I am and I believe I’ll always be a fan of marketing research. The more the better, including focus groups.

However, when it comes to focus groups, I am always mindful of the opinions of two great men:

1) Henry Ford: “Had I listened to focus groups, I would have made a fantastic carriage.”

2) Sergio Zyman: “Make sure you don’t ask stupid questions at focus groups. For exapmle – if you ask ‘Why don’t you drink more Coke’, you might get an answer ‘Cause I don’t feel like it, dude!”

In today’s world where creativity is put on a high pedestal and there is a severe competition between the banks for every lev out there, I came across this:

For those of you who still aren’t fluent in Bulgarian, the text says: ” Deposit 1+2+3. Short-term deposits in BGN, EUR and USD. The indicated interest rates are annual, for BGN deposits”.

So there. You tell me if you understand something. What’s the term of the “short-term” deposit? Do 1, 2 and 3 indicate the months you deposit your money for? If it is just one [short term] deposit, why 1, 2 and 3? Which interest rate corresponds to which term? WHAT does this tell me???

Why does Cibank (formerly known as EiBank) think it made a smart decision by doing this ad in-house? Did it? I sure hope so! (If not, I hope they fired their agency.) And, if they did do it in-house, do they really think it was a good idea to save a couple hundred Euro for this to come out?

Today I received my first copy of Advertising Age (despite the fact that I subscribed for it for an entire year, I got nothing for the first three months). I quite enjoyed it, however, it turned out to be yet another marketing magazine where in every second article someone says something along the lines of “Now that we are in a period of a financial crisis, companies really want to see results for every penny invested in marketing and advertising”.

I just cannot help but ask … Really??? NOW you expect to see results? What were you thinking before the crisis? Let’s keep spending a couple of million each year just because it’s there?

And if people are really that dumb why am I not a millionaire?