Assumptions are expensive.
Get leadership back in the room.
Most companies have more customer data than ever. That doesn’t mean leadership teams are actually close to their customers. The Front Row immerses decision-makers in the real lives and choices of the people they’re building for. Because the distance between leadership and customers is where bad assumptions start sounding like strategy.
The way your customers decide has been rewired.
AI redefined how people discover, evaluate, and decide. Journeys went non-linear, shaped by a growing set of influences that are hard to read from a dashboard. At the same time, research got faster and more automated, so it’s never been easier to feel informed about your customer while quietly drifting away from who they actually are.
Most leadership teams are sure about a customer they haven’t sat with in a long time. The picture they’re working from was built before the platforms and behaviors that now drive how people decide, and it keeps sounding like fact while the real person moves on. That gap is where the expensive decisions come from.
The Front Row is our customer closeness program.
It helps you re-learn your audience by getting the people who make your decisions genuinely close, in living rooms, in stores, in the passenger seat while someone talks themselves into a buy. The immersive research is customized to your category, your customers, and your teams, and it runs as a single immersion before a big call or a continuous program that keeps you in touch all year.
AI can get you insights faster. It can’t get you closer. When the fast, wide research is something anyone can generate in minutes, the advantage goes to the team that’s actually been in the room. Closeness is the part you can’t automate.
Insight, brand, strategy, and marketing leaders who want to meet, observe, and engage their customers in the real world, so they make sharper calls and bring their teams with them.
Custom-built, and produced end-to-end.
Every Front Row is designed, managed, and delivered by senior Basis consultants. We vet the right customers, handle every detail from arrival to the closing dinner, and keep it honest. Nobody sugar-coats anything, so your team gets the real thing.
Say It to My Face
Customers give your team direct, unfiltered feedback, in person and unscripted.
Reality vs. Aspiration Reveal
Customers show the gap between what they say they want and what they actually do.
Design It With Me
Customers and your team build solutions together, in the same room.
Role Reversal: You Be Me
Your team steps into the customer’s shoes and attempts the real tasks themselves.
Journey Walkthroughs
Shop-alongs, surf-alongs, drink-alongs. The customer narrates while your execs follow.
Ethnography
Watching and talking with people in their own environments, where behavior is real.
Every detail is handled, and none of it is staged. You get the real deal.
The difference is in how we get you close.
Getting leadership into a living room or onto a shop-along is table stakes. Most qual can do that. Two things set the Front Row apart.
The shift from “what we think matters” to “what actually drives behavior.”
Sharper decisions
You decide from how customers actually behave, seen with your own eyes, which makes the call easier to make and easier to defend.
Teams that agree
Insight, strategy, and creative leave aligned around one real customer, because they were in the room together when it landed.
Credible leadership
Conviction that comes from having met the customer firsthand, which is what makes a strategy land inside the building and out.
A major retailer stopped guessing what quality meant to its shoppers and learned it inside their homes, closets, and shopping trips.
After internal team and agency changes, a major clothing retailer needed to get its insight, strategy, and creative teams past internal opinions about how customers judge quality, and aligned on how shoppers actually think, feel, and behave.
Basis designed an immersive closeness program, online diaries, in-home interviews, and shop-alongs, and put the client’s teams inside their customers’ homes, closets, and shopping journeys. They traveled together, shared learnings over dinner, and challenged assumptions in real time.
The retailer learned how quality builds confidence, why “designer” doesn’t always mean “better,” and how shoppers judge value in the moment. The work pulled disparate teams together and directly shaped their current campaign by letting leaders live in their customers’ shoes.
The Front Row and Touchpoint 360°
Some questions need your team in the room. Some need the whole journey mapped at scale. Touchpoint 360° is our customer journey methodology, combining AI and data, quant, and qual to show how people discover, evaluate, and decide across your category.
The Front Row gets you close enough to feel a decision. Touchpoint 360° shows you how widespread it is. Together they cover both halves.
What teams ask before they start.
What is the Front Row?
The Front Row is our customer closeness program. It closes the gap between the decisions a leadership team makes and the real customers they make them for, through immersive research customized to your category, customers, and teams. It runs as a single immersion before a big decision or as a continuous program, and is custom-built and produced end-to-end by senior Basis consultants.
What is customer closeness research?
Customer closeness research gets decision-makers in direct contact with real customers, in their homes, stores, and daily lives, so they understand how people actually think, feel, and behave. It captures the context and the moments that surveys miss. At Basis we deliver it through the Front Row, designed and produced so leaders watch and engage firsthand rather than read a summary later.
Who is the Front Row for?
The Front Row is for leaders who want to meet, observe, and engage their customers in the real world, so they can make sharper decisions and inspire their teams to create more relevant products, services, and communications. Insight, brand, strategy, and marketing leaders use it when a decision matters enough to ground it in real behavior.
What methods does the Front Row use?
The Front Row blends immersive methods built around your decision: Say It to My Face Sessions, Reality vs. Aspiration Reveals, Design It With Me Collabs, Role Reversal exercises, Journey Walkthroughs such as shop-alongs and drink-alongs, and ethnography in people’s natural environments. We mix and design the methods to fit your category, customers, and the question in front of you.
How is the Front Row delivered?
Every Front Row is custom designed, managed, and delivered by senior Basis consultants. We rigorously vet the right customers, produce the whole experience from arrival through debriefs and curated dinners, and keep it honest. Nothing is sugar-coated, by us or by respondents, so your team gets the real thing.
How is the Front Row different from Touchpoint 360°?
The Front Row gets your team close to individual customers in person, for depth and conviction. Touchpoint 360° maps the whole customer journey at scale, combining AI and data, quant, and qual. They’re complementary: the Front Row helps you feel a decision, Touchpoint 360° helps you size it. Many teams use both.
Can the Front Row run as an ongoing program?
Yes. The Front Row ranges from one-off projects to continuous programs depending on your needs. A single immersion works before a major decision, while an ongoing rhythm keeps leadership in regular contact with real customers so the team’s picture of them stays current rather than drifting back into assumption.
What sectors does Basis work in?
Basis works across retail, beauty, CPG, food and beverage, financial services, gaming, entertainment, and consumer technology, in the UK and US. Every Front Row program is tailored to the category and the specific decision in front of the leadership team, so the closeness work earns its place commercially.
Get your leadership team back in the room.
Tell us the decision you’re facing. We’ll design the closeness work that gets your team to the truth of it.
