Focus Group Evaluation.

Thursday 12th Nov we conducted our focus group and Verve House. Overall it was a huge success and we got a lot of usefull feedack that i personally would like to implement. Below are some of the more important points our group brought up that i thought we should really take notice of.



- They thought the fact that there were two gay people in our top 6 characters was excessive as they said that gays are a minority. Even working in a fashion retail business not many would be seen as it's still a regular business. They said it takes away from the realism.
- The P.A was said to be suicidal, considering he had a wife and children, he was secretly gay, he's had a major pay cut, work has an uncertain enviroment, he's had to descale all he's property (car, house). We'll take this into consider as maybe too much is going on for this "poor bloke".
- From one of the gentlemen he mentioned that the new girl should be a tart and failed to see what our intention was. Maybe we'll chose to keep her gay.
- An interesting storyline idea another gentlemen mentioned was that maye the boss can be having an affair with an employee. The time comes when Aya has to 'sack' her lover and he can then turn round and blackmail her. "No you can't. I'll tell your husband and everyone at work about us!"
- They informed us that people bitch/gossip a lot. For example they told us that when an employee takes a holiday and another member of staff takes their position for the week they begin undermining there position. "Stupid cow. I can't believe they pay her this much, i can do a much better job". This shows it's a perfect location to include the huge factor of gossip to intise audiences.
- They said that the boss would never present employees with balance sheets. This is a very secretive affair between the boss and the accountant. They said it's more likely that an accountant would present it to the boss either on a computer screen or written document.
-They affirmed our idea that discrimination doesn't exist in their working environment. They stated that they do a lot of business with people of a Jewish and Muslim faith. Evidence of this is that the two bosses are Greek and Jewish.
- We got told that; when people were told about the upcoming job losses everyone was gathered into a large room. Grown men were seen to be crying. It was said that there was a great uncertainty, fear, anticipation, worry and generally very depressing. Whilst employees were explaining this to us the mood in the room suddenly droped as you can still tell it was still strongly affecting them.
-The people that were left claimed to be much closer and more as a family.
- Due to the huge competitiveness they have to do 5 times the amount of work, and provide much more products than the single garment. And, their pay as decreased.
-This happened just before christmas so maybe we could feature this as our chrismas special.
- They proposed we should definatly show how it has affected people at home as, basing it in an office alone is too narrow and niche.
- They proposed we should show it from the bosses point of view as when he told employees individually he went through it ten fold compared to employees. They all agreed it was more 'soul destroying' for the bosses than anyone else.



-For the website perhaps we can show clips of characters reactions or have an interview special to make it more exclusive and interactive for audiences. This will also help establish realism and make the characters and soap more believable. It would also spark of viral marketing and increase the gossip factor.