Focus Groups in vogue again, thanks to Super Bowl

I feel so vindicated.  Which almost makes up for yesterday’s Packer-less Super Bowl.

After last year’s event, I announced the Top E-Holes of the Super Bowl.  Most of the winners, especially the Grand Super Bowl E-Hole — Groupon — had declined to conduct Focus Groups to pre-test their commercials.  My rant was about just that; the utter folly and pure arrogance of taking such a huge chance with their brand.  Given Groupon’s $377 million in funding, why hadn’t they spent the mere $20,000  to do a couple of groups? Simply as brand insurance, if you will.  Like duh. Ask the customer?

I would have been happy to take on a juicy new Groupon project, and of course always delighted to visit Chicago when the snow flies and black ice proliferates.

Oh what a difference a little joking about Tibet makes.  After the Groupon social media firestorm, this year smart marketers returned to their tried-and-true market research toolkit.  The Wall Street Journal reports that companies such as Hyundai to Bridgestone to Chevy conducted Focus Groups in advance of the broadcast. Now that viewers are tapping into Twitter and Facebook in mind-blasting numbers (Madonna’s performance during the halftime show saw an average of 8000 tweets per second), checking in with your customers in advance makes even more  sense.

Still, it’s always something. Yesterday’s reigning hashtags #Clint Eastwood and #Halftime in America were today’s brouhaha, both for questions about the star’s politics, and for the commercial’s mysterious removal and return.  IMHO, the spot and Clint were genius — kudos to the creatives at Wieden + Kennedy who pulled off this new classic.  Extra kudos for the concept of Visual Viralizing:  Share the video from the Chrysler YouTube channel and see how far across the country your Tweets and reshares reach. Brilliant.

Why Pinterest Should Be on Your Research Radar Now.

Oh savvy marketer, of course you’ve heard the scuttlebutt about new social darling, Pinterest. You’ve already heard that the online pinboard phenomenon just won the Crunchie for the Best New Startup of 2011.  You’ve already heard about the site’s “crazy, crazy traffic and growth.” 8000% in one short year.

You’ve heard about those sweet purchase-power psychographics — all those happily addicted Pinners, 80% of them women ages 25-44, who are spending an average of 14 minutes daily pinning like mad.  Growing the site organically by passing along hard-to-nab invitations.

And the Big Brands, especially retailers like Nordstrom, Whole Foods, and Lands’ End, who are jumping on board this thriving new platform. You already know the tantalizing details.

But your question remains: What’s in it for me, for my brand? Why should I take the time, head count, and budget to expand across yet another social space, especially when Google + and Tumblr are also growing in significance for marketers? Why should I bother?

Here’s why:   Pinterest is an unprecedented opportunity to get up-close-and-personal with your customers. It’s Customer Research as it should be.

While Pinterest clearly didn’t plan to be an astonishing new Digital Ethnography tool, the site is the most intriguing opportunity for marketers to go native that’s come along in decades.  At the core of ethnography is the study of culture — notably  the meanings individuals give to objects, people, events, and experiences.  Ethno actually comes from the Greek word ethnos — meaning folk or culture.  Graphia means writing.

From where I sit, a veteran market researcher with a trusty trendkit at my side , Pinterest is the epitome of our folky digital culture today. Marketers can essentially go native each time they visit the site.  Each board is a collection of what’s meaningful to the Pinners, along with graphia type responses:  Likes, Descriptions, and RePins.

Unlike traditional qualitative research, the methodology or structure is not owned or even necessarily guided by the researcher. We’re merely dropping in;  observing the customer in their native environment.   Call it a digital upgrade of those venerable Focus Group projective techniques — Vision Boards, Mood Boards, Treasure Maps. But even better, Pinterest is iterative. All those Pinners are vividly evolving their boards with every sticky minute they spend per day on the site.

Imagine watching your customers’ wishlist-style boards, all those wants, needs, and desires, as they’re mapped out in gloriously colorful detail. All those aspirations presented authentically and beautifully. Living scrapbooks of your customers’ life designs.

Pinterest is an exciting opportunity to:

• Conduct digital ethnography
• Discover new category/industry/style trends — what pins are most popular
• Study your brand’s Competitive Landscape (visually + response)
• Find new Influencers (many “existing” Influencers are already pinning but new, and perhaps different persona, are are emerging)
• Explore/test new themes, ideas, product development
• Crowdsource product development
• Name Generation.
• Imagine the deep insights of combining face-to-face Focus Groups with Pinterest Digital Ethnography.

