SevenQuestions: John Warner

Seven answers on 7Q (also known as the FAQs of life.)
Interviewed by Tom Mangan

John Warner, former marketing guy, current college writing instructor, co-author of "My First Presidentiary: A Scrapbook of George Bush."

AUTHORS

Michael Fuchs
Elizabeth Hilts
Paul Riddell
Gary Rivlin
Jim Motavalli
Barbara Shafferman
Jules Siegel
Keith Snyder

ARTISTS/POETS/
PHILOSOPHERS

Jon C. Allen
Will Baker
Mike Leung
Jon Sarkin

COOL SITE KEEPERS

Mike Cash
Scott O'Neal Colf
Godfrey Daniels
Cliff Davis, DDS
Tammy Hocking
Wes Modes
Frank Rogan

DIARISTS

Ralph Becker
J. D. Bruns
Linda DeVault
Mike Reed
Moira Richardson
Jessamyn West

FILMMAKERS

Ben Kufrin
Dean Mermell

JOURNALISTS

Bernie
Mary Cooley-Jones
Lindsay Crysler
Jamie Dupree
M.O.A.T.M.A.I.
David Moll
Robert Niles
John Orr
Steven Ovadia
Pierce Presley
Mack Reed
Rip Rense
Curtis Ross
Neal Ross
John Scalzi
Catherine Seipp
David Sheets
Dwight Silverman
Matt Welch

MOVIE MAVENS

MaryAnn Johanson
Brian Koller

HUMORISTS

Debbie Farmer
Mike Jasper
Madeleine Begun Kane
Patrick Keller
Bob Sassone
Valerie Sprague
Ken Swarmer
Ian Wolff

SOLDIERS

Maj. Jon Anderson, USAF

TEACHERS

John Warner

TECHIES

Chris Adamson
Mike Gunderloy
Michael Ivey
Greg Knauss
Floyd Maxwell
Ellen McDonough
Mike Pingleton
Wayne Thume
John Worth

TEENS

Gary Baum
Marty Beckerman

UNDECLARED

Bev Gibbs
Beth Reid

WEBLOGGERS

Jason Kottke
Jish Mukerji

ONE
You mentioned once that you had some backgound in marketing and, specifically, signage. I'm curious about good vs. bad signs, that is, what a sign's supposed to do and supposed not to do, but sometimes does anyway because the signmaker wasn't too swift.

My expertise (such as it is) is in retail signage, particularly for "big box" stores (Best Buy, Target, Wal-Mart, Home Depot, things of that ilk). In this context, signs give directions, but the intended action always rests with the consumer. The signs generally do not command (with some exceptions). The signs merely point the way along the journey to shopping success.

For example, say you need a light fixture. The signs should first lead you to the correct aisle, then lay out the different styles and options, and finally allow for easy comparison of things like materials and price. In this case, the consumer also may need to know about ease of installation, or any additional parts that may be needed.

Now, the store would certainly like you to buy some other things on your way to the light fixture aisles, so you will encounter other signs that will try to entice you to investigate a particular item further ("you know, that old rake really is looking beat up"), but they should never overpower the original mission to the point that the consumer fails in the primary objective. Consumers feel best about a store when the can get what they came for, and while ancillary purchases while in the store make money, the best money maker is loyalty.

The biggest signage sin is creating confusion and leading the consumer down a fruitless path. This sin is committed often.

TWO
What did making these retail signs teach you about human nature that you couldn't have learned otherwise?

For clarification's sake, I never created the signs. My company (a marketing research firm) was hired to test them among consumers, generally first in a focus group situation, and then perhaps in larger, quantitative numbers. I moderated the focus groups and then consulted on the results and the sorts of changes that might prove successful. I actually had a lot of respect for people who could take something so prosaic (say, a sign for the baked goods section) and do their best to communicate something in the process of creating a signage scheme.

As to the human nature question, I'd say this: as complicated as the human personality is, put a group of us together and the collective will almost always seek the middle. The same thing happens in creative writing workshops or film studios. The result of this phenomenon is that reaching for consensus rarely results in anything interesting or fun, or engaging, or worthwhile, but almost always achieves safety and comfort, (usually) a plus for a retail store, a minus (in my book) for a film, or a piece of writing.

By the end of my tenure as a marketing researcher, prior to conducting the groups, I could pick the design or concept that the groups would favor at least 95% of the time, and usually within 30 seconds of looking them over. This talent is not at all unique among people who do this kind of work either. It's just the result of a slow process of conditioning oneself to identifying the middle. Someone like Ron Howard has an almost infallible sense of this audience and grooves his crummy movies right at them. I suppose thinking this way either makes me supremely jaded, an elitist, or both, but I think this is what happens when one spends time behind Oz's curtain.

