Tag Archives: market research

Remembering Ethnography

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If you want to innovate, you have to look beyond the problem at the world in which that problem exists. Ethnography is about looking at the world as a complex system and understanding what elements you can affect.  If you want to understand the opportunities for your product or service, then you need to think about how it fits into the bigger picture of people’s lives. Ethnography provides a real-world way of looking at a problem or opportunity, applying social and cultural understanding to the topic.  What this means is that ethnography provides a wide range of answers that, if analyzed properly, go well beyond the tactical, the sensational, and the superficial. A true ethnography includes a rigorous process of data collection and analysis using the scientific method, which insures that findings are based on a careful examination of the data and not a focus on the most dramatic video clips or quotes. The risk in marketing and new product development is very real: misinterpret what people need, say and do and your idea will fail, costing you not only lost revenue but also lost brand standing. What do ethnographers do differently than other kinds of market researchers who study what other people’s lives are like?

Ethnography is a real-world look at a problem or opportunity, applying social and cultural understanding to the topic. It evaluates what people actually say and do through observation and interviewing techniques. It uncovers not only what people do but why they do it. Ethnography does not assume that people are lying during an interview, but that their perceptions and ideals may not correspond to the realities of their daily life.  People often “weed out” information that they believe is extraneous, may be embarrassing or that they simply forgot.  The skilled ethnographer samples the “context” surrounding the topic at hand; paying attention to human behavior from many angles and uncovering opportunities that might otherwise be overlooked.

  • Ethnography is always inductive. This means that our approach to research is exploratory and does not start with a hypothesis. An inductive approach takes best advantage of ethnography’s spontaneity and its potential for discovery, for finding those hidden discoveries that we, our participants and our clients, have never thought of before. Ethnography links the little details of life to larger cultural patterns, treating the consumer, the shopper and the passerby as part of a complex adaptive system. So layouts of retail space, front yards, and food storage are not seen as ephemeral but are linked to big issues of world view, consumption and social organization.
  • Everything is data. The furniture, how people decorate, what they throw away, what people say and what people don’t say, it is all data. There’s substance in every inch of someone’s home, in every movement, in every glance.
  • Useful ethnography is more than observing or conducting a good interview. It is much more than that, and it has to be  grounded in some knowledge of what to look at, what to observe, and what to record.  Just coming home with a stack of videotape about, say, how breakfast is done in a culture is not ethnography. Good ethnography lies in the analysis and the ability to work collaboratively with other researchers (qualitative and quantitative), marketers and business development teams to create new ways of solving problems and understanding your business.
  • Finally, ethnography is one link in a process.  It is not a panacea and should be used as part of a larger discovery and innovation process.  Work may begin with explorative ethnography, but ideas need to eventually be built, tested and quantified.

What this all means is that ethnography aims to tease out the whole story behind a product, activity or service. The benefit of ethnography’s holism is a multi-dimensional understanding of consumers that lends to genuine innovation. Having this holistic understanding ultimately helps reduce risk even as it sparks radical new ideas for design, marketing and business development.  And that leads to a better bottom line.

 

Anecdotes vs. Insights: Analysis Matters

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Why does a world-class chef eat Spam? Why does a man in his late twenties, making over half a million dollars a year, choose to be “poor” on the weekends? And most important, why does it matter to a business? It is important, quite simply, because understanding the deep, resounding issues, practices, and beliefs of people provides an advantage in an increasingly complex and competitive markets.  Gone are the days of shouting a product’s benefits.  Gone are the days when is was good enough to be clever in an advertising strategy.  Understanding the complexities of behavior and meaning change the way a company talks to its customers. It isn’t enough to know what people do (or say they do), you need to know why.

Ethnography is the buzz in market research these days, but fieldwork isn’t as simple as it might seem. Although ethnographic research is a remarkably powerful tool for marketing if conducted properly, the challenge is in how to uncovering deep, often latent mode practice and meaning, then convert findings that go well beyond surface-level observations or sensational statements into something that can be used to innovate and sell products and services. In other words, it isn’t enough to go out and conduct a good interview. An ethnographer worth his or her weight in salt is one who learns to see beyond the surface and find information and patterns that the untrained eye might overlook.  This isn’t to say that legitimate ethnographers hold the key to some special knowledge or map of the human psyche.  It is to say that legitimate ethnographers have learned through training and experience to see everything as data.  And legitimate business ethnographers have learned to translate that information into something more than interesting information; they’ve learned to translate that information into something useful and applicable to their clients.

