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John Jantsch (00:01.282)

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch and my guest today is Jacqueline Lieberman. She’s former chief strategy officer at Story Worldwide, a master of narrative-based marketing, blending human insights with brand truths for giants like Unilever, Google, and Lexus. She’s now the founder of brand Crudo, which she created the DNA method to help &A executives and CMOs differentiate their brands by leveraging raw

truths that can’t be copied. Frustrated by the stale research methods, she also launched the Anti-Focus Group, exclusive dinners that deliver actionable insights from hard to reach audiences while doubling as premium brand experiences. So Jacqueline, welcome to the show.

Jacqueline Lieberman (00:49.624)

Thank you, john. feel like that’s the podcast. did such a great job with the intro. We’re done.

John Jantsch (00:52.452)

Well, I just read what you gave me to tell you the truth. So I take no credit credit for other than being able to read, which Mrs. Morrison in first grade made sure of.

Jacqueline Lieberman (00:57.262)

you

Jacqueline Lieberman (01:03.16)

There we go.

John Jantsch (01:04.228)

All right, so let’s define like what’s an anti-focus group dinner look like.

Jacqueline Lieberman (01:09.422)

sure. Yeah, well, let’s see, as the name suggests, it is the opposite of what a traditional focus group is. And because I am a believer that setting really matters. So when you think about traditional focus groups, they basically take two paths. The traditional route is that you think of this, you know, conference room, a stale conference room with a

what feels like this double glass, you know, one sided mirror that’s there that makes you feel like you’re in like an FBI interrogation room, you know, being detained for some reason. And then you have a moderator who nine times out of 10 really just looked at, you know, what they’re supposed to be talking about. And they don’t really have a lot of skin in the game as to like what to do with the information. So there’s that.

And then the, you know, with the advent of zoom and online panels. So now a lot of really where it’s gone is that you’re looking at a screen with a bunch of boxes that people are doing all day long anyway. And of course people are multitasking while they’re supposedly answering your questions and paying attention. So that’s made the whole feedback loop even worse in my opinion, you know? So yeah.

John Jantsch (02:31.564)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, no, I was just going to say, so, you’ve talked about all the limitations of those, but I mean, are, the real limitation that we’re not getting very much that’s actionable out of these? mean, is that why it’s broken?

Jacqueline Lieberman (02:33.998)

And so what I go ahead and you go.

Jacqueline Lieberman (02:51.254)

Yeah, I mean, so being 30 years on the receiving end of those reports, and that number is a real number three, zero. And, and I because I’m the one that’s supposed to do something with it as a brand strategist. This is supposed to be a gold mine of information by which I’m supposed to use as a foundation for brand strategy, audience messaging. And, you know, because of that,

John Jantsch (02:59.95)

Yeah.

Jacqueline Lieberman (03:21.068)

What I end up getting is I dig through a hundred pages of a poorly designed PowerPoint and the crux of it is really about it tells you exactly what was said in the room, which is helpful, but it doesn’t tell you why it was said. It doesn’t tell you really what the motivations are behind what some of the feedback was. And really what the anti-focus group dinners are about is

They’re designed to uncover key mindset and emotional triggers, right? So those are really the two foundational elements of marketing mindset and emotion. So that’s what this dinner setting is meant to unlock because immediately the professional armor comes off. As soon as they walk in the room, they’re like, this is like the best, this is the best part of my day right now. They’re treated like VIPs from the second they walk in.

And they’re sitting down to an amazing meal in an amazing setting. And I’m gently moderating the conversation. I’m not peppering them with a million questions, but it’s new course, new question, or new course, new sets of questions. And we talk about things like, how do you build trust with people? Who do you love to collaborate with and why?

Is there anything in your career that you haven’t done yet that you really want to do? Just so we can understand the more as people and not as targets is really what the feedback is.

John Jantsch (04:59.62)

So as I listen to those, it’s almost more like networking questions than research questions, right? It’s something you might typically want to uncover in a healthy networking conversation. But let’s back up a little bit. So I’m assuming, or maybe I’m wrong, but are these mostly, if not exclusively, B2B settings? OK. OK.

