Frank Luntz

Frank Luntz is one of the most honored communication professionals in America today. Sir David Frost calls him “the Nostradamus of pollsters,” and Time magazine named him one of “50 of America’s most promising leaders aged 40 and under.” He is the “hottest pollster” in America according to the Boston Globe, one of the four “Top Research Minds” according to BusinessWeek, and a winner of the coveted Washington Post “Crystal Ball” award for being the most accurate pundit. Luntz’s focus groups have become so influential that presidential candidate Barack Obama had this to say following the PBS presidential debate: “When Frank Luntz invites you to talk to his focus group, you talk to his focus group.”

Luntz has written, supervised, and conducted more than 2,000 surveys, focus groups, ad tests, and dial sessions in over two dozen countries and four continents over the past decade. He has become the go-to consultant when Fortune 100 companies and their CEOs need communication and language guidance, from General Motors to Federal Express, Disney to American Express, from AT&T to Microsoft, from Lowe’s to Pfizer, from Kroger supermarkets to McDonalds to the entire soft drink, hotel, and motion picture industries, as well as for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers and the Business Roundtable. In some capacity he has helped almost 30 Fortune 100 companies navigate the economic climate and connect more closely with consumers.

The “Instant Response” focus group technique pioneered by Luntz has been profiled on 60 Minutes, Good Morning America (on Election Day 2008) and on the award-winning PBS show Frontline. He has been a guest on virtually every talk show in America, including Meet the Press, Nightline, The Today Show, Charlie Rose, The Jim Lehrer News Hour, The O”Reilly Factor, Tavis Smiley, Montel Williams, and Hardball. He also served as a consultant to the award-winning NBC hit show The West Wing.

More media outlets have turned to Luntz to understand the hopes and fears of Americans than to any other political pollster. In 2008, he was the “Focus Group Czar” for Fox News, conducting over 40 sessions in 14 states, as well as co-hosting four live hour-long prime time specials and dial sessions during every debate. Luntz was a primary night and election night commentator for The News with Brian Williams on MSNBC in 2000 and for Hardball in 2004. His reoccurring segments on MSNBC/CNBC, “100 Days, 1000 Voices” won the Emmy Award in 2001. Luntz has conducted focus group sessions for all three major television networks, two of the three cable news channels, PBS and the BBC, as well as for The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, The New Yorker, and U.S. News & World Report.

Luntz is the author of the New York Times best seller Words that Work: It”s Not What You Say it”s What People Hear. His most recent book, which hit the New York Times Best Seller list in its first week of release, is What Americans Really Want…Really. He has also written about language for The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Financial Times, The Times of London, and the Washington Post.

When he is not consulting, Dr. Luntz can often be found in front of a classroom. From 1989 until 1996, he was an Adjunct Professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He has also taught courses at Harvard and George Washington University.