Hope to see you on Pinterest soon. I’d love to help get your brand up and Pinning.  If you need an invitation, email me at: hello@guruofnew.com or @guruofnew

Happy Indie-preneur Day! 7 Sparky Tools to Help you Celebrate your Independence

Indie.
It’s everybody’s favorite power-to-the-people word, especially when you check out the dictionary definition and discover its intrinsically American qualities: free from external control and constraint; “an independent mind”; “a series of independent judgments”; “fiercely independent individualism.

All of which translates so smoothly into a star-spangled new word: Indie-Preneur. Being an entrepreneur is so last century.

On this pivotal Independence Day 2011, it’s time we re-defined ourselves with a word that better represents the burgeoning world of plucky, passionate, indie-innovators who are busily working to rebuild our country. Our chances of rebounding may be vastly increased by honoring — not resisting — today’s fluctuating and increasingly independent workscape. Indeed, Indie ‘tude celebrates all that made the U.S.A. revolutionary 235 years ago.

An Indie-preneur may be working solo, as part of a team, small business, non-profit or even work fearlessly within a giant organization. Indie-preneurism is a state of mind; a style of being; a scrappy, bootstrapping never-say-die way of life. Indie-ism is finding new solutions to pressing old problems by honoring our inner quirks and creativity; that eccentricity that provokes us to see things in a different way. Indie can scale big or stay small. There is no hard and fast definition of Indie. (Except this: note the word: ‘fiercely’ above.)

And no, Indie is not a synonym for maverick. (But it is a synonym for Gigster)

Here’s the Third Annual Indie-Preneur Award, which goes to: Taryn Voget, CEO/Founder of The Everyday Genius Institute. Here’s why:

Not much more than a year ago, Taryn, along with noted Behavioral Scientist Tim Hallbom, kicked off the Everyday Genius Institute product line with the promise: With the right strategies, anyone can become a genius.

Now, thanks to Taryn’s blood, sweat and indie-perseverance, the Everyday Genius Institute’s “Study Smarter, Not Harder” DVD has landed in retail powerhouse OfficeMax — and will soon be in Staples, Barnes & Nobles and more.

What just goes to prove what smart start-ups know — you don’t need a crammed org-chart to make things happen. You just need one fierce, fire-in-the-belly Founder –like Taryn Voget.

Not surprisingly, Indie-Preneurs are fervent do-it-yourselfers. Here are 7 easy online tools to help you celebrate your independence:

Do It Yourself Logo Design: Logoyes.com LogoYes offers do-it-yourself logos to small businesses around the world. Guru’s Note: Logoyes is simple, fun, and even if not the perfect customized logo for which you’d pay thousands, it’ll do in a pinch. Consider it market research and explore colors, fonts and symbols.

Or tap into a world of talented graphic designers for bargain prices starting at $275. I’ve had great success with LogoTournament, especially with the logo for popular music tech blogger RedSaid. Here’s what they say: Get the logo that you really want by choosing from 50-200+ custom designs, instead of settling on a design from a handful of options that a traditional design firm provides. See your first company logos within hours, not weeks. Guru’s note: Clients sometimes come to me wondering if they should hire me to do a whole Name Generation project when they already have a name they think might work. I suggest they check it out on Logo Tournament by unleashing their name and creative brief on the site’s zillions of gifted designers. If the potential name communicates what they want it to, then they should move ahead on their preferred name. If not, I’m here to help.

Did you drool over that shimmering new box of crayolas every fall? Then prepare. Once you enter this site, you’ll be lost in color lust for hours. Colourlovers.com calls itself an international creative community that helps people discover their inner designer. There are now 656,197 COLOURlovers around the world who have created 4,012,636 Colors, 1,647,242 Palettes and 1,617,245 Patterns. (Including quite a few of mine) Guru’s Note: This site is a powerful brainstorming tool. During my Lab360s, each participant creates colors and names for whatever product we’re focusing on that day. Sparks the imagination! Also a valuable tool for banishing writer’s block.

More great ColourLovers news: The company recently raised $1 million from investors including Atlas Venture, Morado Ventures, Founder Collective, Charles River Ventures, 500 Startups, Seraph Group & Zelkova Ventures, Matt Mullenweg, Alexis Ohanian, Don Hutchinson, Dharmesh Shah, Jared Friedman, and Shawn Bercuson.

