Editor’s note: John Houlahan is founder and CEO of FocusVision Worldwide, Inc., Stamford  Conn.

Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink is at the top of non-fiction and business book lists. Gladwell is an enormously interesting and entertaining writer, and has attained guru status with Blink and his prior book The Tipping Point. He is a staff writer for The New Yorker, and was formerly a business and science reporter at The Washington Post.

The subject of Blink is “the power of thinking without thinking.” It tells how choices and insights that seem to be snap judgments - made in the blink of an eye - are not as simple as they seem. These choices explain why some people are brilliant decision-makers with highly developed intuition and instincts while others are inept even after long study of a subject. Often the best decisions and insights are those that can not be explained easily to others. He describes the art of “thin-slicing,” which allows filtering out the few factors that really matter from an overwhelming number of variables.

As you can imagine, Gladwell has become the darling of the advertising and creative community. The headline for a January 24, 2005 Advertising Age article trumpeted, “Tipping Point guru takes on focus groups.” The article continued by thumping “market research that fails to ratify anything but the status quo” and Gladwell himself said that he hoped the book would help “creatives to protect their work from the numbing effect of market research.” And there is more, such as this quote from Ben & Jerry’s researcher Lucas Jenson: “The unique insights that drive innovation and really great ad campaigns aren’t gained through traditional research like mall intercepts, mail surveys and focus groups.”

No wonder ad agencies like Omnicom Group’s DDB are hiring Gladwell to speak to small groups of their clients: He deifies the insight and process of ad agency creatives.

However, the principles espoused in Blink can be interpreted to provide underpinnings and rationale for why talented moderators and the qualitative research process are so effective in delivering exactly the insights marketers and advertisers seek.

The book itself is a fast and entertaining read. Business examples make it particularly relevant for market researchers, marketers and product designers. New insight is offered about the New Coke fiasco which required Coca-Cola to return to Classic Coke. In a chapter about “the chair of death” it is shown that early tests were negative for a Herman Miller chair design that became the company’s best seller ever. Work in package research by Cheskin Research demonstrates how “sensation transference” is key to effective packaging design. And experienced programming executives at CBS overrode poor quantitative show testing results to bring innovative shows such as All In the Family to TV. The lesson: be cautious when evaluating well-entrenched iconic brands or revolutionary new products and concepts.

Gladwell has a knack for taking complex, often academic research and experimentation and breaking it down to relevant principals for us lay readers. He tells how intuition can be trained to “thin-slice” an experience. For example, “thin-slicing” allows art experts to immediately identify an artistic fake, or trained classical musicians to know whether an audition player is good or not after just a few musical bars. It is the same phenomenon which allows instant decisions to be made under stress, such as police officers deciding in a split second whether to shoot at an armed suspect or battlefield commanders giving orders to attack or retreat in the heat of combat.

Research can deliver

It becomes apparent in reading the book that “blink” principles are certainly used by skilled and talented focus group moderators and qualitative researchers. In spite of the market research-bashing stimulated by the book, qualitative research can and does deliver exactly the kind of insight, deep understanding and creative leaps of faith prized by marketers. Here’s how:

  • Moderators know how to look beyond the spoken responses of focus group participants. They quickly “thin-slice” based on experience to the critical factors that make a difference. They “mind read” effortlessly and automatically because the clues to make sense of someone are right there on the faces and in the demeanor of those in front of them.
  • Moderators insist on being in the same room face to face with participants for focus group sessions. It allows them to “listen with their eyes,” register involuntary facial muscle response, “jiggle,” and other body language that feeds the moderator’s sense of what is really happening.
  • Experienced moderators know how to be cautious in conducting and interpreting focus sessions when the subject is something revolutionary or beyond respondents’ everyday experience. They will not throw out an idea or concept, but make allowances for unfamiliarity.
  • With the experience of conducting and interpreting hundreds of focus sessions they become expert at decoding what lies behind snap judgments and first impressions. They do it formally or informally with a refined vocabulary to communicate with clients.
  • Moderators encourage client personnel to observe and experience the sessions for themselves. This shared experience permits client buy-in and “leaps of faith” without excessive explanation and rationalization.
  • Moderators insist on synthesizing and reporting interpretive results. It permits them the platform to deliver insights and intimate understanding that are the heart of the qualitative experience.

Introspection

Market research today is going through a lot of introspection. An editorial titled “The Disappearance” in the February 2005 issue of ESOMAR’s ResearchWorld decried the trends which degrade or substitute for direct respondent interface. These include low cooperation rates, substituting traditional methods with “bricolage, ethnography, semiotics, diaries…and disciplines such as linguistics, neuroscience and cognitive psychology.” The author wonders, “What exactly is being measured and how reliable is the information?” They are hopeful, however, that the worlds of “knowledge and analysis and imagination and intuition are now connecting.” They state:  “Now is precisely the time for market research to take action in order to retain its unique character - as the voice of the consumer - and to continue offering insight which is valid and reliable.”

The February 15, 2005 issue of Marketing News contained an article “MR deserves blame for marketing’s decline” written by Northwestern University ’s distinguished professor of integrated marketing communications Don E. Schultz. He noted, “Research is supposed to present the ‘voice of the customer.’ Today it doesn’t.” It is “sadly lacking in customer insights and understanding.”

Of course, qualitative research and focus groups can provide exactly that. It is the only formal research methodology that permits client and researcher to see, hear and interact with real consumers up-close and personal. Other research provides a numerical representation of the consumer, but not “mind, heart and soul.” The principles delineated in Blink add validity and underpinning to the qualitative research process, and show that, if used with wisdom and discretion, they can bring the insights and intimate understanding marketers crave.