Monthly Archives: July 2011

ROI and What Ethnography Brings to the Retail Table.

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I had an interesting conversation with the CMO of a large retailer the other day – at the time I didn’t know that he was the CMO, but I did know he was skeptical about what it is that ethnographers bring to growing the bottom line.  So when he asked, “How does your work help retailers and brands better connect with shoppers?” I had to decide what my elevator speech would be.

“My work gets to those powerful, underlying drivers that really matter to people. If you understand how elements of behavior and worldview fit together in a system, you can develop complete strategies that convert shoppers into buyers and buyers into advocates. And I think that is the ultimate goal. It isn’t enough to hook people in the store, even if you leave them happy. My work, any ethnographer’s work, is designed to engage people in the storyline of the retailer or brand. The goal is to produce a type of conversion that is devotional, almost religious, getting people not only to visit your store repeatedly, but to sing your praises to everyone they know, creating more devotees.”

Perhaps it was a bit dramatic or poetic (I confess, my choice of language was fueled in part by a glass of Knob Creek), but it made the simple point that in an age of obsession with analytics, there needs to be a balance with understanding the truth of the human condition.

Retail is growing increasingly complex. 70% of purchases are done on a whim. Anthropology is an inductive process that’s all about understanding the meaning behind our actions and our ways of interacting with the world. We try to look retail through that lens.  Shopping is entertainment, it’s a teaching moment, it’s a way of establishing social bonds. Anthropology provides a real-world look at a problem or opportunity, applying social and cultural understanding to the topic, in this case the retail stage. It evaluates what people say, what they do and why they do it. Research has typically looked at individual shopper motivations. But people never really shop alone – they carry their culture and experiences with them. So, if you want to understand how and why people use, say, a clothing retailer you have to start by asking what kind of experience are they subconsciously looking for. What kind of interaction with the staff do they really want and expect?  What kind of image are they trying to project at different points throughout the day and how does that shape their decision to use on retailer over another?

In the end, it’s about uncovering this sort of information than can change the conversation with the people shopping at a particular retailer. To quote a friend, “ROI means return on insight.”  And that leads to increased revenue.

Linguistic Determinism and Successful Marketing

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The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.  Without a linguistic counterpart to a new-found action or object, we find ourselves searching for meaning in terms of categorization, semantics, and symbolic associations.  We are the words we have at our disposal and when we don’t have the word (or words) we languish. Language determinism is the idea that language and its structures limit and determine human knowledge or thought. The words we possess determine the things that we can know. If we have an experience, we are confined not just in our communication of it, but also in our knowledge of it, by the words we possess.

Though the work of Sapir and Whorf (no, not the Star Trek guy with the deformed forehead, but the linguist) are a perennial point of debate in sociolinguistic circles, their work still matters.  In a nutshell, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis argues that individuals experience the world based on the lexical items and grammatical structures they habitually use. For example, speakers of different languages may see different numbers of bands in a rainbow. Since rainbows are actually a continuum of color, there are no empirical stripes or bands, and yet people see as many bands as their language possesses primary color words. For those engaged in design or marketing, this has significant implications when launching brands in a global market.

The objective world is entirely removed by the presence of language. It is perceived, but human life is determined by having language and by the language’s own internal demands. Like Semiotics, which argues that a single grammar exists prior to all human activity, the structures, hierarchies, and hidden associations of our individual human languages determine the conclusions that we reach in our logic, the aspirations of our lived lives, and all our emotional content.  In other words, we are our language and while there may be exceptions to the rule (though I’ve yet to see one) the fact remains that who we are and how we see the world is bound up in the act of communication, linguistic exchanges in particular.

