Focus groups are supposed to be the cure-all for marketers' woes: Gather some people in a room and ask them what they think of your product or service. Many marketers don't like conducting focus groups, never quite trust the results and are uncertain of how to act on the information they glean from participants. But if you want to hear true disdain for the traditional focus group, just talk to Bob Taraschi, founder of the Cambridge, Mass.-based Marketing Partnership.

"The model most companies use for their focus groups is an electric chair," he says, describing a typical focus group scene with customers being grilled in front of microphones and one way mirrors. That grilling is the problem. Customers are forced into a subservient role, being presented with a product and asked if it is something they want to buy. Taraschi has developed a new way to, get customers involved, a method, which he believes, is more effective than traditional focus groups. Rather than generating a product in isolation, he says, companies should bring their customers into the product's development.

"It seems to me to only make sense that if you understand what your customers want, your likelihood of success is greater." To this end, Taraschi has created the Customer Immersion^® Program. "We engage customers in an interactive session with company areas like marketing, finance and advertising, to uncover likes, dislikes, perceptions. The way a traditional focus group is run is quite unnatural." Too one-way. The customer immersion process takes 18 months, and Taraschi has already implemented it for clients like Lotus Development Corp., Quaker Oats and AT&T. "One product we worked on was Improv from Lotus Development [makers of the spreadsheet software, Lotus 1-23]. Improv is a new kind of spreadsheet, allowing you to look at the numbers in a different way."

"We held customer immersion sessions, talking to them at every stage of development and they said, 'This is what we need. Make this and we'll buy it." The new software is scheduled for release this month. Taraschi's background helps facilitate sessions. His career includes stints as an actor, comedian, advertising copywriter and marketing consultant.

His marketing experience taught the performer in him that the customer puts on the most important performance that company leaders will ever see.

Written by Robert Charm
Profiles Magazine / March 1993