Tag Archives: brand strategy

Doing Away With Disciplines?

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When it comes to explaining what business ethnographers do the first hurdle we often face entails adequately describing the disciplinary substance of anthropological and sociological practice to business professionals not necessarily versed in any aspects of social science. Ethnography is a buzz word in most business circles, but it is more than that to those of us who have spent our professional lives in the field. Before a company, a product development team, anyone will read or listen to what we put before them, they need to understand what it is we do.  One of the first steps in the process of reconciling what we do in the context of the team is to determine what boundaries we set for ourselves within the nature of the work itself and how that translates into the business environment.  The prospective researcher must examine the nature of the boundaries between and across disciplines and determine where he or she fits into these definitional categories.

The understanding of what anthropological fieldwork, specifically ethnography, means and is capable of becomes further blurred when the clients and employers attempt to make some sort of distinction between the researchers of various social science disciplines that may be involved in the research process (in this case a corporate environment), all of whom may be engaged in some capacity in an anthropologically-oriented project.  Added to this is the fact that employers have similar categorical constructs for other disciplines.  For example, psychology has a vague definition attributed to it by non-psychologists and often all of its subdivisions are compressed under a single, umbrella classification. The problem lies in communicating an understanding of the research capabilities to the multitude of others who will need to either turn the data into products, services, etc., or those with the power to supply funding for research and application.  The solution lies in developing multidisciplinary teams with a range of perspectives that can generate ideas and methods capable of addressing an assortment of client perspectives.  It also means developing teams with a keen interest in learning new skills, new ways of looking at the world, an appreciation for different methodological perspectives, and an ability to turn the abstract into the concrete – in short, the ability to make money.

While it varies from company to company and client to client, the boundaries that define anthropology as a select discipline frequently break down in the business setting.  There are no academic review boards, few disciplinarily-specific journals, and essentially no departments based on established traditions or theoretical leanings.  Departments within an organization are typically functional and/or reflect a general need for information. There is little time for the nuances and peculiarities of individual disciplines, and no time for theoretical models – results are measured in terms that reflect the bottom line.  While we certainly have an impact on the nature of how business is conducted, in the final analysis the client or employer is responsible for creating profits, products, and services.  Just as it is unrealistic to assume that the bulk of anthropologists will ever learn the subtle differences between the various technical strata of electrical engineering, it is unrealistic to assume the consumers of our work will ever come to understand or care that deeply about the methodological and epistemological boundaries between social science disciplines.

Within the group of people tasked with performing certain functions or research projects for a company, disciplinary boundaries mean just as little, though for somewhat different reasons.  At the crux of the matter is determining whether the various members of a research team are understood as “insert discipline X here” or as part of a single organism trying to get a job done. For the other members of the research team, the boundaries and the constructs we create have little relevance and can hinder the process of getting the necessary work done. I would contend that a large part of this desired retention of boundaries can be related fear often associated with moving into the unknown and the desire to hold onto something old, something that defines us as us and not part of the new world of which we become a part when entering the business environment.  In a disciplinarily enclosed space it may be easier to maintain boundaries and conclude that while other disciplines may in fact be informed by similar theories and techniques, there is typically less need to mix as freely as is the case in the business environment; maintaining disciplinary purity is, in fact cherished in academia.  In the business environment shedding disciplinary titles is often encouraged, if not demanded outright. For a multidisciplinary approach to be successful the various team members must understand what the other members of the team do in terms of research, how they do it, why they do what they do, and also how they think, insofar as it is possible, and how those skills may overlap to produce something unique to that setting.

While anthropology has a long history of work outside the academic setting, its involvement as a daily part of the business process is fairly recent. There are of course exceptions to the rule, but until recently anthropologists were seen as the “new” thing.  The longer a discipline or methodological perspective is part of the commercial world, the less likely it is for boundaries to be maintained.  This is not to say that those boundaries will be completely lost.  Of course they will not.  The moniker of anthropologist lends understanding about how and why we approach projects, problems, and data as we do.  However, the boundaries will probably continue to blur and social scientists of all stripes in the business environment will be more readily defined in terms of the their final products rather than their disciplinary groundings.  Are we creating “hybrid” disciplines as a result of multidisciplinary work?  The answer is most probably yes.  Of course, this is neither an indictment of nor a call for hybridity.  It is simply a recognition that the tenets of business are frequently such that maintaining disciplinary continuity becomes overwhelmingly a reflection of the both individual researcher’s desire to maintain a separate, bounded identity, and the ability of the team of which he or she is a part to recognize that person as a fully integrated part of the “tribe” rather than as an outsider.

