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HBR.ORG SeptemBeR 2012 reprinT r1209X
HBR CASE STUDY
Should You Listen To the Customer?
A dance troupe debates who should determine its creative choices. by Thomas J. DeLong and Vineeta Vijayaraghavan
Should Delacroix launch a customer research initiative?
For the exclusive use of A. Muhumed, 2026.
This document is authorized for use only by Abdirahim Muhumed in MBA Marketing at Henderson State University 2026 taught by Christopher Feltes, Henderson State University from Aug 2026 to Dec 2026.
“You need to get some art in here,” Nata- lia observed.
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Case Study Thomas J. DeLong is the Philip J. Stomberg Professor of Management Practice at Harvard Business School. Vineeta Vijayaraghavan is a senior research fellow at Innosight Institute.
A dance troupe debates who should determine its creative choices. by Thomas J. DeLong and Vineeta Vijayaraghavan
Should You Listen to the Customer?
HBR’s fctionalized case studies present dilemmas faced by leaders in real
companies and ofer solutions from experts. This one is based on the HBS Case Study “Cirque du Soleil” (product no. 403006-PDF-ENG), by Thomas J. DeLong and Vineeta Vijayaraghavan, which is available at hbr.org.
Natalia Georgio knocked on the door of her new marketing director’s of- fce. Elizabeth Gardos hadn’t done
much with the space yet. Aside from two chairs, a desk, a computer, and a picture of her daughters, the ofce was empty.
“I know,” Elizabeth said. “It’s been a busy two weeks. I want to put up some photos of the dancers.”
The two women worked for Delacroix, an avant-garde dance troupe based in New York that had fve companies touring the U.S. and Canada. Natalia, a former dancer, was the organization’s executive director. She’d hired Elizabeth, another former dancer, for her decades of market- ing experience, most recently at Violet, a fast-growing woman’s athletic clothing company. Despite the stagnant economy, Delacroix was growing at a healthy pace, in part because of its policy of keeping ticket prices reasonably low. Still, Natalia thought
the company needed better marketing to support its expansion strategy. Elizabeth, who’d been keen for a new challenge and to return to the dance scene, had jumped at the opportunity.
“So why did you want to meet?” Natalia asked.
“I have some ideas I want to run by you—some things I’ve noticed in these frst couple of weeks.”
“Great, let’s hear them.” “I’m really surprised that Delacroix has
never surveyed or gathered information of any kind from customers before,” Eliza- beth said.
“Yeah, that’s not really our thing. We take our lead from the dancers, not the audience.”
“Then what you do here isn’t really marketing,” Elizabeth said cautiously. “It seems like marketing’s only responsibility is to decide how long shows should run, how to advertise them, and what to charge for tickets. You promote the shows and
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people attend, but you don’t really know who your customers are or why they come.”
“You mean, we promote the shows,” Na- talia said, smiling. “You keep saying ‘you,’ but you’re part of this company now.”
“We. Sorry.” “You’re right; marketing’s role has been
limited up to now. But part of the reason we brought you in is to give us some new ideas.”
Natalia had a mandate from Delacroix’s board members to take the company in new directions: to explore international engagements and television and flm op- portunities. But she was nervous about for- mulating her strategy without any research upon which to build a case for risks worth taking. She’d explained that to Elizabeth during the interview process.
“I think we should start, at a mini- mum, by doing a simple customer survey,” Elizabeth said, “just with people who have signed up on the website and clearly want to be in communication with us. We can gather some basic information and fnd out what they like best about our shows. That will give us some insight into other audi- ences and markets we should target.”
“That’s certainly an idea,” Natalia said, choosing her words carefully, “but it would also be a big change for us. There are some people in this building who will resist.” She was referring primarily to Henry Delacroix, the company’s founder and artistic direc- tor. Although Natalia was technically in charge of the company, Henry still exerted a lot of infuence.
“So it won’t be an easy sell?” Elizabeth said.
“No, I don’t think it will.”
The Artistic Mission “Why do we want to ask what our audience thinks?” Henry said. “We don’t care what they think.” Elizabeth and Natalia glanced at each other across the conference table.
“Henry, come on—we care that they come to the shows,” Natalia said.
“Of course, I know our audience is important. But our business depends on the creative expertise of our artists.” Henry
forced a smile and turned to Elizabeth. “When people come to our shows, they expect to have an unbelievable, unique experience—one that they’ll never forget. How can people tell you what they want if they haven’t ever seen it before? If we ask them what they want, we’ll end up doing Swan Lake every year!”
Natalia shifted in her seat uneasily. She knew that many of the board mem- bers—not to mention the dancers—felt as strongly as Henry did about maintaining artistic control. If Delacroix were to adopt a customer-centric approach, it could lose some of its best people.
Elizabeth cleared her throat and passed Henry a brief report. “Here are some examples of how my previous frm, Violet, used social media to better understand customers, get feedback on products, and test new ideas.” She paused as Henry gave the report a cursory glance. “This allowed us to make better decisions about how to price our products, how to go to market, and when to take risks with new oferings. I know the product in this case is very dif ferent: We’re a dance company. But there are similar benefts here. Take your fan website, for example—”
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“Yes, 90,000 people have signed up,” Henry replied.
“Right, it’s great. But you—I mean, we— don’t really engage with those people. We have practically no data on which of them are coming to our shows and why. That means we have no idea which opportu- nities to pursue next, or how to present ourselves—to sell ourselves—to the media or to corporate partners. We’re feeling around in the dark. It may work for giants like Apple to tell customers what they want, but that won’t work here.”
