Divining Desire: Focus Groups and the Culture of Consultation

by Liza Featherstone

Over the course of the last century, the focus group has become an increasingly vital part of the way companies and politicians sell their products and policies. Few areas of life, from salad dressing to health care legislation to our favorite TV shows, have been left untouched by the questions put to controlled groups about what they do and don’t like. Divining Desire is the first-ever popular survey of this rich topic.

In a lively, sweeping history, Liza Featherstone traces the surprising roots of the focus group in early-twentieth century European socialism, its subsequent use by the “Mad Men” of Madison Avenue, and its widespread deployment today. She also explores such famous “failures” of the method as the doomed launch of the Ford Edsel with its vagina shaped radiator grille, and the even more ill-fated attempt to introduce a new flavor of Coca Cola (which prompted street protests from devotees of the old formula).

As elites have become increasingly detached from the general public, they rely ever more on focus groups, whether to win votes or to sell products. And, in a society where many feel increasingly powerless, the focus group has at least offered the illusion that ordinary people will be listened to and that their opinions count. Yet, it seems the more we are consulted, the less power we have. That paradox is particularly stark today, when everyone can post an opinion on social media—our 24 hour “focus group”—yet only plutocrats can shape policy.

In telling this fascinating story, Featherstone raises profound questions about democracy, desire and the innermost workings of consumer society.

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics, Economics, Psychology, History

254 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2017

About the author

Liza Featherstone is a journalist based in New York City and a contributing editor to The Nation, where she also writes the advice column “Asking for a Friend.” Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Ms., and Rolling Stone among many other outlets. She is the co-author of Students against Sweatshops: The Making of a Movement (Verso, 2002) and author of Selling Women Short: The Landmark Battle for Workers’ Rights at Wal-Mart (Basic, 2004). She is the editor of False Choices: The Faux Feminism of Hillary Clinton (Verso, 2016).

Reviews

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Informative, entertaining, and well-argued, Liza Featherstone's Divining Desire is a delight to read.

Liza Featherstone traces the history of focus groups from their birth in 1920s “Red Vienna” to today and the tensions and promise that have dogged their existence. Focus groups seek to bridge a growing gap in society between elites (political, economic, cultural) and everyday people. Focus groups provided a means by which elites could listen to people and figure out what mattered to them, and to learn why policies or messaging was not working. This was a particular problem in Vienna in the 1920s, as Social Democrats had gained control of the city government but a strong gap existed between the technocratic party elite and the workers they represented. Featherstone explains, “….the idea was not to take leadership from or share power with ordinary people, but to find ways to reshape them, to make them into the kinds of citizens that a better society would require.”

Focus groups came to the US in the context of World War II, where crafting messages that resonated with public opinion and shifted behavior was of key importance to the war effort. The government learned, for instance, that messages that focused on how evil and scary the Nazis were fell flat (Why would we want to send people over there? It’s too risky, etc.)—as opposed to more optimistic, patriotic messaging. After the war, though, with a retrenchment of spending, the government was no longer as a large client for social science research (or for any expenditures, really), but industry was, with the ushering in of postwar consumerism.

Featherstone analyzes the uses of focus groups for the consumer age and how that consumer mentality has also increasingly shaped our relationship with politics (or, at least, how politicians would like us to view our relationship with politics). As the distance between elites and the masses grew, focus groups became more important. People were “listened to” more and more, while they had less and less power. Focus groups have often inspired backlash, whether from elites who don’t want to have to listen or from everyday people who feel like focus groups are a poor substitute for real participation.

Featherstone underscores well that there is a democratic promise to focus groups: “One of the subversive—and sometimes powerful—aspects of the focus group is that it is a conversation. It forces people to slow down, talk, and above all, listen.” It provides the appearance of influence and control. But, at the end of the day, listening is not the same as sharing power, and if we are to have a democratic society, we need not only more listening but more sharing of power.

The book is filled with memorable anecdotes that highlight why we are so fascinated by focus groups (we love them, we hate them, we love to hate them, we hate to love them – all are true, if you ask me). The book is repetitive at times (but not so much to be distracting), but, all in all, it is an important read in an age where the distance between elites and masses is constantly a cause for concern.

[H V · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a delight. Liza Featherstone writes in a tongue-in-cheek, humorous way that makes a topic typically thought of as boring fun. She comes from the same line of thought as Chris Hedges and Thomas Frank, so we get a behind-the-scenes look at the corporate consolidation of power over the last 50 years. The increased use of focus groups - which enables the powerful to "listen to the people" - during this time only seems paradoxical in a superficial sense because it merely gives the common man table scraps, meanwhile substantial things like healthcare and a clean environment are taken away. In exchange, the masses get to delight in "Hollywood endings" that are manufactured by test scores, and so on and so forth. Bread and circuses, that sort of thing. If you are interested in how we arrived at the hollow, hallucinatory consumer world surrounding us, this book is for you.

[Catherine · Rating 3 out of 5]

A deep dive into the role of the focus group in American culture, from its technocratic beginnings to its modern form as an inadequate avenue for people to participate in and influence our world. I appreciated Liza Featherstone's writing about women as both consumers and consultants, and her distrust of "innovators" who are entitled enough to resent focus groups even as the growing gap between elites and "the people" creates a need for more focused listening.

[Erica · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this more. The content is actually interesting and important, but the book is capital-D dry and repetitive. Really 2.5 stars. But she quoted some people I know in it, so that was fun.

[Ed · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting and thoroughly entertaining history and analysis of focus groups and how their rise has mirrored the decline of actual power being wielded by the masses.

[Scott Neigh]

Reviewed here.