simply get tired during the course of the day, but Tierney demonstrates that the mere act of making decisions wears us down, making us less able make additional choices.  He points to a study in which individuals who simply review material were better able to make choices about it at the end than those who were forced to repeat incremental choices.

He also notes that those who receive food make better decisions. And, it is not the psychological reward of the food that works.  Tasteless, but sugared grub will have more effect than a sugar-free sundae.

What is the impact of decision fatigued?  One makes poor decisions, of course.  But, what is a poor decision?  The fatigued person defaults to the familiar, the usual, the expected.  In other words, he or she avoids making the hard choices — just those choices we would like research participants to make.

So, what is the lesson here for researchers?  Well, I am going to take the cans of Pepsi and cookies on the table much more seriously than I have in the past.  I might even ban water and diet beverages.  On a more fundamental level, it has caused me to re-think the number and nature of exercises I ask people to perform in a focus group.  Let them create a collage at home rather than force them to select pictures for a collage during the interview.  Might there be implications for questionnaire design?

Concerns about decision fatigue also make on-line qualitative and MROCs look all the more promising.  Participants can respond to our tasks at the times they are freshest and best able to evaluate whatever it is we wish them to judge.

There is another troubling issue Tierney raises.  “Decision fatigue is a major — and hitherto ignored — factor in trapping people in poverty. Because their financial situation forces them to make so many trade-offs, they have less willpower to devote to school, work and other activities that might get them into the middle class….  A trip to the supermarket induces more decision fatigue in the poor than in the rich —because each purchase requires more mental trade-offs.” At first this seems like an important, but a political concern.  Yet, it has implications for those who wish to understand the behavior of consumers.

Dan Peck’ Atlantic article, “Can the Middle Class be Saved?” described what he calls the “hollowing out” of the American middle class.  His economic arguments are familiar. Over the past several decades, a larger proportion of the nation’s wealth has accrued to a smaller proportion of individuals at the top.  But, in the process, the middle class has fractured.  Now, the non-professional middle class are more likely to resemble in behavior and attitudes the “high school drop-out poor” than the “college educated members” of the middle class.

The sub-text — many more of those whom we survey or wish to have in our MROCs and focus groups are likely to be in a semi-permanent state of decision fatigue.  Our methods and approaches will need to be much more sensitive to this fact.

By Robert Relihan, Senior Vice President

I am staring at a series of collages I had participants create for a project I just completed.  I have always loved this sort of creative exercise.  It helps (forces?) people to stretch their right brains.  They make more connections and associations when they create the collages and discuss them than they would in almost any other exercise I use in a focus group.  Also, I discover symbols and metaphors reflected on the collages and in the responses of their creators than with almost any other analytic approach.

I was surprised to read an article in the New York Times recently that seemed to suggest something novel in the technique.  I have been using it for years.  One of my approaches is to have participants create collages out of whatever pictures and objects they have around the house.

As I looked as those collages, I realized they said much about the ways a group of young men and women felt about one of their favorite activities, which shall remain nameless.  I could see changes that had taken place in the way creativity is expressed by people who are not specifically trained to be creative.

• Fifteen years ago a typical collage would contain pictures from a range of magazines.  And, they would also be taken from both the advertising and the articles.  Now, it seems that people’s image frame of reference is much more restricted. It is not unusual to see the same pictures repeated in several collages.  It is evidence that magazines are much less a part of everyone’s daily life.  When I conduct ethnogaphies, many houses I visit have no evidence of magazines.It was commonplace for collages created by men to have pictures from the sports page of the local newspaper or from Sports Illustrated.  No more.  All sports news is on-line.  And, as more and more people use smart phones, they are getting their sports news in such a way they can’t even print a picture.And, the images that do appear on the collages are almost exclusively from advertising. This change is a bit more difficult to explain.  What qualities do the images from advertising possess that other images do not?  As I listen to men and women discuss their collages, the answer becomes obvious.  Advertising magnifies and simplifies the representation of emotions.  Its images are designed so that consumers “get it.”  I can only conclude that generations raised on the media can understand their own emotions only through the intensifying lens of advertising.

• The collages also reveal what is a complementary trend.  The Internet, in effect, has short-circuited creative thinking.  I used to see collage creation as a serendipitous process in which my participants wandered through magazines or their homes and happened upon pictures and objects that triggered a response they might not otherwise have felt.Now, however, collages have become more logical and literal.  I see a trophy in a collage, and I ask its creator to explain it.  Oh, he says, I felt successful, so I Googled “trophy” and printed the first picture I found.  So the search for images had become less about metaphorical and and more interpretation.I can’t help but feel that this presents a problem for my collage exercise.  The Internet enables consumers to get THE answer, and that answer more often than not is verbal and logical.  The emotional dimension is lost.

What this all suggests is that in the age of the Internet, with Millennials as targets, we need new ways to tap into the emotions of consumers.  Or, we ourselves need new metaphors for that emotional response.