In the last few years, ethnography has shifted from a novel and often misunderstood methodology to a do-it-or-die necessity in many marketers’ and product designers’ tool kits. Ethnography has a logical appeal for business clients; market intelligence born from the homes and hearts of customers. It’s an ethnographer’s job to talk to and observe people, as they go about their daily routines, using sociology and anthropology methods for data collection and analysis – giving clients true-to-life, informed insights and a firsthand understanding of their customers. But insights come from more than simply recounting what was seen and heard, they come from having the analytical tools to make sense of the seen/heard and unseen/unheard. In other words, anyone can conduct an interview or note where people store excess toilet paper in their homes, but not everyone can dissect the encounter and identify symbolic, functional and culturally mitigated actions. And this leads back to the first point.

Relying on surface-level impressions leads to short-sighted solutions to marketing problems. If “hipsters” are drinking PBR, it isn’t enough to say the beer is a brand badge – that’s stating the obvious. No, what matters is uncovering the contexts that define “cool,” how the beer fits into general drinking rituals, what it means to be part of a special group, how objects become visual markers for subcultures, and similar deeper issues. If you understand those sorts of things, which emerge from having a solid grounding in the theoretical models of trained social scientists, you have insights that your competitors do not. If you don’t understand those sorts of things, all you have is a collection of anecdotes.

Writing Case Studies, Not White Papers

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When we were in college, particularly those of us who came out of the social sciences, we tended to write volumes when given the task of reporting. I recall regularly churning out 50 pages or more every week at times.  For better or for worse, many researchers, ethnographers in particular, have come to think of themselves as descriptive interpreters, which often leads to rich but dense texts.  Our role has been to translate cultural practices and allow those people who consume our work determine what, if anything, should be done.  We tell a story and provide information that is deep and expansive. And that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It can, however, get in the way of writing short pieces meant to sell or skills and engage readers with little time or patience.  When it comes to case studies, nine times out of ten the reader is looking for information that is quite literal and instructional.  Ambiguity and/or involved anecdotal descriptions are usually rejected in favor of what is more concrete. Rather than looking for a white paper, they are looking for simplicity and proof that the research had applicable results.

White papers are detailed, often lengthy descriptions of methods, variables, problems, outcomes. They are meant to expose the reasoning and rationale behind a position, a problem or a generalized topic. The point is, they are designed to be consumed with a higher degree of reflection on the part of the reader. Case studies, in contrast, are (or should be) direct and brief. They should convince the client to seek more information and take the next step, namely, engagement with the author or company that produced them.  The case studies most potential clients want need to be short, simple, to the point and entertaining. So, other than being brief, what makes for a good case study?

It starts with understanding why we’re writing what we’re writing. It needs to entertain and be thought provoking, but it also serves a purpose for the author. Good content isn’t just fun to read. It should set in motion a sequence of visitor thoughts and actions that ultimately lead to a sale. Case studies are meant to get business, not just enlighten or entertain. The people reading the case study assume you’re writing them to drive business. If you don’t hook them, they assume you’re incompetent or you’re wasting their time. Case studies are the shiny-shiny of authorship.

Before you begin writing, organize your information around two basic principle: what was the business pain and what were the results. reveal real business pain

We often spend more time than is necessary on the way we went about finding a solution rather than thinking through why a solution was needed in the first place. Or, we don’t link the process to the outcomes.  Shorter is better and remembering that everything needs to relate to the Why and So What will help focus the story.

If the objective is to showcase your organization’s ability to generate awareness, revenue or innovation, it needs to equate capabilities with results.  Once the two fundamental points are defined, the story being told needs to be broken out into three simple elements:

  1. Issue
  2. Solution
  3. Results

A well-written case study should:

  1. Build suspense and be provocative: State the problem in terms that make the readers stop in their tracks and want to know what is to come. Simply stating problem in dry, mechanical terms doesn’t attract the reader. Set the stage with language that makes people want to see an outcome – an outcome they can’t predict.
  2. Solve a specific business problem (company X needed to know Y): Tell the reader what needed to be done, how you solved their specific problem and why your process was different from (and better than) your competition. Simply saying something along the lines of “we used an ethnographic approach to uncover insights…” won’t engage and it won’t set you apart.
  3. Solve a generalizable business problem (make money or save money): Once you tell the reader the specific problem you solved, tell them what ultimately matters most; how you made the client money or helped them save money. If the results can be quantified, all the better. The point here is that we often actually manage to overlook this part.  We give examples of outcomes that are often interesting and inspiring, but we fail to tie them back to the money.
  4. Have a satisfying conclusion: Resolve the tension that the story built at the beginning of the case study.  Don’t simply leave the reader with numbers, give them a sense of emotional resolution.
So, as an example:

What does a company do when it’s flagship product isn’t making the money it once did despite huge advertising budgets? It figures out how to talk about what it makes and sells in ways that have never been considered before. It embraces new markets. But to do that, it needs to define those markets in ways their competitors hadn’t. It needs to rethink who it is. 