THREE

What were some of the tricks of the marketer researcher's trade that were essentially to getting the job done but might seem vaguely diabolical to someone outside the profession?

For my old company, the gathering of data itself is actually a very "clean" business because it always involved some sort of choice on the behalf of the respondent. Nobody who says no is hoodwinked into participating. Sometimes their permission was purchased via cash or some other kind of incentive (focus groups always involve an incentive), but for things like internet or phone surveys, people usually give answers simply because we ask for their opinion. Of course, in the case of a phone survey, the vast majority simply hang up on the interviewer at the get go, but enough don't to make it a worthwhile enterprise. Individual respondents are always kept anonymous to people outside the company, and names we would gather were never ever sold.

This is in contrast to marketing research that takes the form of "data mining" where information from individuals who have made purchases with something like a frequent shopper card (like at the grocery store) is analyzed, and/or gathered for mailing lists. This kind of thing is largely hidden from the consumer, and few people actually realize the level of personal information they leave out there on a day to day basis.
If, for example, you slip in the icy parking lot and hurt your back and you start seeing a chiropractor, and you pay for those visits with a credit card (or check for that matter) your bank knows this, and it's not inconceivable that you'll start receiving catalogs targeted towards people with back problems or in need of pain relief because a company in partnership with your bank has asked for people who may be good targets for their pitch.

That's actually downright scary to me, but there's nothing we can do about it at this point.

The dirtiest part of the enterprise for me was realizing that the effort I put into my work served almost entirely to grease the wheels of commerce. Though, the idea that marketing and advertising gets people to buy stuff they don't want or need is incorrect. Marketing research is designed to understand existing wants and desires, and figuring out the best way to position a particular product so it appears to fulfill that desire.

One could argue that that's a good thing.

FOUR Just about everyone whose boss has told him, "well, the focus groups say we should stop doing X and start doing Y," develops in immediate, powerful and enduring dislike of focus groups. How do you account for the fact that nobody seems to like focus groups, yet everyone uses them?
Heh. There is always much gnashing of teeth and pulling of hair in the viewing room. By their nature, focus groups tend to laser in on flaws, and when you have the people who have created a product or concept listening to Joe or Jane six-pack trash your work, pain is an understandable reaction.

People use them because they don't trust their own judgment, or in many cases, different factions within an company may be in conflict about the right path and the focus group is there to break a tie. K-Mart didn't need focus groups to tell them what was wrong with their stores, but I'm sure they were doing them right up to the chapter 11 filings.

FIVE
I'm guessing you must've developed some kind of intuition for the kinds of things that brought out strong reactions (good or bad) from people in the focus groups. What were they?

Really strong reactions are kind of rare since whatever is being discussed (an ad, new product, website, store, packaging, signage, whatever) has been engineered so as not to offend anyone in any way, but advertising that respondents felt was "clever for clever's sake" would routinely get bombed, unmercifully, usually with the creative team behind the ad weeping on the other side of the two-way mirror.

That's not to say that unusual things don't happen. A colleague of mine likes to tell about a group she did with women where they were presenting different models of massaging shower heads and the discussion quickly turned to the ah...self-pleasure aspect of the devices.

SIX
What are some of the old habits of the marketing game that stick with you now that you're out of it?

Only good habits, really. The most important skill that running focus groups taught me was the ability to both listen to what someone is saying while also formulating something intelligent to say response, as well as figuring out what you want to discuss five minutes from that point. Invaluable tools for my current life as a college teacher.

Marketing research also involves a constant process of reading subtext, and synthesizing a lot of seemingly disparate information into a coherent whole. This is just good training for life in general, teaching one to be a less passive consumer of media and check my own lesser instincts. When you know how the machinery behind the image works, it's just easier to see past the surface. Not to say that I'm immune to marketing or advertising or good signage or packaging. If the stuff is good it's simply irresistible.

SEVEN
Kids see zillions of ads by the time they get to college. How does that express itself in your students' homework?

Funny you should ask. We're actually doing a unit on analyzing print and television advertising in class right now. To kick it off, I have them read an essay by Robert Scholes called "On Reading a Video Text" in which he first argues that video texts (commercials) have replaced literature and other communication forms as the primary source of "cultural reinforcement." That is, what we come to believe about our culture is primarily learned from these video texts. He then goes on to advocate for a curriculum that teaches students how to desconstruct and in turn question the cultural assumptions present in these video texts. He believes the development of these skills is vital to our developing society, that otherwise we are to be lulled away from reality, to the detriment of our lives.