So what does it mean to marketers and the like?  It simply means that a clever turn of phrase isn’t necessarily the best option when talking to the people we’re trying to sell things to. The underlying symbolic and structural elements of language need to be understood in a range of contexts and the webs of meaning need to be explored. Far too often, we write copy and brand descriptions that simply don’t make sense or are so removed from the context of the people using the product, engaging in the retail space, etc. as to become detrimental to our goals in marketing the brand. Knowing what someone said our how they feel isn’t enough.  We need to understand how they create and interpret their world, then create modes of communication that go beyond a tagline or list of attributes.  We need to understand the complexity of the human condition and how language shapes behavior, beliefs and action.

Selling Aspirations or Realities

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We often see that words, phrases and concepts are repeated when describing an event.  But I have to wonder, is it more powerful for marketing to ask “what happened…” or “when you went/used/etc. what were you hoping for…”?  No doubt it is some balance between the two, but at which points in the shopping, consuming and disposal processes do you stress the aspirational over the practical?  At what point do you reverse them?  It all depends on the nature of the narrative as told by both the brand and the people who buy it.  And it depends on breaking away from a binary view of the world.

Narratives are representational forms that provide valuable data about the practices, perspectives, and beliefs people have about a brand.  In other words, these are the stories people tell, but narrative analysis digs deeper, uncovering symbolic triggers and psycho-social stumbling block. What we want isn’t always what we need (or even what we really, truly want).  Understanding the narrative being told and the one we wish to create means thinking about more than a message.  It means thinking about marketing as a story and that is never an either/or proposition.

Subject Matter Experts Running the Ship

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There is a belief that the people with a passion for what they do shouldn’t necessarily be the ones running the business.  On the face of it, there’s actually a point to be made about how you can’t just be a good researcher (or electrician, or painter or baker) if you don’t have a business bone in your body and expect commercial success to occur naturally.  Sometime being the best at your craft doesn’t translate into being able to turn it into a successful business.  But is the reverse also true?  Often times it is.

If you just put MBAs or other professional managers without deep subject matter expertise in charge of the company and/or brand, you’re likely to end up with an uninspiring business that fails to take any meaningful risks or be passionate about the right things.  You can’t sell anything genuinely innovative if your worldview is limited to what they teach in business school.  The best brands, the ones we admire and talk about, are driven by people at the top who intimately know how things should be and who have an intense love for what it is they do.  They are about more than the bottom line and can and do embrace risk, innovation and inspiration.

This isn’t to say that experts and MBAs can’t work together. It is to say that businesses and brands are about more than the dollars and cents, they are about the human beings behind them. Remembering that can be damn hard work.

Death of the Old Ad Model? Hardly.

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There is a strong belief out there that the interruption-disruption model in advertising is dying out, thanks to shifting consumer trends in behavior and technology. Because shoppers and consumers are increasingly in control of their media content they can and do simply skip those ads they don’t want to see. Social media has further altered the landscape – people are now creating their own content be it in the form of a testimonial, a simple tweet or a video homage. But it’s important to remember that the interruption-disruption model is not a product of a post-industrial world. It dates to the earliest civilizations, with merchants calling out to passersby the quality of their goods. Something to keep in mind.

Thus the story goes that marketers and advertisers who want to maintain a meaningful level of engage will need to completely rethink what it is they do. They will need to turn advertising into content. Not only products and brands need to be sold, so will the means by which we promote them. Advertising will need to be so compelling that people seek it out, promote it and help create it. The new ad model is about creating great content and finding ways to make it part of the larger social and cultural dialogs.

But how true is this model? Is there a fundamental shift that is so dramatic that the old way of doing things no longer has a place? Forgive me, but I’ve heard similar things before – the TV would cease to exist by the year 2000; the invention of Internet would democratize the world and open-source would change the nature of capitalism. When CP+B declared that the model had changed by saying that the “big idea is boss,” they were simply repackaging the big idea. Yes, consumers have gained more control through social media, DVRs, Hulu, etc. They will no doubt continue to change the landscape. But only to a point.

