The Oh, Hello and welcome to Behind the News. My name is Doug Henwood. Just one

guest today, the journalist Liza Featherstone talking about her new book

Devining Desire, a study of focus groups published by Orr Books in partnership with Counterpoint.

The effects of focus groups are all around us, consumer products, entertainment products, political products.

Malcolm Gladwell famously blamed the flop that was New Coke, way back in 1985, on focus groups, as he so

often is Gladwell was wrong.

If a movie seems banal, we may blame it on a focus group. And politicians like George

W Bush and Donald J Trump often brag about not using focus groups. Bush was lying and as far

as we know, Trump isn't. We often condemn politicians like

either Clinton, Bill or Hillary for being entirely the inauthentic product of

focus groups. The late Steve Jobs was contemptuous of them.

People who like to think of themselves as original thinkers and bold leaders are often that way.

But on the other hand, what is wrong with trying to find out what people think about your product,

whether it be a movie, a soft drink, or an agenda.

How pervasive are these things?

Where did they come from?

spoiler, a bunch of Viennese socialist intellectuals 80 years ago. What is the process like?

What do marketers think of them and their participants?

And what do they mean in the larger scheme of things?

These are the questions that Liza Featherstone looks at in divining desire. Her larger

points is that focus groups are symptomatic of what she calls our culture of

consultation. In a world of pseudo-democracy where people have little power,

...