And even better, COLOURlovers used the indie-preneur’s best friend –Angel List — to build the round.

Got new website? Get new feedback. Launchly showcases new websites to an audience to help site owners get the attention and feedback necessary to succeed. Launchly’s big plus: instead of just showcasing a startup and letting it fall by the wayside, Launchly allows apps to resubmit new iterations and build on their ideas. Guru’s Note: Yes, Ms. Website Owner, you do need Feedback– and from more than just the peeps you drink with and their cousins-in-law. Website/app development very quickly becomes a myopic process — a site like Launchly is very reasonably priced ‘insurance’ in a world of fickle marketplaces and even fickler users.

Another smart way to test your site is a user experience tool called Userlytics that market research pros like me have been fantasizing about for years. Here’s the description: With Userlytics you can capture videos of participants’ screen navigation, spoken remarks and facial expressions – right from their home or workplace, within days, even hours. And even better, Userlytics offers a free study so you can test the service.

Small Business meets Big Government: SBA.gov is a web portal operated jointly by 22 different federal agencies — a kind of one-stop-resource for small businesses. With links to federal programs, links for various rules, regulations and laws, state-specific and industry-specific links, it’s just what we Indies need to stay within the lines, at least occasionally. Guru’s Note: My favorite part of this upgraded site is the new Startup America section, which delivers everything you need to know about this White House initiative to celebrate, inspire, and accelerate high-growth entrepreneurship throughout the nation. The White House has enlisted Steve Case, the co-founder of AOL, and Carl Schramm, who runs a group that encourages entrepreneurship called the Kaufman Foundation, to head the “Startup America Partnership.” They’re leading a privately funded board that will encourage large companies and foundations to provide seed money to start-ups. Follow the action on Twitter.

And then there’s the Patron Saint of the Indie-Preneur: TED. “Riveting talks by remarkable people, free to the world” from the landmark conferences have now been translated into 51 languages and counting. After the fireworks this weekend, set off a few more by tuning in to TED.

Now go out and set off some fireworks of your own.

Three Compelling Reasons Why Focus Groups Should Not Die.

You’re a growing company looking to massively increase awareness of your product among mainstream consumers. You have a brand new $377 million cash injection from some venture firms. You have a pre-IPO valuation that hovers around $15 billion. You have a hot-shot ad agency salivating over spending some of that money on disruptive creative.

Super Bowl LXV, with the crowd-pleasing Packers at the helm, looms provocatively.

So here’s the $377 million question: How much of that cash are you willing to spend to avoid being perceived as an E-Hole?

That’s right. A ‘stupid and humorless’, ‘bad taste and bad business’ ‘shame on you’ E-Hole. And oh yes, someone who ‘makes fun of your customers by trivializing very real tragedies.’ *

How much of that $377 million dollars are you willing to spend to avoid losing evangelical subscribers, billions in valuation and pundits pontificating on your #epic fail?

In the case of Groupon, the answer is zero.

I have been fuming about this ever since the Super Bowl. These three Super Bowl E-Holes — Groupon, HomeAway and PepsiMax — need not have happened. Their companies need not have taken it on the chin (or in the case of HomeAway’s smushed baby, the poor thing’s entire face) nor did they essentially have to flush their pricey budgets and previously positive brand perception down the dumpster.

All it would have taken to avoid this E-Holism is a few Focus Groups. Three of them — a day’s commitment — would run around $15,000. That’s approximately 6 hours worth of sitting in a room, chomping on M&Ms and veggie dip, watching your customers and potential customers responding to your $3 million per 30-second Super Bowl spots. Heck, they could have simply viewed storyboards to sidestep spending the big bucks on producing the television.

There is no way any of these spots — from Groupon’s “Tibet” to HomeAway’s “Test Baby” to PepsiMax’s “Love Hurts” – would have made it past even a single focus group scott free. Even with a bad moderator and equally egregious back room behavior, it is impossible to imagine a Focus Group that would give these commercials a complete pass. The most inside of Groupon’s humor-elite insiders would have had to notice that the respondents weren’t laughing.

So why am I, the Guru of New, taking to the blogbox on behalf of a market research methodology that’s been declared if not completely dead, then at least wounded and doddering? Why am I not expounding on Sentiment Analysis, Text Analysis and Eye-Tracking?