Jacqueline Lieberman (05:10.712)

Sure.

Jacqueline Lieberman (05:17.794)

Yeah, they seem to work for b2b, you know, so, you know, it’s not about, you know, let’s look at the latest box of Cheerios and determine what the creative is. It’s, it’s really more about business to business products and services.

John Jantsch (05:26.733)

Yeah, okay.

John Jantsch (05:34.116)

So I’m a customer or maybe a targeted customer. get invited to this. Am I told I’m going to dinner and it’s going to be a research? do you sometimes get a little, because it’s unique, do you sometimes get a little, wait a minute, what?

Jacqueline Lieberman (05:42.402)

Yes.

Jacqueline Lieberman (05:48.45)

Well, we get mostly the only wait a minute what is when we do disclose that they will be wearing microphones, because this is research, you know, so this is, you know, when I call it, it’s the most productive dinner you’ll ever sponsor all year, you know, it’s like you have b2b dinners all the time and networking, right and golf outings and all of this stuff. But but when people walk in,

John Jantsch (05:56.676)

Yeah.

John Jantsch (06:04.536)

Yeah, yeah.

Right.

Jacqueline Lieberman (06:14.574)

They we let them know in the invitation before they even respond that they will be mic’d up that this is for research and just like research in a focus group they do get compensated for their time. So we want them to feel that their time spent was immensely valuable in every way.

John Jantsch (06:36.42)

So I’m sure people forget about the microphones pretty quickly in, I’m imagining like, okay, I can’t burp, right? So, all right, so then you get, I assume the microphone is because you’re recording, right? So you get all of this recordings. How do you make sense out of them that in a way that you can actually address the objectives of the sponsor?

Jacqueline Lieberman (06:43.502)

We haven’t run into that.

Jacqueline Lieberman (07:02.464)

Yes. Well, before I answer that directly, I will address the so the mindset questions that I was saying before, we do have dinners where it is a mix, it really depends on the goal of the dinner. some goals of the dinner are to really understand their ideal customer way better in terms of their mindset and emotional triggers. So that could be the beginning of the dinner, the second half of the dinner could be very much of a brass tacks look,

John Jantsch (07:10.627)

Yeah, yeah.

John Jantsch (07:17.188)

Hmm.

Jacqueline Lieberman (07:30.246)

we would like you to respond to this messaging or this concept board. And I hand it I hand it out over dinner and say, you know, once we’re done, or we’re looking at dessert, and we say, Okay, what do you think about this particular concept or this tagline? So we can get to brass tacks and cover that for sure. But we recommend that it’s definitely going to be a balance of both mindset as well as the brass tacks to make it really worth the sponsoring companies while

John Jantsch (07:33.86)

Mm-hmm.

John Jantsch (08:00.258)

You know, I’ve always contended for years that, you know, one of the best things a company can do is bring their customers together so that they can, hey, you know, I’ve had this problem. They solved that problem for me too. So there’s networking, there’s referrals that go on. It’s people feel like champions now because you’ve treated them to dinner. Is there a little bit of a combination of, hey, we’re like treating you special and getting research from you?

Jacqueline Lieberman (08:07.266)

Yeah.

Jacqueline Lieberman (08:27.086)

for sure. Yeah, for sure. mean, and making them feel valued is part of where the authentic feedback comes in, you know, because when, you know, like I said, when that armor kind of comes down immediately, when you make this comfortable setting and you’re breaking bread with people and introducing yourself and all of a sudden, you’ll get a very different piece of feedback if you ask the same question in a zoom panel or in a conference room.

know, you just do and and that’s the the beauty of it. And and with your question before about you know, how do I weed through three hours of transcript but you know, I’ve been interviewing stakeholders my entire career, it’s part of my process for brand strategy, right? So so before I even, you know, put pen to paper on a brand foundation work, I

ask and say give me the 1015 people at your company who I should be talking to. So so I’ve been doing you know, trying to pull out the nuggets of what people say, you know, my whole career and this is really no different.

