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How to Kill Good Ideas with Focus Groups

The nice thing about focus groups is that even when you learn nothing, you get to spend some time out of the office eating M&Ms, stealing facility premiums, watching YouTube videos, and blatantly ignoring customers on the other side of the glass.

What if cavemen took the concept of fire to a focus group before launching it? This is a promo for TheIdeaGroup courtesy of TheVideoEditGuy.

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20 Comments

  1. I liked it, very clever. Though it would have been more believable if the Focus Group had been American. But I suppose that would have been a poor marketing idea as well 😉

  2. Love the concept, generally liked the execution. I thought the cavemen were just gonna grunt. Actually, having them grunt with subtitles might have been funnier.

    I would love to be in a focus group with a bunch of people on this blog. Oh, how we could fuck up a company’s business plan!

  3. I was in a focas group once. We were deciding whether or not to give the green light to a TV sitcom pilot called “Uncle Buck.”

    (sigh) I TOLD them so.

  4. Focus groups have notoriously rejected the TV show “Seinfeld,” the telephone answering machine, and the minivan. Well, at least they were right about the minivan.

  5. That was clever. The area where I live, for whatever reason, is a test market. We gets lots of cool new products that later just disappear. I guess maybe I’m the only one that thinks they are cool.

  6. I was just getting off a three-hour shift of humping beer for Arco. Co-worker Allah was just getting off his eight-hour clerking shift. I filled my soda cup with Cherry Coke and followed Alla out the door. His car was parked against the fence. I just have a short walk to my crack motel. I was going ‘home’ to my crack motel room to unwind on my broken barcolounger. Allah was in a hurry to get to his second job at another Arco.

    Some chollo was parked almost right up against the front bumper of Allah’s car. He was sitting in his car trying to negotiate terms with one of our local afternoon streetwalkers, whose head and arms were inside the chollo’s car. Her ass waved back and forth like a dog’s butt waves when he knows you’re fixing to give him a doggie treat.

    Allah got in his own car and, being the impatient Mediterranean type that he is, immediately honked his horn at the chollo to move. It was completely unnecessary to honk. Allah could’ve just backed up and drove around the transaction, but nooooooooo, Allah had to assert his Arco employee right of way.

    The streetwalker popped her torso out of the chollo’s car and started walking away. I was walking past the front of the big, bald-headed, gangbanger-dressed chollo’s car when Allah had honked. When I saw the look of anger, no, bloodcurdling, murderous rage in the chollo’s face, I decided to backtrack a few feet back onto the Arco driveway to watch . . . maybe even participate . . . in the ‘festivities’ I was sure would follow.

    The bullheaded chollo looked back at Allah, yanked his door open with such force that I thought the door would come off its hinges and stomped over to where Allah was sitting in his car. For a split second, I could see in Allah’s eyes the realization that maybe he had fucked up. He had just hit a beehive with a stick and the swarm was racing towards him in the form of a big, angry, coitus-interrupted gangbanger whose fists were tight as he screamed curses at Allah.

    Words were exchanged.

    I moved to within a few feet of the back of the chollo. He sensed me and looked back over his shoulder at me. I gave him my best White Rhino dead-eyed, bring-it-on-if-you-got-the-stones look. Allah was wearing his Arco uniform. I had my Arco name tag on the nasty blue jacket I had found in the dumpster and wear to work. I looked like I had just been in a fight. Two Arco employees. One gangbanger. He must’ve decided the odds weren’t in his favor for a clean getaway.

    Bullhead swaggered back to his car, keeping me in his peripheral vision until he reached his car door, then turned to face me like a bull in a pasture turns to face an intruder, his head high, chin up, nose up, sniffing at the wind for that telltale odor of fear. Bullhead was facing me squarely and I tucked my head down a bit, in the pose of another bull, a challenging male, getting ready for the charge.

    If he makes just one move towards me, just one step, I’ll step towards him with my right foot, swing my right hand out and throw the soda on him. He’ll jerk back a moment, into the involuntary protective pose most people make when someone is throwing something liquid at you, and that’ll be my chance: I’ll step off quickly towards him: left, right, left, plant my left foot and swing my right foot as hard as I can towards the bullhead’s center until my right foot plants itself powerfully into bullhead’s testicles.

    He should go down. I might have to follow the brutish kick with a short, right-handed downward chop to the right side of his head to finish him off. If he makes me do that, if this big bull of a man makes me work to put him down, then I’m going to be angry, real angry. I’m gonna have to break some bones on this big motherfucker. Break them hard. I’ll go to town on this guy and it’ll take five cops to pull me off him. Why? Because this is MY neighborhood and nobody brings that cock-of-the-walk, gangbanger spirit of violence into my neighborhood, into my face. Nobody.

    I pushed a narrow, two-foot wide {I’m gonna break your bones and rip out your intestines if you make one move towards me} mental vibration at the bullhead.

    His body snapped back a few inches as if he actually felt the force of my mental pushing, {gonna rip your head off and pee down the hole in your neck} vibrations and he hopped in his car and drove off. Alla pulled up to make his right hand turn, giving me an exasperated, eyes rolling up in his head “Where do they get these crazy motherfuckers?” look as he passed.

    I don’t think he ever knew how close he came to seeing the breaking and dismemberment of a bad-ass, motherfucker.

  7. i think chollo is actually spelled cholo, but I’m not the spelling nazi so I defer to her.

  8. Sukatra, I am so proud of you! You are absolutely correct!

    I spent my day driving to Buffalo, NY (5.5 hours) and then moving my son into the apartment where he’ll be staying for the first quarter of this school year doing a co-op. Then I took him and his roomie to Cheesecake Factory dinner, back to my hotel for a late swim (to work off all of those calories!), and now I’m trying to catch up on everything I missed.

    I wish you guys would all take the day off for once, so I wouldn’t have to stay up all night catching up on this blog.

    No Ambien for me!

  9. He’s only 20; not old enough to drink yet. And he doesn’t. He’ll probably spend most of his weekends going back and forth to RIT (Rochester Institute of Technology) where he goes to school, because his girlfriend is there and it is only about an hour away. I doubt he’ll ever make it into Buffalo, anyway. He is actually living in a cute little suburb of Buffalo called East Aurora. Not too far from Orchard Park, home of the Buffalo Bills, my team!

  10. @JimmerSD; The 90’s were our heydey; except that we kept losing the damn Super Bowl!!

    I’ve been to Rich, but not for several years. The company my son is doing his co-op for has a skybox at Rich. I told him that if anyone offers him tickets, he is to immediately accept. He doesn’t even like football (he is a geek, not a sports fan).

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