Because this latest explosion of of E-Holes has me convinced that marketers are making an enormous mistake in neglecting to create some face time with their customers.

Yes, online research rocks. I pioneered in online groups and interviews way back in the prehistoric era of the Internets. Today, thanks to dazzling technology we could only fantasize about in those early days, I am even more passionate about the power and the possibilities for social research. But after watching this latest Super Bowl debacle and watching as more and more brands step in the digital doo-doo, I strongly urge a return to some of the “old” research ways that got zapped in our zeal for all things new.

*These were some of the comments posted on Groupon’s blog. And believe me, they were some of the kinder ones.

Wanted: Adventurous and Creative Clients. Must Be Willing To Experiment with New Research Tools.

Here’s a good working definition of Market Research:

An objective approach to finding solutions to problems in marketing. Involves qualitative and quantitative research and analysis of the findings to help marketers’ best target and reach their audiences.

For me, the operative phrases are finding solutions to problems and reach their audiences.Thanks to the emergence of Social Media, problems and solutions are the pulsebeat of our non-stop global online conversations. From the tell-it-like-it-is Power Mom bloggers to the 200 million+ Facebook members to the exploding Twitterverse, we’re chattering about everything from politics to products to people. As of December 2008, more than one billion of the world’s population is now on the Internet. Why on earth would market researchers resist these irresistible methodologies?

Here are my favorite new market research tools — I dare you, O Clients, to (hire me) to give these a try:

Twitter

Quick, easy and budget-friendly, Twitter is a goldmine of fresh consumer insights. It’s a global stream-of-consciousness on every topic imaginable. Plus, all kinds of tools and third-party services are available to convert raw data into actionable information including trends and hot topics.

Trendrr is my favorite for trend tracking and comparison. Its Twitter Search graphs are invaluable – virtually real-time, they provide graphing of keyword mentions by the hour.

Tweetmeme: Here’s how to find the most popular links on Twitter.

For your iPhone: Twitter Trend: This free app provides a tag cloud for looking at emerging trends on Twitter.

Twithority is an easy way to have the most recent Twitter trends tweeted to you. The links provide a view of Twitter trends based on both time and authority.

Hashtags.orgIf you were checking this site right now, you’d know that #liesboystell and #liesgirlstell are the numbers one and two hashtags of the moment.

Twist: Twist is a trip. Twist provides a graphical interface for trends and keywords on Twitter.

Facebook: While most of us are waiting for Facebook to do some serious monetizing via its growing datamine, in the meantime, there’s Facebook Lexicon. Lexicon aggregates and analyzes millions of Facebook Wall posts every day to provide a searchable database of trends over time. Users can query a single word or two-word combinations and compare as many as five strings per query. The results display a chart plotting the frequency with which the words are being discussed each day. All this is done automatically with no person reading individual Wall posts and all information aggregated anonymously to protect your privacy.

Brand Community Platforms Every brand researcher in existence has to be drooling over this hot new opportunity for brand-love: BzzAgents new Bzzscapes. Now brand passionistas can erect online altars to their favorites, then watch as fellow fans join in, adding their own content to the social media mix. Will the overzealous (companies included) try to game the system? How organic and authentic can these sites be?

Private Online Communities: From Ning to Communispace, building your own private online community is easier than ever and can be valuable low-risk market research tool. These ‘walled gardens’ are a safe place to engage your with best opt-in customers, test ideas, evaluate user experience and experiment with new initiatives.

Projective Expression/Journaling Platforms
Glogsterbrings graphic blogging to the masses, and just happens to be a promising online ‘projective expression’ tool, similar to the popular Focus Group technique: Collaging. The service is focused on letting people create “posters” of various bits of premade and user-generated content. Using the right tools, Glogster users can create colorful stuff with a distinct visual style — one that could be used to represent “My Customer Service Experience with Yahoo” or “If I Could Invent My Own Perfect Hair Color It Would Be …”

Glogster offers private .edu accounts, which could be used for corporate market research.

Another site, Scrapblog, lets users create personalized scrapbooks with photos, video and thousands of creative elements, and also lets them print the scrapblogs. They’ve added top scrapbooking designers with high-quality content that’s available to purchase. The problem with this site is the user is locked into Scrapblog’s formatting — which does not even provide a ‘blank’ scrapbook for true customization.

