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This morning I had the chance to reconnect with two executives from Fieldwork, one of the best-known marketing research facility companies in the business. For those of us who spent years moderating qualitative research on the road, their facilities became almost a second home.
And for many of us with kids, they’re also memorable for another reason: the squeezable animal toys sitting in the viewing rooms. If you spent enough time in those facilities, you probably brought a small zoo home in your carry-on.
For the first two decades of my career, I was a nomadic qualitative moderator in healthcare. My calendar was a rotation of cities and facilities -- NYC, Chicago, LA, Dallas, San Francisco -- week after week. So the conversation we had today felt a bit like stepping back into an earlier chapter of the industry and my professional life.
But the topic wasn’t nostalgia. Today it was a very practical question: how do we encourage pharmaceutical marketing teams to re-engage more with in-person research?
One observation from the conversation stuck with me.
Sarah Kotva pointed out that after the pandemic, many industries quickly returned to in-person research: consumer packaged goods, technology, communications, financial services. In fact, one well-known New York facility was practically taken over by teams from Meta during and after the pandemic. Their teams saw a strategic opportunity to get closer to their users again -- watching behavior firsthand, listening together, and accelerating learning.
Meanwhile, pharma largely remained remote.
Today, most of the foot traffic in facilities comes from CPG, tech companies and financial services. Pharma and medtech are still present, but primarily for human factors testing or device work. The steady stream of commercial teams observing interviews -- the kind that used to be commonplace -- is far thinner than it once was.
And it’s not hard to understand why.
Pharma marketing teams are operating under intense time and resource constraints. Marketing research budgets are tighter. Timelines are shorter. And remote qualitative methods offer clear advantages.
When research is conducted virtually, it’s easier to recruit a national sample. There are fewer logistical constraints. Travel disappears. Scheduling becomes simpler.
And when you’re doing patient research -- particularly in rare diseases -- virtual methods often make the most sense.
At ThinkGen, an increasing share of our work is patient-centered research. When your respondents may be scattered across the country, or the world, asking them to travel to a facility in one city simply isn’t practical. Online research is faster, more inclusive, and often more cost-effective.
So the shift toward virtual research isn’t surprising.
But that doesn’t mean the story ends there.
Despite all the efficiency of virtual research, there are still moments where being physically present changes the quality of insight.
One of the clearest examples is campaign and concept testing.
When teams are together in a facility, something different happens. The research becomes a shared experience.
Everyone is watching the same interview. Everyone is reacting in real time. And between interviews, the team gathers in the back room to talk about what they’re seeing.
Those conversations matter more than people sometimes realize.
A few months ago we saw this play out during research at a facility in New York City. We were testing franchise-level campaign concepts. The initial set simply wasn’t resonating. Patients and physicians were not connecting with the ideas the way the team had hoped.
So between interviews, the marketing team and the agency sat down together in the back room.
We brought in a whiteboard and some sticky notes. Ideas started flowing. Within a short window, the group developed a new set of prototype concepts.
And we tested them the same day.
The difference in response from customers was immediate and unmistakable. The revised ideas resonated in ways the original set never did.
That moment -- watching a team move from disappointment to creative breakthrough within a single afternoon -- is difficult to replicate in a purely virtual environment.
The immediacy is powerful. And the sense of shared discovery stays with the team long after the research ends.
Another topic came up during our annual ThinkGen meeting in Philadelphia last week that I mentioned during this morning's conversation with Fieldwork.
Several members of our ThinkGen team joined the industry after the pandemic. Their entire professional experience has been with virtual qualitative research.
They’ve never sat in a facility back room. They’ve never watched a respondent walk into a room. They’ve never seen the subtle dynamics that unfold in a live setting.
When I mentioned this to the Fieldwork team this morning, they immediately recognized the same pattern.
There is now an entire generation of healthcare researchers who have never experienced in-person qualitative work.
And that’s a loss -- not because virtual research is inferior, but because it removes certain dimensions of observation.
One of the most under-appreciated advantages of in-person research is simple: you see the whole person.
In a virtual interview, you see a head and shoulders on a screen. Or, more likely, you just hear the respondent's voice.
In a facility, you see everything else.
Body language. Posture. How someone sits when they’re thinking. How they physically respond to a stimulus. Even the way they dress or carry themselves can provide context that deepens interpretation.
These cues are subtle, but experienced researchers know how much meaning they can carry.
The physical setting also creates a different level of respondent, and observer, focus. (They were originally called "Focus Group Facilities" for a reason).
When you’re watching a virtual interview from your desktop or laptop, distractions are everywhere. Slack messages pop up. Email notifications flash. It’s easy -- too easy -- to glance at something else for a moment.
In a research facility, the context is different. You’re sitting with colleagues. Everyone is watching together. There’s a collective sense of attention.
And then there’s the back room.
After each interview, the team talks. What did we hear? What surprised us? What worked and didn't work? What should we test differently in the next conversation?
Some of the most effective, and dare I say even award-winning, pharmaceutical branding campaigns have emerged from those spontaneous back room discussions.
Yes, companies can recreate some of this through internal immersion days at headquarters. But there’s something about being offsite, in a dedicated research environment, that sharpens everyone’s focus.
Facilities were purpose-built for this kind of thinking.
During the conversation this morning, we also talked about how cultural cycles have a way of bringing things back.
Young people today are rediscovering older technologies and experiences. Vinyl records. Bell bottom jeans. Thrifting. Devices with buttons.
In other words, the past sometimes becomes the future again.
So perhaps the opportunity here is not to frame in-person research as a step backward -- but as a rediscovery of something valuable.
For younger researchers who have only known virtual work, the facility experience may feel new rather than old.
And that’s an interesting opportunity.
One idea that came up is whether social media could play a role in reintroducing the industry to the in-person research experience.
Imagine short-form content on platforms like Instagram or TikTok that demystifies the process.
Clips showing what the back room looks like. Moments from collaborative discussions between interviews. The energy of a team reacting to insights in real time.
Not promotional material, but glimpses of the craft of qualitative research.
Sometimes the best way to spark interest is simply to show what people have been missing.
The shift toward virtual research isn’t going away -- and it shouldn’t. In many, perhaps most, cases it’s the right approach.
But there are still moments where being physically present with customers produces a different kind of learning.
A deeper kind. A unique vibe.
The question, then, is not whether in-person research should return to its former scale. The industry has changed too much for that.
The question is where it still adds unique value, and how we ensure the next generation of researchers knows how to use it.
So I’m curious to hear from others in the healthcare insights community:
And if you spent time in facilities years ago, I have one more question.
Did you bring home the animal toys too? 🐘