John Jantsch (09:37.944)

Yeah. Well, and I will say maybe you’ll disagree with it, but this idea, but, your, strategist brain creates the questions in the conversation, but I do think some of the new tools that we have AI tools, are very good at analysis if given the right data, right? Yeah.

Jacqueline Lieberman (09:50.446)

Mm-hmm.

Jacqueline Lieberman (09:54.938)

sure. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it helps with calling down transcriptions and you know, maybe generating some themes but you know, I’m I’m the only one that has my client in the back of my brain to understand really what they’re looking for. So, that’s what I’m looking at when I look through those raw transcripts.

John Jantsch (10:07.82)

Yeah, that’s right.

John Jantsch (10:14.98)

So do you have an example maybe of a campaign or maybe you can’t name names but maybe talk a little bit about the impact of one of these dinners?

Jacqueline Lieberman (10:24.216)

Sure, yeah, I can’t name names or disclose, but we’ve had dinners where it was first, it’s like, okay, we need to really know our customers better because the current personas that we have just tell me the pain points of why they hate my technology, for instance. And I already knew that. can we really understand who they are as people? So that was dinner number one. Then we went back to work.

and said, okay, so this is the feedback from dinner number one, we worked on brand strategy and positioning. So we worked on actual messaging for campaigns and for websites, like for homepages, product descriptions, things like that. And it was a piece of technology for a platform. And, and then so dinner number two was very specific around, what do you think about what this company is saying and how they’re talking about their technology?

And that now that particular dinner informed what ended up on the website and what is in campaign development right now. And, you know, so CMOs are, you know, it’s a way to really kind of keep a quarterly pulse on, know, how their customers are evolving. Also how, you know, especially if it’s a B2B technology company.

John Jantsch (11:41.538)

Mm-hmm.

Jacqueline Lieberman (11:49.388)

You have a product roadmap, you’re constantly putting out new technology. So that’s always evolving. So, you know, they’re using it as these quarterly check-ins to understand if they’re on the right track.

John Jantsch (12:01.633)

Do you see this approach being something that has specific uses or do you think this is just going to reshape the way brands do research, period?

Jacqueline Lieberman (12:11.592)

mean, honestly, it’s, I mean, there’s nothing wrong with starting if brands are doing surveys, you know, things like that. I think there’s always a use for surveys because it casts out a wide net. And surveys will always be there for that reason is to get a beat on, you know, what the mass market or what your mass consumer is saying if we want to send it out to a couple of hundred people. Now, when you really start to

Any qualitative is usually second after that survey is like, okay, here are the general themes that we saw that people are saying and what they care about. Let’s dig in deeper. And usually that’s where, you know, focus groups and online panels come in. But, you know, as I said before, when we’re talking about really understanding, say, executive level insights, C-suite insights, they’re not going to focus groups. They’re not joining.

online panels, and maybe they’ll be doing a survey maybe. So this is the way to really understand what that B2B executive is really caring about and what motivates them.

John Jantsch (13:22.092)

Have you heard from clients that have done, I don’t know, let’s call it traditional as opposed to anti-focus group. Have you heard from some that say, wow, this is different or what’s been the feedback?

Jacqueline Lieberman (13:34.97)

yeah. I mean, I can’t so the feedback from clients and I’ll talk about the guests in a minute. but what clients are really loving is the fact that there there is this brand halo effect that happens. That’s that intangible effect of when people are leaving on a high. So even if they didn’t know the sponsoring brand coming in, you know, we disclose who the sponsoring company is. But even if they weren’t familiar with it at first, say,

John Jantsch (13:41.284)

Mm-hmm.

Jacqueline Lieberman (14:04.822)

Now they’re leaving the room, understanding them better, leaving on a high, networking and exchanging numbers with other guests. So it became like this peer to peer exchange dinner by default. you can’t beat getting a beautifully designed 15 to 20 page chock full of actionable insights where we go, here’s the main insight.

Here’s the main implication and here’s the very specific marketing opportunity. You get that within 10 days, not a month, not six weeks, not anything that you need like, well, can we look at this or that? Can you cut the data this way? It’s 10 days, they get exactly what they need to act on. And that’s what they’ve been loving.