The truth be told, I don’t believe the notion that consumers are or ever will be totally in control of the ads they are exposed to any more than I believe that war will cease to exist because of Twitter. Magazines, online and off, will not stop printing ads. TV advertisers will not do away with the 30-sceond spot for product placement exclusively. Not every campaign will need to be guerilla marketing. Yes, the technology changes and the techniques we use to promote on brand over another, but there is no reason to assume the old model will simply vanish. Again, the interruption-disruption model is not new and though it will change, it isn’t going to vanish.

Advertising is about capturing attention. It is and always has been about telling a story and getting people to stop, look and listen. Add to that a simple fact that the technology wonks out there seem to overlook: people simply don’t care. They don’t want to exert much energy or time learning about the range of products available to them or the hundreds of outlets in which to buy them. People are lazy about most things. They have better things to do with their time than spend 4 hours on CNET. Yes, there are those that do, but they simple do not make up the majority. In addition to basic disinterest, people love (and respond to) advertising far more than they’ll ever admit. We are trained to say we dislike advertising, but is it true? It’s a sociolinguistic construct, just as asking a person how they are doing (something that in truth we don’t much really care about). The fact is that the old model will be modified, but it certainly won’t die.

Designing Research: Start With Understanding the Research Categories.

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Research shouldn’t be haphazard.  There should be a plan and a design for conducting it, not a rough idea of how things should be done.  Every detail matters, and it begins with breaking the plan down by understanding what type of research needs to take place, when it needs to take place and how it will be used.  A design is used to structure the research, to show how all of the major parts of the research project — the samples or groups, measures, treatments or programs, and methods of assignment — work together to try to address the central research questions.

All good messaging begins with understanding what makes your customers tick on a rational and emotional level. We approach research with four phases in mind:

  • Study and Learn – This is due diligence work.  It can be used to prep before doing more involved, primary research or once a campaign, product, etc. has been launched.
  • Explore – This is where you find unmet needs, subtleties of behavior, patterns of consumption and all of that information that leads to breakthrough innovation and insights.  These are the most time intensive processes, but are the most powerful for understanding the right questions to ask and the right solutions to provide.
  • Create and Execute – this is the creative stage, where you have assumptions and hypotheses to work from.  These methods push to understand individual motivations and perceptions (not necessarily reality, but what people believe).
  • Test It – This is the nuts and bolts phase, when the creation phase has effectively come to a close and it’s time to make sure all the details are in place. This stage is crucial to a solid execution.  It also identifies any pieces of the puzzle that may have been overlooked.

Notes About Observation

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It’s Friday and I’m headed to the zoo with my daughters.  At the risk of being deemed a bad parent, I will say that I will no doubt be engaged in observation of the people and the activities with an anthropological perspective in mind – a hazard of the trade, no doubt.  But it has me thinking that there are elements of observation that we often forget and it can be harder than we think.

When I’m sent to a setting, be it a country I’ve never visited before, a dinner party with a group I’ve never met, or even the zoo, one of the first things I do is some informal observation.  It is grounding and primes the mind for the fieldwork to come. In this sense, observation means watching and listening to people and trying to form some ideas about their beliefs, behavior, knowledge, and interactions.

This requires an attitude of openness to experience.  It means not taking anything for granted, no matter how seemingly mundane. It sounds trite, but it’s often useful to imagine that you are a visitor from another planet, and that you are visiting Earth for the first time. What do you notice about the humans? The buildings? The structure of a setting? Even the most trivial details are revealing if you forget, or try to forget, some of what you know. Of course, this isn’t entirely possible, so keep in mind that what you think and feel are as much part of the data set as the observations themselves – self-reflexivity is a marvelous tool.

With informal observation, you are always looking for something that might make a community different from others. Perhaps the difference is in products they can buy, not only what they have and how they use them.  Perhaps it is the way they talk to their children or spouses.  Perhaps it is their structuring of power. Remember that nothing is certain and notice anything that makes a community unusual to your own worldview.