“It has up to now,” Henry said, smirking. “But the game has changed. You’re
thinking about diferent ways to expand. I know we want to go international by the end of the year, but we know little about what, say, a London audience would really want to see.”
“We will tell them what they want to see,” Henry shot back. “Many companies
operate this way. Tifany doesn’t survey the women of the world asking what kind of jewelry they want. The company has faith in its designers and their imagina- tions—and it gets a better product as a result. We can’t keep our artists inspired and innovative if we start letting custom- ers tell us what to do.”
Natalia looked at Elizabeth apologeti- cally, but she recognized that Henry had a point. Delacroix hadn’t been founded to meet customer needs; its mission, from the beginning, had been to push the boundaries of modern dance. Henry’s relentless pursuit of that goal had brought the company much success.
“What about what happened last year at the Joyce?” Elizabeth asked. Natalia looked at her new hire, who’d clearly done her research.
Delacroix had invested a big chunk of its marketing budget in promoting the three-month run of a new show. Expected to be one of its best ever, the show featured dancers in huge masks. Unfortunately, the masks seemed to terrify all the children in the audience. There were walkouts at ev- ery performance in the frst few weeks, and then parents fooded the website, as well as ticket and review sites, with complaints. After much internal deliberation, the com- pany decided to put a note in the program warning that the masks might be scary for children under eight. Natalia had wanted to do more, maybe even remove the masks from the show, but a few board members held strong to the principle that they shouldn’t bow to customer dictates. They also told her, however, that they didn’t want to see that sort of mistake again.
“It was an unfortunate incident, def nitely a failure on our part,” said Henry.
“But we learned from it: No more scary masks in our shows.”
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“But if we had an ongoing dialogue with our customers, we might know these things ahead of time—know that they want more kid-friendly performances, or that we need to market certain shows to certain segments of our audience,” Elizabeth countered. “We could avoid these sorts
3 Harvard Business Review September 2012
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This document is authorized for use only by Abdirahim Muhumed in MBA Marketing at Henderson State University 2026 taught by Christopher Feltes, Henderson State University from Aug 2026 to Dec 2026.
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of failures. I know from my time at Violet that information is power. New ventures, new partnerships, more exposure—you can’t gamble with these things. You have to get it right. Customer research will help minimize our risk.”
Henry shook his head. “You’re just not getting it—”
“OK.” Natalia stood up. “We’re not going to resolve this today. Elizabeth, can you e-mail that report to Henry and me? We’ll discuss it ofine.”
“What will you do when our customers ask us to put our dancers in Smurf costumes?”
Just One Survey? Natalia was in a cab and headed home when her cell phone rang. It was Henry.
“You’re not really considering this, are you?” he said as soon as she’d picked up.
“Yes, I am. Elizabeth has some great points. How are we going to enter interna- tional markets if we don’t know anything about the audiences there?” Natalia looked out over the water as the cab started across the Brooklyn Bridge. “How am I going to compete with every other company that wants a chance at TV if we don’t have the customer research? Those Hollywood execs will laugh us out of the room, never mind the corporate partners.”
“And what will you do when our cus- tomers ask us to put our dancers in Smurf costumes? Will you order one for Sophia?”
Natalia smiled at the thought of the company’s most famous—and most dif- fcult—dancer dressed as Smurfette. “Stop being dramatic, Henry. They’re not going to tell us to do something ridiculous.”
“Fine, not the Smurfs, but you know we’ll have to take fewer risks, to err on the side of selling tickets instead of pushing the creative envelope. You were a dancer, Natalia, one of our best. Remember the mission? Remember how energized you felt by it?”
“Of course I remember. I also remember that it’s part of our mission to bring mod ern dance to as many people as possible.” Natalia tried to keep the frustration out of her voice. She knew as well as anyone how much Delacroix relied on the board mem bers and dancers for innovation. “But I was brought in to professionalize this com pany, to expand on what you started. And customer research—real marketing—may be part of that. Elizabeth knows what she’s talking about. She ran the whole customer initiative at her previous job, and it was a huge success.”
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“She sold clothes, Natalia,” Henry said. “Fair enough. But what’s the harm in
a survey or two? If the customers give us outrageous feedback, we don’t have to listen to it.”
“But if we ask what they think and then don’t give it to them, we’ll alienate them,” Henry said. “We’ll damage the relationship. And you know there’s going to be resis- tance from the board.”
Natalia was not surprised. The business types would be all for it, she knew, but the members with an artistic background—the ones who understood the creative pro- cess—would never approve it. She pictured each of the board members sitting around
the table at their next meeting, only a few weeks away. Henry was right. They would probably divide on this issue, almost evenly.
“Besides,” Henry continued. “We’re do- ing fne. Why rock the boat now?”
“Now feels like precisely the time to rock it,” she said. “The board is expecting big things from us over the next year, risky things we’ve never tried before.”
“And we’re going to be successful only if we trust our own creativity and our own instincts—not customer research.”
Natalia looked out the cab window. She felt tired.
“You still there?” Henry asked. “Yes.” “Well, think about this. We can’t have
it both ways. Either employees come frst, or customers do. You know where I stand. Where do you?”
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For the exclusive use of A. Muhumed, 2026.
This document is authorized for use only by Abdirahim Muhumed in MBA Marketing at Henderson State University 2026 taught by Christopher Feltes, Henderson State University from Aug 2026 to Dec 2026.