Of course there are times when it is best to keep a single disciplinary approach or set of monodisciplines, just as there are times when it makes sense to build teams of fieldworkers and other times to go it alone.  Anthropology’s greatest contribution to business is the introduction of the culture construct as a means of identifying shared human experience and the ways that culture impacts consumption, use, and product development.  Expertise is expertise and maintaining disciplinary control may help maintain focus both for the specific research and the various members of the team.

The question still remains as to what makes a project multidisciplinary as opposed to being comprised of several monodisciplines.  There will, of course, be instances where the work is singularly monodisciplinary; a test meant to determine the ergonomics of a new shovel design may have little need for a multiple disciplinary perspective.   More complex problems typically involve a number of people, however, and require doing more than simply handing the results off to the client once the work is done.  This is a significant boon if all of the members of a team feel they have a voice and are willing to incorporate multiple perspectives into their understandings of the project.  If this does not occur, the result is a fractured mix of varying opinions vying for dominance in the final report and list of recommendations.  A multidisciplinary project can be defined through how methodologies are built, how the knowledge is shared.

As stated, the length and scope of the project typically means more time in preparing for the research itself.  Multidisciplinary teams must work together to shape the numerous sub-goals within the project and determine how these sub-goals are best interwoven to produce a unified vision.  From the outset this implies that all the members of the team work openly to provide input on how data will be gathered, shared, and discussed.  The first step is to determine who will lead what phases of the research, how the lead may change through time, and how the final output will be crafted and displayed. Involvement from beginning to end (and with an implied extension into the product and/or service as it moves through its lifecycle) must be complete insofar as each voice must feel it is being heard and suggestions are openly assessed and probed by the group as a whole.  As the project moves from one phase into another, for example, from exploratory research through concept development through usability testing through marketing, each team member needs to reinvest him or herself in the project and provide input from their distinct perspectives.

What Insights Come From Your Toilet? Good Ones.

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I am in Las Vegas this week as a judge for the OMA Awards. One would think my eyes and ears would be riveted to signs and displays. Outside the Global Shop Expo, I should be focusing my anthropological heart and mind on gambling, the spatial layout of the resort/casinos, the press of human life as in decends into unabashed hedonism.  And in many ways these are indeed the places my mind has indeed gone to, but they are not the primary places.  No, after half a day at the Sands and the other half at the Bellagio, my mind goes to toilets and bathrooms.

The flush toilet is recognized in the West as an icon of modernity. It is 
often the first thing that pops to mind when thinking about the bathroom, 
but the thing we discuss the least ­ it is often hidden within larger bathrooms and is the last object we want to display when we give the tour of 
the home. Even with the lack of willingness to talk about toileting, we take 
the toilet as a symbol of our civilized nature. Toilets, like basins and 
baths, are often in attractive colors or designs. We tend to believe that 
our toileting habits are the best, as are our toilets, and that they reflect 
progress, hygienic superiority and the civilizing nature of our world-view. 
But interestingly, in the 1930s only 30% of American houses had indoor flush 
toilets. In the economic boom following WWII a fully-fitted bathroom, then 
later multiple bathrooms, became standard even in modest American homes.

Sometimes aspiring families in poor countries or countries enamored with 
the image of the West will install a porcelain pedestal in their home to 
demonstrate modernity, status and progress. The toilet gives them the upper hand in terms of social capital. They may even install the toilet even if 
there is no piped water connected to make it work or a sewer system in which 
to deposit “the goods.”

Here in Las Vegas, they are symbols of opulence and leisure. Materials, colors and even sounds are orchestrated with the precision and artistry of Mozart. And it is not just Las Vegas – there is a men’s room in Hong Kong that is something of a tourist attraction because of its striking view of the city. The point is that bathrooms, toilets and plumbing are more than they perhaps seem.