A cool new site currently in beta, Plumkeeper, is described as ‘Family Journaling Made Easy’. This promising technology leverages everything consumers already do online –including emailed stories and photos, funny text messages, mobile photos, Facebook, Twitter and more. This makes for uber-authentic market research indeed– as it plucks from existing attitudes and behaviors in all their spontaneous authenticity. If I had a Mom or family-oriented product, I’d tap right into Plumkeeper for fresh and juicy insights.

Shoot The Focus Groups? Not This Time.

It took more than a half-century for focus groups to die. From their invention in the 1940′s via noted sociologist Robert K. Merton through their glory days in the 80′s and 90′s, last century’s leading qualitative methodology had a great run. It wasn’t until 2005 or so, when then Yahoo CMO Cammie Dunaway plotted to ‘kill’ all the focus groups and author Douglas Rushkoff dubbed them ‘useless’ that the death knell officially sounded. Yes, there was a sputtering revival or two. (Online focus groups) But CNN finally nailed them completely with this year’s Election Coverage of perpetually undecided voters, ‘moderator’ Soledad O’Brien, and the ratings-friendly perceptual analyzer dials decorating the screen in happy primary colors.

Which is why (as a veteran Focus Group moderator and advocate) I was so surprised and gratified to read the latest news on last weekend’s wildfire VOM (Voice of Moms) aka Motrin Gate. Ad Age details the frenzied timeline plus the general take-away, including this paragraph:

Ultimately, Ms. Presnal (key Mommy blogger) said she sympathizes with J&J’s plight after having received at least two e-mails from (VP) Ms. Widmer last week. Reading from one, she noted that J&J had worked with focus groups of moms in developing the campaign.

“We listened extensively to moms, the insights about their lives, and how their pain impacts them,” Ms. Presnal said, reading from Ms. Widmer’s e-mail. She continued from the e-mail: “I think where this went wrong was the creative expression we used. … The tone was intended to be real and lighthearted, but it came off as irreverent. … We did conduct focus groups with moms. But truthfully they probably weren’t extensive enough to uncover this.”

Mon dieu! Amazingly, the ‘creative’ is getting blamed here. No quotes about how ‘useless’ or ‘dishonest’ the Focus Groups were. The only perceived glitch in the groups is that J&J believes they didn’t do enough of them.

With hundreds of Focus Groups under my moderator’s black belt, I certainly understand both the limitations of the tried-and-true and the temptation to switch to the newer, sexier Social Media Research methodologies.  I am deep into shiny new things myself: Twitter Product Parties, Hybrid Chats, Buzz Audits and Crowdsourcing Polls.  In fact, more than half of my research requests in the past 6 months have come from clients itching to jump on the intriguing Social Media Research bandwagon.  There’s good news from key social networking fronts: both Facebook and Linkedin have big plans to help researchers get uber-targeted, fresher data.

Still, I have to defend the original concept of Focus Groups, which I firmly believe is still viable — when effectively designed and conducted.

Guru’s Note:  Stay tuned for Part 2: Five tips to bring your (traditional, that is, f2f) Focus Groups into the 21st Century.

Say Goodbye to Bill Gates — and Windows XP.

Bill Gates has left the building.

And soon, Windows XP, the last operating system anybody (sorta) liked and actually wanted to use, will go poof as well. As of today, Microsoft is scheduled to stop selling XP to retailers and major computer makers, despite fervent protests from frustrated users who want nothing to do with XP’s successor, Vista. While there are still a few ways to get an XP loaded machine — including limited sales via smaller shops till January 2009 –all but the most resourceful will be forced to switch to the once heavily-hawked Vista.

This is why a group of PC users created a “Save XP” petition which is posted on InfoWorld, now reportedly with more than 210, 563 signatures–including mine. Signers want Microsoft to keep selling XP until the next operating system, Windows 7, is available.

Eric Knorr of InfoWorld pens an impassioned plea: We began this campaign because our readers compelled us to do so. Those of us who have been in the industry for a long time have never seen anything like the negative reaction to Windows Vista. Our readers have frequently voiced their frustrations about software incompatibilities, arbitrary UI changes, expanded hardware requirements, and altered security business rules. On the other hand, we’ve also heard from many users who are clearly satisfied with Vista.

Our point from the beginning has been that Microsoft customers should have a choice: For a reasonable period, those who want to license Windows XP should be able to continue to do so just as easily as they can license Windows Vista.