But observation means nothing if you don’t recall what you experience. It’s not enough simply to observe people.  Recording is essential. I have found that the best way to do informal observation is to always carry a small notebook and pen. Yes, the camcorder and the camera are important, but writing things down and mapping an environment have a way of helping organize what is important as well as having the benefit of making you think about what you have missed. When you see or hear something interesting, I write it down.

It is also at this stage that models and theories begin to take shape. As I form theories, I write these down too, in the same notebook – usually in the form of questions. Whenever you start to form a theory about some possibility, look for evidence that will either confirm or oppose the theory. This will in turn lead to more questions and better observation.

That being said, there is a fine balance that must be struck. It’s very important not to jump to conclusions straight away, and to look for evidence on both sides of the question. Many people will form a theory without searching for opposing evidence, or they will head down a path that substantiates what they want to believe. The main difference between observation in normal life, and informal observation for research is that the researcher is always trying to seek the truth, such as it is, and to find out how far that truth can be extended.  Remember, this is the first stage in the research, not the end. This is exploration.

With that in mind, remember that for observation to be successful and useful, you have to go beyond observation, and ask people “Why do you do that?” You are not observing purely for the sake of observing, but to find out why people act as they do. It’s certainly something I’ll keep in mind at the zoo as I watch all the critters – human and nonhuman alike.

Coffee in Uganda, China and Beyond

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It was not hard to find a Starbucks or a Pacific Coffee Co. while walking around Hong Kong. Having such a large community of expats, tourists ­ not to mention that whole era of British occupation ­ the ability to order an extra tall soy latte en route to the office in Quarry Bay or after a night out in LKF seemed absolutely pedestrian. Visiting Shanghai, Shenzhen or Beijing, I would encounter the same ease of java procurement. It would have been easy for me to infer that China has an established coffee culture. I’d have been wrong.

In reality, most Chinese still stick to tea. It’s a culture and a tradition thousands of years old. Coffee shops cater to expats, tourists, businessmen and the bourgeoning middleclass looking to indulge in benign trappings of symbolic Western affluence. “Coffee” appeals to the young, the adventurous, and the marginally wealthy in large urban environments. I say “coffee” because, thought the category has grown rapidly in the last 10 years, that doesn’t always mean you’ll be finding roasted beans or espresso. Outside of a coffee shop, my requests for coffee would usually result in Nescafe¹ mixed with hot water or hot milk or a can of Mr. Brown. Outside of urban centers, you’ll be lucky if you can find even that.

The “coffee culture” that exists in most of China is defined by instant coffee. Wander into a great deal of Chinese grocers in the United States and you’ll still find Nescafe and cans of Mr. Brown. The same can be said, sadly, of eastern Africa. On my last trip to Uganda, where coffee has long been a cash crop (particularly Robusta), coffee was always served at meals. It was Nescafe. I was served brewed coffee from local beans once, and that was at a high-end resort catering to wealthy Kampala expats and tourists.

Congratulations to Nestle, you clearly know your market and have done well. To the rest of you looking for a comparable caffeinated status quo during your next foray abroad, my condolences. Coffee purveyors, small and large, take note: the increasing demand for coffee in non-traditional markets and cultures without a history of the sweetest (and bitterest) of beverages represents a new frontier of opportunity.

 

Matt

When Egos Rule Your Business

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Although we all like to claim that we do not care about things like our position in society or our status among our colleagues, the truth is we do. Some more than others. There’s nothing inherently wrong with feeding the ego, but it unfortunately it has a nasty habit of getting in the way. Our big thinkers, our movers and shakers within a company aren’t necessarily the best and the brightest – sometimes they’re simply the people with the loudest voices and the most flare for projecting the roles they assume. In these situations, big egos invade every team conversation, boardroom debate, marketing plan, client interaction, contract negotiation, employment interview and performance review. There’s no question it gets in the way and is a major cause of bad decision-making. Again, most of us strongly believe our ego is healthy, contributing to self-confidence, optimism and success. It drives entrepreneurial behavior. It produces competition and innovation. And indeed, most of us don’t have overinflated egos. However, we’re capable of letting them run amok and when this happens our personal success and organization’s performance pay the price.