As part of a brand repositioning and product development initiative, [the client] needed to develop a better understanding of how [lite beer] was understood and used in context by Latinos. They needed on-the-ground, experience-rich information. The response was an in-depth ethnographic project spanning multiple geographic areas and seasons. This wasn’t just interviews – it meant attending rodeos, picnics, BYOB restaurants, bars and birthday parties to gather insights about symbolism, rituals and uses of the product.

The research steered the client down a completely new road of product positioning, saving them millions by developing a campaign strategy and messaging system that were in line with what consumers do, not just what they say they do.  Unlike their competitors, [the client] were able to use the insights uncovered to identify entirely new channels for sales and promotions. Ultimately, sales saw a 6% increase in the first year of the new campaign.
Not a bad end result. Sometimes doing research right leads to big things. 

This is hardly ideal and its quality could no doubt be argued. But it does tell the story. And for someone simply trying to narrow the field from thousands of vendors to just a few in the space of an afternoon, it is considerably easier to read than a full-blown white paper. And that is more likely to help you make a sale.

 

 

 

 

Speaking to Business, Not Academics

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Why do ethnographers find their work dismissed in many business settings?  Because we don’t always practice what we preach.  Once we land projects, we often fail to do an assessment of the most crucial cultural sample of all – the client. Vast numbers of pages, complex discussions of theoretical frameworks, and jargon-laden language are understood as hallmarks of academic writing.  Whether this actually improves our performance is contestable, but as we progress from undergraduate through graduate programs, through our careers, the length of our texts and the intellectual mass of specialized terminology as a rule grow in what seem to be exponential degrees.  The most avid consumers of ethnographies have traditionally been people engaged in fieldwork (or who aspire to it), people who hold deep interests in the discipline and who are willing to read what we create.  We learn to write and present for people that have the patience and frequently the need for lengthy, specialized, in-depth text, not for the fast-paced corporate world, where quick and to-the-point presentations are the expected norm.

Assessing the audiences can be thought of as an extended, ongoing mini-ethnography. Thinking in terms of an ongoing ethnography gives the researcher important insights into what it means to be a participant within a given context and allows him or her to begin formulating ideas about communicative tenets, power, and perceived sub-groups within the organization.  The processes we would employ if doing fieldwork in a more “traditional” setting must be employed, particularly during the earlier phases of a project.

Of course, the criteria we construct for identifying a community can be extremely varied and range from power relationships, racial distinction, job type, or any number of other theoretical stances.  The point being that the criteria we would employ for any field study must be used within not only the largest manifestation of the organization of which we are part, but also the multitude of other community divisions that occur throughout the organization in its totality.  We assume that the people we find ourselves among constitute a “community” (with varying degrees and levels of situated identity and subgroup allegiances) and that community must be sustained by systematic observations. We look for and expect to find commonalities in behavior, mutually intelligible habits, social activities, and modes of communication, etc.

In terms of presentation styles in the corporate world, sociolinguistic models of adaptation and understanding apply themselves well to understanding what and what not to do.  Learning the “local” meanings and methods of communication to the speech community is essential. This applies to the interdisciplinary team as well as the various client audiences. “The greatest value of learning the language of another people does not come from being able to interview informants without interpreters or from providing native terms in ethnographic writings; it comes from being able to understand what natives say and how they say it when they are conversing with each other.” (Witherspoon 1977, pp. 7)  In short, learning the communicative norms and processes of the individual groups allows us to better grasp and define our audiences, adapting our methods of presentation to be understandable and, and perhaps more importantly, acceptable according to their world views.

In the business environment short, direct modes of communication with little or no embellishment are standard practice.  This is not to say that a lengthy, detailed report is unnecessary.  It frequently is an expected part of the package.  However, the lengthy piece is often little more than window dressing for most of the people we address.  It is meant to back up higher-level statements.  This undoubtedly sounds cynical but it is not meant to diminish the detailed report or argue that analytical rigor and detailed information has no purpose.  Indeed, analytical rigor and depth of information are precisely what separate us from simple interviewers.  It is simply meant to point out that levels of detail serve different functions depending on who sees them.  A “Just the facts ma’am” process of communication is most frequently the best way to get your foot in the door – hit them with the big points and get them to interact and ask questions.