I will add my impassioned plea to Eric’s. As a Microsoft market research vendor, Customer Experience pro and frequent tech focus group moderator for the company and others in the industry, I have over the past ten years listened to hundreds of opinions, stories, criticisms and raves on the subject of Microsoft. I’ve worked with developers, consumers, enterprise, small business, IT, evangelists, you-name-it. My training is all about sifting through reams of feedback, crystallizing what has been expressed and spinning it into actionable form. In this case, seldom has there been such consensus: Vista sucks.

The lone (sorta) good news coming from Redmond? At least they will be providing technical support for XP through 2009.

“I’m A Focus Group Moderator and I Approved Obama’s New TV Commercial.

As a veteran market researcher and focus group moderator, I usually can spot Projective Exercises like Perceptual Mind Maps or ‘Design Your Ideal Product’ techniques.  Sometimes smart ad agency creatives, if they’re not too engrossed in either the Merlot or the M & Ms in the viewing room, pluck verbatims from the groups and sneak them into television commercials. There are countless anecdotes about this – like the classic McDonald’s theme “You deserve a break today”, which supposedly emerged during a focus group in Chicago.

One of the reasons to conduct focus groups is the off-chance that an expressive respondent in Cleveland will blurt out something so right on and real that it can quickly be transformed into a tagline or campaign that resonates authenticity. Another reason is to further understand what’s polarizing about potential products — in this case, fully figure out how Obama can satisfy the wants, needs and hopes of Hillary supporters who continued to passionately plead the case clear through to the bitter-end of Puerto Rico and South Dakota. And then there’s grokking to the likely toolkit of Karl Rove-style tricks that are already being emailed 24/7.

The minute I saw Barack Obama’s new television commercial “The Country I Love” now slated to appear in some 18 states starting this month, I knew that market researchers everywhere were nodding. The spot is so tightly targeted even a marketing newbie can’t miss the strategic genius in this commercial. Every sentence and shot, from the very visible flag pin to the neighborhoods ‘devastated when steel plants closed’ is perfectly calculated to resoundingly answer those persistent questions. Not only is the ghost of Hillary most decidedly flickering about but so are other symbols of white America — like Barack’s mother and grandparents. Carefully designed to be warmly reassuring with its message of Heartland working class character and values, this spot is a classic example of smoothly going from Me Media to We Media.

Much of this affecting and effective 60 seconds is subliminal.  While it’s all about heading off the negatives, it never feels anything but positive.

I only wish I’d been the Moderator facilitating those Perceptual Mind Maps.

Here’s the full transcript: (video link above)

OBAMA: I’m Barack Obama.

America is a country of strong families and strong values. My life’s been blessed by both.

I was raised by a single mom and my grandparents. We didn’t have much money, but they taught me values straight from the Kansas heartland where they grew up. Accountability and self-reliance. Love of country. Working hard without making excuses. Treating your neighbor as you’d like to be treated. It’s what guided me as I worked my way up – taking jobs and loans to make it through college.

It’s what led me to pass up Wall Street jobs and go to Chicago instead, helping neighborhoods devastated when steel plants closed.

That’s why I passed laws moving people from welfare to work, cut taxes for working families and extended health care for wounded troops who’d been neglected.

I approved this message because I’ll never forget those values, and if I have the honor of taking the oath of office as President, it will be with a deep and abiding faith in the country I love.

Oops! WOM Beats The Pundits Again. Sex and The City Glams Its Way To A $55 Million Opening.

Hollywood pundits underestimated the massive femme power of the SATC franchise, with many predicting opening box office in the typical chick-flick realm of $20-30 million. Some wisely hedged it on higher, but always with the disclaimer that their usual methodologies were not jibing with word-of-mouth.

Therein lies the issue with traditional research tools — Word of Mouth, particularly in the realm of female fashionistas and passionistas, wields power like nothing else.

In Santa Monica, the SATC showings at Mann’s theater were sold-out from 6 until midnight Friday night.  Thanks to a savvy friend, we were lucky enough to sneak in at six, beating the line of giggling girlfriends — some in their Carrie-best — that snaked around the block.

Inside, it was a blend of focus group, pep rally and the annual Nordstrom spring sale. The target-specific satisfaction was palpable.

Reviews. Schmooz. It’s all about the shoes.