John Jantsch (14:51.812)

So I heard you say that they may not know the brand. these are not customers. I just made an assumption that they’re interviewing customers or having customers at these.

Jacqueline Lieberman (14:59.648)

It’s a little it’s been both. So some it’s been let’s invite our existing pool of customers. And then there’s been you know what, we need to just recruit our existing profile and of people who may or may not know us, but we’re going to invite them to dinner anyway. So and you know, there’s a lot of gold in inviting those types of guests as well.

John Jantsch (15:22.99)

So there are some logistics, right? They have to be in the room. So do you, know, lot of B2B brands, their clients might be all over the country, all over the world. So does that add a layer of logistics and cost, I assume, right? Yeah.

Jacqueline Lieberman (15:26.094)

Correct.

Jacqueline Lieberman (15:33.368)

Yes.

Jacqueline Lieberman (15:38.072)

For sure. Yeah. I mean, I think really what we do is we start with the customer, the sponsoring company. Everybody has a sales, Jen demand, Jen lead list. So everybody has warm leads, hot leads. We start there and say, okay, who, who are they? Can we, can we get them into in a specific geo? And then once we get the geography down, then we pick the, the 20 that really will.

move the needle for the sponsoring company. then, you know, the, take care of all the logistics from there, which is as soon as I have those 15 to 20 people, then we start the outreach and, and I have to say the, you know, the venue is also very important because again, if we want people to come, we want them to be excited about it, that it’s time well spent. it’s

it’s in a venue that either they’ve heard about been there before or someplace that they’ve always wanted to go and just haven’t been. So the venue is definitely a draw. And that’s why, you know, we really insist on keeping the quality very high, because we want it to be, you know, really well worth their time, you know, when when they enter. So, yeah.

John Jantsch (16:56.388)

Is this something in your mind that you could write a book about, that you could teach, that you could certify other people to do, or do you have any plans to scale it beyond your work?

Jacqueline Lieberman (17:07.266)

Yeah, I mean, I’ve thought about, you know, I thought about a book at least, in thinking about just kind of the magic that happens when you break bread with people around the table and and what you kind of learn from that because guests come in as complete strangers and then they leave almost as friends. I mean, they’re hugging me at the end, you know, taking selfies with a group selfies of all of us, they’re exchanging information.

John Jantsch (17:32.004)

Right.

Jacqueline Lieberman (17:36.174)

We connect on LinkedIn and every single person who on LinkedIn has commented on any of my posts, if they were a guest, they say, I mean, here’s the other thing. They haven’t just commented like one sentence like, that was great. Paragraphs, I’m getting paragraphs of comments saying this was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. You know, it was a way that…

John Jantsch (17:55.204)

video.

Jacqueline Lieberman (18:02.274)

we opened up I keep in touch with the people around the table that I met that night now on a consistent basis. So it’s it’s a really nice ripple effect that happens, you know, after that particular dinner, which is which feels great. You know? Yeah.

John Jantsch (18:17.228)

Yeah, absolutely. Well, Jacqueline, I appreciate you taking a moment to stop by and tell us a little bit about what you’re working on. Is there any place you’d invite people to find out more about your work or certainly about

Jacqueline Lieberman (18:30.016)

Yeah, absolutely. They can just go to brand crudo dot com and there’s an anti focus group tab right there and they can find out more info.

John Jantsch (18:40.132)

I’m going show my ignorance here and I’m sure you told me the last time you were on the show, what’s the significance of the word of the yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jacqueline Lieberman (18:46.03)

brand crudo. So part of the DNA method of what I uncover for brands to help out maneuver their competition is that I believe that every brand has a raw truth, you know, and that’s part of their DNA. So, so that’s where crudo came from. And, that’s what I helped them uncover and tell to the world through strategy.

John Jantsch (18:59.986)

John Jantsch (19:10.486)

Awesome. again, appreciate you taking a few moments to stop by and hopefully we’ll run into you one of these days out there on the road.

Jacqueline Lieberman (19:17.046)

awesome. Thank you, john. Thank you so much for having me. Bye bye.

John Jantsch (19:19.492)

You bet.