My students are completely untroubled by this thought, though in interacting with them, it's hard to argue with Scholes' main thesis. In many ways, my students' primary identity is that of "consumer." Naturally, they're all very skilled in the retail purchasing arts, but it goes beyond that. Each choice they make, including where to go to college, what to major in, what classes to take, is one made using a consumer mindset of cost/benefit, in this case, for the most part thinking about what will lead them to future wealth and comfort.

This attitude isn't universal among my students, and I'm certain it's not unique to this generation, but the concrete (read: money) ends that these scholastic means may purchase are never far from their minds. It is simply their way of thinking, and I do believe that it does stem from this consumer identity. When I return essays, the first thing they want to know is what they could do better. I explain where I think their writing process or approach could be improved, but what they really want to know is where they went wrong in that key cost/benefit equation. They're already calculating how much time may be necessary for the next essay in order to receive the grade they desire.

In their papers in this unit, they're asked to analyze and then comment on a print ad with an eye toward explaining the ad's significance as a cultural object. They think I'm crazy to give them such a task. I know it seems irrelevent to them. Advertising simply is. It's not something to think about.

My students are extraordinarily smart, accomplished students, and one of the reasons behind their accomplishments is their skill at being able to subconsciously calculate this consumer cost/benefit ratio and therefore direct their energies towards academic success. Very few know anything of current events. The particulars of the war in Afghanistan are totally lost. Enron? What's that? But who can blame them? I think the conventional wisdom says that they're just spoiled and apathetic, but why aren't we questioning the source of this apathy? These things exist outside of their lives as academic consumers, so to time spent on them is wasted.

Our educational system of successive hoop jumping in the secondary school years has created this culture. My students almost universally just want to know what they're supposed to do to get an "A". They spend their time trying to figure out what my target is and how to hit it. I think I frustrate them because I speak of them setting up their own target, their own topic for exploration and me judging them on how well they engage with this process. Again, for most, this doesn't compute. There are exceptions, young, budding intellectuals, but they've been forced to play the game long enough that even they are not immune.

I love my students, I think the world of their potential for unique and important thinking. It's a shame we've spent so much time inculcating them into comfortable little cubbyholes.

THE BIG INDEX...
Who they are, what they do, how they think. Go there now.

A TO Z ARCHIVE...

Everybody here, with quickie bios. Go there now.

Return to the main Seven Questions page
See the original Newsies 7Q project

Contact info@sevenquestions.com
Copyright 1999-2002, Thomas L. Mangan



Seven answers on 7Q (also known as the FAQs of life.)	Interviewed by Tom Mangan John Warner, former marketing guy, current college writing instructor, co-author of "My First Presidentiary: A Scrapbook of George Bush."	AUTHORS Michael Fuchs Elizabeth Hilts Paul Riddell Gary Rivlin Jim Motavalli Barbara Shafferman Jules Siegel Keith Snyder ARTISTS/POETS/ PHILOSOPHERS Jon C. Allen Will Baker Mike Leung Jon Sarkin COOL SITE KEEPERS Mike Cash Scott O'Neal Colf Godfrey Daniels Cliff Davis, DDS Tammy Hocking Wes Modes Frank Rogan DIARISTS Ralph Becker J. D. Bruns Linda DeVault Mike Reed Moira Richardson Jessamyn West FILMMAKERS Ben Kufrin Dean Mermell JOURNALISTS Bernie Mary Cooley-Jones Lindsay Crysler Jamie Dupree M.O.A.T.M.A.I. David Moll Robert Niles John Orr Steven Ovadia Pierce Presley Mack Reed Rip Rense Curtis Ross Neal Ross John Scalzi Catherine Seipp David Sheets Dwight Silverman Matt Welch MOVIE MAVENS MaryAnn Johanson Brian Koller HUMORISTS Debbie Farmer Mike Jasper Madeleine Begun Kane Patrick Keller Bob Sassone Valerie Sprague Ken Swarmer Ian Wolff SOLDIERS Maj. Jon Anderson, USAF TEACHERS John Warner TECHIES Chris Adamson Mike Gunderloy Michael Ivey Greg Knauss Floyd Maxwell Ellen McDonough Mike Pingleton Wayne Thume John Worth TEENS Gary Baum Marty Beckerman UNDECLARED Bev Gibbs Beth Reid WEBLOGGERS Jason Kottke Jish Mukerji