David Marcum and Steven Smith write about the costs of ego in Egonomics (Fireside, 2007):

  • The person who develops an idea trumps the quality of that idea
  • Dismissal of team members lacking status
  • Hearing, but not listening
  • Failure to challenge status quo
  • Candid discussion saved for outside the meeting
  • Failures being buried and never mentioned again
  • Silos created and tolerated
  • Meetings being dominated by one or a few individuals
  • Fear of making mistakes or admitting them
  • Small ideas and no tolerance for risk

Companies can be populated with talented, high-IQ people with no shortage of vision, education, experience or good intentions, yet they may still have an undercurrent of out-of-control egos responsible for huge losses in productivity and profits. Power is a dangerous thing for design and innovation. Behavior, decisions and strategy become mired in self-aggrandizement and a sense of self-image that is baseless. Insights become inconvenient and strategies become just another example of “me too” thinking.

The result? Creative thinking and breakthrough ideas die in the womb. Businesses stagnate and eventually become irrelevant. And that’s no good for anyone.

Sampling: Why Individuals Don’t Matter

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We spend a lot of time talking about samples when talking with our clients.  Samples are constructed differently in ethnography than for focus groups or surveys. Ethnographers sample settings and interactions as much as individual people. The individual is rarely the unit of analysis.  Sample is defined in the social interaction and the contexts in which activities occur. Asking a person if, say, they have specific impressions of a brand of beer will doubt yield information.  Unfortunately, it’s simply nothing more than a first-hand account of what you get from a survey.  Interacting with a group of people as they move from bar, to dinner, to party will yield significantly more information about brands and the contexts of selection and use.

All too frequently, sample devolves into a discussion of validity, with a portion of the clients pointing fingers and declaring the shortcomings of the methods in question because, quite frankly, they in fact know precious little about statistics and the epistemological constructs around them.  But reliability and validity are by no means symmetrical.  It is possible to obtain perfect reliability with no validity, but perfect validity would assure perfect reliability because every observation would yield the complete and exact truth.  This notion is what leads to an obsession with “typing” individuals and limiting our ability to uncover new, meaningful insights.

Loosely speaking, “reliability” is the extent to which a measurement procedure yields the same answer however and whenever it is carried out; “validity” is the extent to which it gives the correct answer.  As an example, imagine 100 people participate in a survey on grocery shopping to determine the optimal placement of goods on the shelves, thereby increasing how quickly people get in and out of a store.  Regardless of the specific questions, the point is that the survey will produce statistically reliable data about individual units of analysis (or what I like to call “people”).  The questions it does not address are what people really do when they shop and why do they do it.  Understanding THAT requires thinking about the sample in terms of context, not individuals.

The number of individual participants involved depends on the relevant diversity of the target population. A skilled ethnographer may use multiple methods in the recruiting process and not rely only on professional recruiters. This different approach to sampling also means that sampling is often built as part of fieldwork, and refined once a team is on the ground and collecting data. This can, and often does, scare a client absolutely shitless.  After all, they are working from psychographic models and segmentation schemes, all the while worrying about which of the other stakeholders will call the work out as a way of currying favor or establishing greater power in the boardroom.  But, the fact is that while statistical work is valid in many respects, it is only one way of envisioning the world.  When faced with the complexities of human interaction, these schemas break down.  In practice, the power of an ethnographic process lies in uncovering unexpected patterns, not in reifying the segmentation work that has already been done. While an ethnographer will no doubt have specific sampling parameters from a client, they should also be able to articulate why sampling may change once the research begins. If they can’t, then you’ve wasted your money.