Experiencing A Fishing Focus Group
Ever wonder about the minds behind some of those goofy fishing commercials you see on TV during Saturday mornings? Maybe recently you’ve been paging through a fishing magazine and asked yourself what were they thinking when they come up with that print ad. I know I sure have.
Well, this evening I had the opportunity to take part in a fun little project at Kerker, a Minneapolis-based advertising agency that services many big clients such as 3M, Target, and of course, Pure Fishing. In case you’re not familiar with Pure Fishing, it is the parent company of such subsidiaries as Berkley, Abu Garcia, Mitchell, Johnson and many other fishing-oriented operations. Kerker was conducting a series of fishing focus groups and invited several avid fishermen to their offices to review and comment on a proposed advertising campaign they are developing.
Having never been part of a fishing focus group before I was quite intrigued by the prospect of reviewing some new ad concepts.
My first step before arriving was to check out Kerker just to see what they were all about. If you do a search on the Internet you will soon discover that one of their trademark advertising campaigns is for Taco Johns with “Whiplash the Cowboy Monkey” who rides around on a border collie, ala the Lone Ranger on Silver. It’s a fun spoof of an ad so I figured right away these folks must have a keen sense of humor. I was not disappointed.
When I arrived at their offices they were quick to point out that the five of us in the group were expected to freely comment on what we saw, what we liked, what we disliked, but also how any advertising concept could be further honed and improved. While I won’t get into any of the specifics of their future ad campaigns, the focus for the evening was on developing ads for Berkley – both branding the company in general, but also specifically promoting certain products (such as line and artificial baits).
It was really interesting to me how Susan, the focus group facilitator, worked with us to elicit our responses. She engaged discussions and did a great job picking our brains on what we liked and disliked. You see, even though the brains at a big ad agency are far more experienced at developing marketing concepts that work than the average fisherman would be…a savvy ad agency will make sure the ads have the right affect on the market audience by testing to achieve a desired response.
I was truly impressed. When I first entered the room I did not know anybody else in the focus group. There were five of us and throughout the evening we brainstormed on how to tweak the ads to make them more effective. There were suggestions critical of improper safety practices (child models with no PFDs), ways to improve graphics to better deliver a visual impact, and suggested titling and copy ideas.
We also reviewed storyboards depicting proposed TV ads, weighed the pros and cons of certain new slogans for Berkley and in general described what ads were effective and why we liked them.
I can now see how the concept of an advertising focus group is real effective and money well spent. The four other guys I was with this evening were awesome in both the depth of their knowledge of fishing, but also in an ability to transfer that fishing savvy into some useful advice for developing Berkley’s future advertising campaigns. Even though Kerker had the ads well thought out and solid in their affect, it was our job to play devil’s advocate and make sure that each ad passed the ultimate test – that being scrutiny from an average fishermen.
It’s hard to tell if anything we discussed tonight will ultimately be used in a Berkley Fishing promotional ad 6 to 12 months down the line…but nevertheless it will be fun to observe how spending a few hours with a company to hone their ideas might possibly get presented to the fishing world. I’m just happy and fortunate to have been a small part of the process.
© 2005 Jim Braaten. All Rights Reserved. No Reproduction without Prior Permission.
