How do you know what your customer really wants?
Gupt was one of my favourite albums during engineering undergraduate days. Everyone I knew in college loved the songs. You'd find the music play everywhere from lounges to stereo shops to auto rickshaws. The music which was more techno than any other Hindi album, was a huge risk. It went against the softer, romantic, melodious tracks which were raging at the time.
Yet, this against-the-grain album won the listeners over.
Viju Shah, the music director, shared an interesting story. Once the genre was selected i.e. techno / trance, they recorded a few songs. In his neighbourhood, there were some college students. This age group was better suited to tell if the music connected. On listening the songs, their feedback was to scrap the album!
Imagine if you are the creator and the financer for such a project - what would you do with this project?
The movie and music industries are unforgiving and extremely tough. The product has to be different than others in the market. What makes it challenging is you don't get a chance to improve.
A restaurant can replace your dish if something was wrong. Apps can send you software upgrades to fix issues. An album or movie once released cannot be iterated over.
How do people manage risk in such a one-and-done environment?
You'll hear directors who will seek input on a script they're considering. Songs are recorded in a scratch version, a rough cut. Movie rushes or scenes are shown to a select few people.
What the Gupt team did was a typical process.
A group of college students was chosen. This target audience was supposed to resonate with the music. It's kind of like hoping to hear the answer - a resounding approval.
Despite the lack of enthusiasm from the focus group, the team went ahead.
Their reasoning was that the music was a part of a story line. It would be shown with visuals, the actors dancing to the beats. Also most people would experience this in a movie theater with much better sound systems.
The gut feel overrode the data.
In hindsight, it was a good call but what can we learn from it? We will face such decisions in our professional lives. Should you similarly override any data insights?
Here are some things we should prepare before presenting to a focus group:
Build an ambience - the goal is to mimic the user's environment. It can be physical such as a lounge bar or an office cubicle.
Set the context - provide background constraints. Imagine a product for students with a limited budget or a single parent juggling 10 things at a time.
Strategically introduce them to the product - only after they've understood the backdrop. Making college students listen to a new song after they have just played cricket was not the right setup for the Gupt team.
What should you do after you've received feedback?
Judge it appropriately. Was it received after the users understood the context? Is it a one off glowing or critical input?
Depending on the product, consider split testing.
Once you've gathered initial input, you can consider contrary suggestions across two sets of trials. Split the trials across the focus groups. Their feedback will help you evolve your product.
Our job is to create the best product. It is tempting to keep iterating until all your trials give you the answers. The risk is missing the market while adding considerable cost as you keep evolving.
Ultimately we have to ship it.
Delivering what resonates with people is never a trivial task. If we've done our bit, the results will show up. If not, it's good learning albeit with a slightly bitter pill :-)
One thing is for sure - we'll keep innovating.
That's it for today.
Happy Ideating!
Hemang.