ONE	You mentioned once that you had some backgound in marketing and, specifically, signage. I'm curious about good vs. bad signs, that is, what a sign's supposed to do and supposed not to do, but sometimes does anyway because the signmaker wasn't too swift. My expertise (such as it is) is in retail signage, particularly for "big box" stores (Best Buy, Target, Wal-Mart, Home Depot, things of that ilk). In this context, signs give directions, but the intended action always rests with the consumer. The signs generally do not command (with some exceptions). The signs merely point the way along the journey to shopping success. For example, say you need a light fixture. The signs should first lead you to the correct aisle, then lay out the different styles and options, and finally allow for easy comparison of things like materials and price. In this case, the consumer also may need to know about ease of installation, or any additional parts that may be needed. Now, the store would certainly like you to buy some other things on your way to the light fixture aisles, so you will encounter other signs that will try to entice you to investigate a particular item further ("you know, that old rake really is looking beat up"), but they should never overpower the original mission to the point that the consumer fails in the primary objective. Consumers feel best about a store when the can get what they came for, and while ancillary purchases while in the store make money, the best money maker is loyalty. The biggest signage sin is creating confusion and leading the consumer down a fruitless path. This sin is committed often.



TWO	What did making these retail signs teach you about human nature that you couldn't have learned otherwise? For clarification's sake, I never created the signs. My company (a marketing research firm) was hired to test them among consumers, generally first in a focus group situation, and then perhaps in larger, quantitative numbers. I moderated the focus groups and then consulted on the results and the sorts of changes that might prove successful. I actually had a lot of respect for people who could take something so prosaic (say, a sign for the baked goods section) and do their best to communicate something in the process of creating a signage scheme. As to the human nature question, I'd say this: as complicated as the human personality is, put a group of us together and the collective will almost always seek the middle. The same thing happens in creative writing workshops or film studios. The result of this phenomenon is that reaching for consensus rarely results in anything interesting or fun, or engaging, or worthwhile, but almost always achieves safety and comfort, (usually) a plus for a retail store, a minus (in my book) for a film, or a piece of writing. By the end of my tenure as a marketing researcher, prior to conducting the groups, I could pick the design or concept that the groups would favor at least 95% of the time, and usually within 30 seconds of looking them over. This talent is not at all unique among people who do this kind of work either. It's just the result of a slow process of conditioning oneself to identifying the middle. Someone like Ron Howard has an almost infallible sense of this audience and grooves his crummy movies right at them. I suppose thinking this way either makes me supremely jaded, an elitist, or both, but I think this is what happens when one spends time behind Oz's curtain.



THREE	What were some of the tricks of the marketer researcher's trade that were essentially to getting the job done but might seem vaguely diabolical to someone outside the profession? For my old company, the gathering of data itself is actually a very "clean" business because it always involved some sort of choice on the behalf of the respondent. Nobody who says no is hoodwinked into participating. Sometimes their permission was purchased via cash or some other kind of incentive (focus groups always involve an incentive), but for things like internet or phone surveys, people usually give answers simply because we ask for their opinion. Of course, in the case of a phone survey, the vast majority simply hang up on the interviewer at the get go, but enough don't to make it a worthwhile enterprise. Individual respondents are always kept anonymous to people outside the company, and names we would gather were never ever sold. This is in contrast to marketing research that takes the form of "data mining" where information from individuals who have made purchases with something like a frequent shopper card (like at the grocery store) is analyzed, and/or gathered for mailing lists. This kind of thing is largely hidden from the consumer, and few people actually realize the level of personal information they leave out there on a day to day basis. If, for example, you slip in the icy parking lot and hurt your back and you start seeing a chiropractor, and you pay for those visits with a credit card (or check for that matter) your bank knows this, and it's not inconceivable that you'll start receiving catalogs targeted towards people with back problems or in need of pain relief because a company in partnership with your bank has asked for people who may be good targets for their pitch. That's actually downright scary to me, but there's nothing we can do about it at this point. The dirtiest part of the enterprise for me was realizing that the effort I put into my work served almost entirely to grease the wheels of commerce. Though, the idea that marketing and advertising gets people to buy stuff they don't want or need is incorrect. Marketing research is designed to understand existing wants and desires, and figuring out the best way to position a particular product so it appears to fulfill that desire. One could argue that that's a good thing.



FOUR	Just about everyone whose boss has told him, "well, the focus groups say we should stop doing X and start doing Y," develops in immediate, powerful and enduring dislike of focus groups. How do you account for the fact that nobody seems to like focus groups, yet everyone uses them? Heh. There is always much gnashing of teeth and pulling of hair in the viewing room. By their nature, focus groups tend to laser in on flaws, and when you have the people who have created a product or concept listening to Joe or Jane six-pack trash your work, pain is an understandable reaction. People use them because they don't trust their own judgment, or in many cases, different factions within an company may be in conflict about the right path and the focus group is there to break a tie. K-Mart didn't need focus groups to tell them what was wrong with their stores, but I'm sure they were doing them right up to the chapter 11 filings.



