Here’s the top 19 signs your focus group is quickly collapsing into abject failure and will be completely unusable for consumer research, message testing, product verification or concept formulation:

• From an arriving participant: “Hey! I used to be a 1-900 operator for this place!”
• The clients hold up the session waiting for the muffin plate to arrive.
• The recruitment coordinator works from the bus depot.
• A fantasy sports fan hijacks every idea with a poorly thought-out sports analogy.
• I’m not saying it’s a bargain basement facility, but the viewing room has an electric blind that has to be fed quarters to stay up.
• Your moderator shows up, and he’s in a Leafs jersey.
• The participants are handed Hello Kitty knockoff pens and notepads.
• There’s more than one socially conscious teacher at the table.
• The moderator starts off by saying “Most of you know the drill …”
• The viewing area for agency types is behind an old patio door. From a mobile home. With a “Texas Kixass” sticker on it.
• Five words: retiree with a hearing aid.
• The testing facility uses old pieces of drywall for whiteboards.
• At the end of the video clip you’re testing – at great expense – more than one participant refers to “the money shot.”
• Participants who answer in complete sentences are handed Wal-Mart gift cards.
• More than three instances of someone saying “I’ll tell you what I think …”
• Your moderator’s Steve McClaren (for the Brits among us).
• “I know this product! I think my stepmama’s suing ya’ll!”
• In the facility’s waiting room, you can make an extra ten bucks with only “a twist of the wrist.”
• One of the participants asks who will sign for her high school volunteer credit.

[tags] focus group, public opinion research, moderator, popular opinion [/tags]