it's over. move to somnia.

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Mktg

Being hard up for cash and in search of something new, I went to a focus group last week. The topic was energy drinks, or rather, an energy drink. Despite my almost total lack of interest in or experience with anything more caffeinated than tea, [Company] had seen fit to let me have a go at it. (I was surprised to find out that, not being a coffee drinker, I was not alone in my group of eight 18-to-30-year-old peers.)

The session took place in a windowless room with the requisite mirrored wall and microphones on the table and ceiling. Our effusive host laid down a general outline of the evening's agenda started us out asking which drinks already on the market we were familiar with. The general consensus was that [Product] was the best-known. How did we drink it? Mixed with vodka, mostly. (Not its intended use, but the innovative drive of America's youth cannot be underestimated!) I was the only one who had heard of [Other Product], which caught Effusive Host's attention--it turned out that [Other Product Spinoff] was to be our main topic for the night. [Spinoff] is apparently a revolutionary idea in the world of energy drinks: a get-up-in-the-morning-and-go option meant to combine the attributes of orange juice and coffee. With carbonation. Yeah, I know: yuck.

We were first asked to appraise a design for the can. My fellow groupies immediately won my heart by sniffing that it gave the impression of its contents being totally artificial (and it looked rather like a box of detergent, one pointed out). We went on to compare other can designs--always referred to as "ideas" by Effusive Host--then discuss a short block of text ("[Spinoff] has the goodness of guaraná and maltodextrin!") that EH claimed was not ad copy. The word "ignite" figured multiple times in the mystery text, and "fire" seemed to be the theme of the can designs. This will be important later.

EH presented a number of different colors for the drink itself (from Day-Glo yellow to persimmon orange), and further ideas for package designs. I have to admit the clear plastic can was pretty cool, but the silver bottle ("it looks like...hair mousse!") and tallboy just elicited snickers. After much buildup, we were presented with four samples. Somehow I thought they'd already decided on the composition of the product, but...no. The first was, um, pungent--I could smell it from six feet away. Oh, yeah. Not a good sign. Tasted horrible. Horrible. I imagine the first sample was presented in order to make all the others seem much nicer by comparison. And they did. One tasted like Sunny Delight (ordinarily not pleasant, but in context quite refreshing), one tasted like Orangina, and I found the last sample intermediate, although some others in the group likened it to [Parent Product], the logo of which was featured prominently and rather uglily on all package designs.

I have to admit that after tasting the latter samples, I wasn't quite so opposed to the product idea as I thought I'd be. It didn't have the nasty caffeinated taste I'd expected, and was rather refreshing. Still, I wouldn't give up orange juice (healthier and cheaper) that easily.

The most telling moment came when we were asked to rate alternate names for [Spinoff]. Some were clever, some were silly...and then there was "Urgent Orange." A couple of my groupmates laughed--OK, I initially laughed too--and said it was so ridiculous that if they saw it in the market, they just might try it. Any negative comments? "Yeah," I said. "It borders on offensive." EH's blank stare told me all I needed to know about why I was glad I didn't go into marketing. It's not exactly esoteric knowledge that Agent Orange is a defoliant used in Vietnam and now linked to various diseases; a product that puns (poorly) on it and incorporates a sense of "burning" in its ad campaign would be in bad taste.
peachy as always, Mike at 1:12 PM