In all cases, excreta must be completely disassociated from the individual generating them. They should be invisible (even unscented where possible) and above all anonymous. The system of flush toilets we use lead to communal sewers and make the separation of the individual the waste not only possible, but mandatory. Toilets provide a strange, powerful link to a 
shared identity where everyone not only poops, but that poop becomes part of 
the collective identity, both physical and metaphysical.

So why does any of this matter? It matters because we often stop looking when we seek out insights about the uncomfortable or the mundane. Ask a person about their toileting habits and the answers will be half truths. Ethnography is often thought of in terms of interviewing with a brief home tour, but toileting provides an example as to why asking people about their preferred product benefits doesn’t work. You have to expand the realm of inquiry and the means by which you collect data. If you want to understand people’s “shit” you have to visit public bathrooms, talk to the kids, etc. Similarly, if you want to understand the motivations behind buying a car, or a beer, or anything else, you have to expand the scope of inquiry to tease out those pieces of information that would normally go overlooked.  In part, it’s because people don’t know what they don’t know, but it’s also because we often take our own cultural practices for granted. With something as simple as bathroom behavior, it’s easy for us to get lost in our own worldview and stop searching. Digging deeper reminds us that the mundane is often more complex than it seems. Understanding that complexity means understanding new sources of revenue, innovation and branding potential.

Just Give Them the Facts and You Won’t Sell a Thing

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Marketers and product developers spend a great deal of time talking about why the thing they’re selling matters, why it’s better than the next guy’s thing.  They quote facts and features and minutia to make their point because, as all good business people know, people respond to fact.  Here’s how things would work in a perfect world: You and your competitors are pushing soap, or tires, or TVs, or, well you get the idea.  To prove your superiority, you pull out a piece of information so precise, so compelling, so perfect, that the consumer is swayed and decides to buy your goods.  They become life-long devotees and advocates for you. You and your team make millions for your company and become the saviors of the day.

And this probably has happened in some cases, as long as it was a product  that neither consumer nor the person buying it cared that much about.  Think toilet bowl cleaners.  But if it is a product or service that has deeper, emotionally charged components, then it probably hasn’t.  We like to think that our facts are enough to sway people because if they’re shopping for, say, a television they are shopping for technology.  But the TV is much more complex than that – it is status symbol, it is entertainer, it is baby sitter, it is the digital hearth around which the family gathers much as it did around the campfire in the not so distant past.  Facts are a necessity, but they are not the most compelling element when trying to persuade someone to buy your things.  Regardless of our belief that we’re all wonderfully rational, the truth is we are not.

Why is this the case?  Well, according to one theory (and they are indeed competing theories about this), we didn’t evolve communication skills just to improve our skills at the hunt.  We evolved to build arguments as a form of verbal bullying rather than a method of spreading correct information.  And competing marketing messages are just that, a form of argumentation.  They are a means of bending others to your way of thinking.  In other words, there are two reasons for a company trying to persuade a consumer to pay attention to them, 1) because they actually want to get you to buy the right thing and 2) because they’re trying to establish dominance over you. Not surprisingly, we understand this at a gut level and interpret leading with a series of facts as a way of establishing control.  We don’t react negatively to it, but we tune it out.

Think about the way people treat the two sides of a political debate like teams.  People are aware that much of what they have to say and what they support is simply absurd dogma.  But they embrace otherwise extremist ideas with remarkable vigor.  Now, note how may of the positions debated involve people jumping into an issue in which they have nothing at stake.  They are tribalizing, joining a team. That is know as confirmation bias. We read a news article that supports what we believe, and we add it to the “I’m right about this” column. Frequently this same model applies to the products we buy and the brands we love.  For example, I once had a friend swear that he could hear tones with his Bose speakers he couldn’t hear with other brands.  The problem was that the tones to which he was referring were literally impossible for the human ear to detect.  It was no more possible than it would be for me to say I can details of the Crab Nebula through my binoculars.  But, rather than recognize this fact, he created ways for dismissing the science – the brand had a different appeal than just functions and features.

What this means for anyone tasked with developing a marketing campaign, it doesn’t matter how much you talk about the thing your selling in terms of facts and figures.  We are hard-wired to remain entrenched in the brands and products that speak to deeper emotion bonds, cultural norms and psychological triggers.  If you don’t understand the more visceral side of your consumer, then all the facts in the world won’t do a thing. In fact, they may come to resent you.