FIVE	I'm guessing you must've developed some kind of intuition for the kinds of things that brought out strong reactions (good or bad) from people in the focus groups. What were they? Really strong reactions are kind of rare since whatever is being discussed (an ad, new product, website, store, packaging, signage, whatever) has been engineered so as not to offend anyone in any way, but advertising that respondents felt was "clever for clever's sake" would routinely get bombed, unmercifully, usually with the creative team behind the ad weeping on the other side of the two-way mirror. That's not to say that unusual things don't happen. A colleague of mine likes to tell about a group she did with women where they were presenting different models of massaging shower heads and the discussion quickly turned to the ah...self-pleasure aspect of the devices.



SIX	What are some of the old habits of the marketing game that stick with you now that you're out of it? Only good habits, really. The most important skill that running focus groups taught me was the ability to both listen to what someone is saying while also formulating something intelligent to say response, as well as figuring out what you want to discuss five minutes from that point. Invaluable tools for my current life as a college teacher. Marketing research also involves a constant process of reading subtext, and synthesizing a lot of seemingly disparate information into a coherent whole. This is just good training for life in general, teaching one to be a less passive consumer of media and check my own lesser instincts. When you know how the machinery behind the image works, it's just easier to see past the surface. Not to say that I'm immune to marketing or advertising or good signage or packaging. If the stuff is good it's simply irresistible.



SEVEN	Kids see zillions of ads by the time they get to college. How does that express itself in your students' homework? Funny you should ask. We're actually doing a unit on analyzing print and television advertising in class right now. To kick it off, I have them read an essay by Robert Scholes called "On Reading a Video Text" in which he first argues that video texts (commercials) have replaced literature and other communication forms as the primary source of "cultural reinforcement." That is, what we come to believe about our culture is primarily learned from these video texts. He then goes on to advocate for a curriculum that teaches students how to desconstruct and in turn question the cultural assumptions present in these video texts. He believes the development of these skills is vital to our developing society, that otherwise we are to be lulled away from reality, to the detriment of our lives. My students are completely untroubled by this thought, though in interacting with them, it's hard to argue with Scholes' main thesis. In many ways, my students' primary identity is that of "consumer." Naturally, they're all very skilled in the retail purchasing arts, but it goes beyond that. Each choice they make, including where to go to college, what to major in, what classes to take, is one made using a consumer mindset of cost/benefit, in this case, for the most part thinking about what will lead them to future wealth and comfort. This attitude isn't universal among my students, and I'm certain it's not unique to this generation, but the concrete (read: money) ends that these scholastic means may purchase are never far from their minds. It is simply their way of thinking, and I do believe that it does stem from this consumer identity. When I return essays, the first thing they want to know is what they could do better. I explain where I think their writing process or approach could be improved, but what they really want to know is where they went wrong in that key cost/benefit equation. They're already calculating how much time may be necessary for the next essay in order to receive the grade they desire. In their papers in this unit, they're asked to analyze and then comment on a print ad with an eye toward explaining the ad's significance as a cultural object. They think I'm crazy to give them such a task. I know it seems irrelevent to them. Advertising simply is. It's not something to think about. My students are extraordinarily smart, accomplished students, and one of the reasons behind their accomplishments is their skill at being able to subconsciously calculate this consumer cost/benefit ratio and therefore direct their energies towards academic success. Very few know anything of current events. The particulars of the war in Afghanistan are totally lost. Enron? What's that? But who can blame them? I think the conventional wisdom says that they're just spoiled and apathetic, but why aren't we questioning the source of this apathy? These things exist outside of their lives as academic consumers, so to time spent on them is wasted. Our educational system of successive hoop jumping in the secondary school years has created this culture. My students almost universally just want to know what they're supposed to do to get an "A". They spend their time trying to figure out what my target is and how to hit it. I think I frustrate them because I speak of them setting up their own target, their own topic for exploration and me judging them on how well they engage with this process. Again, for most, this doesn't compute. There are exceptions, young, budding intellectuals, but they've been forced to play the game long enough that even they are not immune. I love my students, I think the world of their potential for unique and important thinking. It's a shame we've spent so much time inculcating them into comfortable little cubbyholes.


	THE BIG INDEX... Who they are, what they do, how they think. Go there now. A TO Z ARCHIVE... Everybody here, with quickie bios. Go there now. Return to the main Seven Questions page See the original Newsies 7Q project Contact info@sevenquestions.com Copyright 1999-2002, Thomas L. Mangan