New FORTUNE 1000 Executive Focus Groups Promise Unbeatable Value to Companies Seeking Marketplace Validation

Market Researchers at Launch Pad Tap Top Executives to Provide Companies With a Critical “Gut Check” on Proposed Products, Pricing & Positioning

March 28, 2005

Launch Pad, an analytical marketing services company, today announced a new service, “The C-Level Triad Focus Group,” which enables the firm’s clients to quickly test proposed product concepts, positioning, pricing schemes, distribution strategy, and competitive differentiators with a focus group comprised of three participants from the “C-suites” of the nation’s top corporations.

For $5,000, marketers can tap into the expert knowledge and hard-nosed perspectives of an unparalleled mix of hard-to-reach individuals. Recent Triad Focus Group participants include:

• The CISO of State Farm Insurance
• The CIO of Shaklee
• The CIO of KPMG
• The CISO of Prudential Insurance
• The VP of IT at Allergan
• The VP of Global Technologies, Edwards Life Sciences

“So much of the money and time spent on product development and market planning is performed in a vacuum,” said Launch Pad founder and CEO Shelley Harrison. “These C-Level Triad Focus Groups allow an organization to test their hypotheses on an ideal cross-section of prospective customers, generating answers about marketplace acceptance far faster than normal qualitative research, and at a much lower cost.”

From start-to-finish the process takes less than 30 days. The focus group participants can be shown slides about the client’s concept or the client can conduct a demo, as appropriate. Launch Pad experts work with the client to develop the interview guide, and will subsequently recruit participants, moderate the 60-minute session, and provide a follow-up presentation with results and recommendations from the focus group.

According to Harrison, the first few Triad Focus Groups have yielded surprising results: “One of our clients realized they could ‘add a zero’ to their average selling price; another client had the data they needed to kill an expensive roll-out, as the focus group attendees saw no value in their proposed offering. In all cases, the real-world feedback of these FORTUNE 1000 buyers has added unbeatable value to our clients’ planning processes.”

Dominic Li, VP of Products, at British Telecom, agreed. “In any business, ‘the customer is always right.’ Yet often a company will have few clues about their prospects’ response to a new product, until it’s too late. The technology industry is littered with tragic examples of this ‘blind alley’ approach to product strategy. Launch Pad put us in front of a superb group of prospective buyers, and it absolutely helped British Telecom figure out an ideal marketing approach for our upcoming offerings.”

For more information about Launch Pad’s C-Level Triad Focus Groups, please contact us.