Inevitably, understanding and navigating this change of audience from disciplinarily and/or the academically bound almost always means abbreviating the content or restructuring it so, for better or worse, the fine points and ambiguities of the information are lost or downplayed for the immediate consumers of the research findings.  In most cases, the readers (or viewers of a presentation) are unfamiliar with our jargon, largely disinterested in the finer points of the theories involved in the data acquisition and the subtleties of human interaction that we often find so engrossing. This does not imply that the conclusions we draw be “dumbed down,” but rather that we must synthesize and distill the information so it can be readily applied to the needs of the consumers of that data.

In the end, we are writers and interpreters of the complexities of behavior and culture, romantic as that may sound.  The principal tools in our “tool kit” are theory, pen, and paper (or camcorder and PC).  Culture is created by the construction of text, the video, etc.; it is not a distinct object of scientific inquiry though we often assume that this is the case.

Several points should also be made very clear. First, each business community (and each company as well) will have their own specific patterns of communication.  However, as a whole businesses generally expect presentations that are succinct and short.

Second, communication styles, communities of practice, and expectations will differ from place to place.  The presentation expectations in Paris are significantly different from those in the Omaha.  While it is possible to think of Business as a distinct cultural process, it is important that this is a construct we impose to make our lives simpler, but business culture, such as it is, is subject to the historical, economic, and sociolinguistic realities of the larger culture in which it is couched. Ultimately, this means doing yet another internal ethnography even if it only touches on surface-level communication practices.

Finally, while we do explore it in great depth here, external perceptions of a researcher’s professional experience, expectations about how a scientist “should” sound, and division of power all work to influence how we present our findings and how readily they will be received. Suffice it to say, when determining audience needs and accepted norms of communication, it is important to reflect on the nature of power and expectation based in the local folk taxonomy, e.g. what is a “scientist” or an “anthropologist” and how does that impact expectations of what we present.           

The fact that anthropologists are increasingly in demand leaves us holding at least some of the cards.  The fact that business people are coming to understand that disciplinary training is in fact necessary to effectively perform and interpret data (in the sense of all acquired knowledge), that expertise is in fact more than a catch phrase, gives us some degree of clout and places anthropologists in a better position to redefine the emerging lexicon of business, of which words like “ethnography”, “culture”, and “anthropology” are an undeniable component. But it means learning to communicate these ideas in a language that fits their context, not ours.

 

Hire Me: “Selling” Good Ethnography

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The term “ethnography” has been used fairly loosely and expectations about the work and final outcomes vary as much as the people calling themselves ethnographers. Businesses have embraced ethnography with mixed reactions and mixed results.  Ethnography has become as much a $10 word for those who feel at ease interviewing people in a “natural” setting as it has a legitimate, systematic meaning of learning.  As I’ve said before, trained ethnographers do more than talk with people – they rely on a set of analytical tools that take experience and specialized training.

Unfortunately, we rarely sell this or explain why it matters to the people who hire us. The fact of the matter is that we rarely address business people by saying “hire me because…” in a straight forward way.  I’ll be the first to say I don’t believe in the idea of simply laying out a capabilities deck and pushing the hard sell. Question-based selling is a much better bet because it is, I contend, focused on establishing a partnership with the client and helping solve their problems (rather than defining self-serving opportunities).  However, I also contend that it is beneficial to practitioners and buyers alike to understand what it is we do and to differentiate how we, meaning anyone selling ethnography, will make them money, increase brand equity, etc. Before a client decides to use an ethnographic approach to answer a research question, it is imperative to know what to expect from a provider.  And that falls to us to explain it. 

What Is It We Do?

Ethnography provides a real-world way of looking at a problem or opportunity, applying social and cultural understanding to the topic.  What this means is that ethnography provides a wide range of answers that, if analyzed properly, go well beyond the tactical, the sensational, and the superficial. What that means to a business, and something we should be more bold about stating, is defining new opportunities for revenue. Far to often we leave the message at the theoretical or deliverable levels without explaining how the work will be translated into actions.  We fail to explain why good methodology and good analysis is important. Providing real-world examples of how our work has been used, vivid accounts with readily defined outcomes, is important but so is articulating how we got there is perhaps more so.  This isn’t to say we bore clients with jargon and detailed explanations of every step of the analysis process, but it is to say we tell them the underlying framework and thinking processes that allowed us to go from findings to insights and recommendation to results that impacted the bottom line.  And that brings us to the second point.

A true ethnography includes a rigorous process of data collection and analysis using the scientific method.  This insures that findings are based on a careful examination of the data, not opinions or sensationalism. For anyone who prides themselves on the quality of their work, analyzing  ethnographic data is not simply a matter of compiling anecdotal information. Analysis is systematic and relies on set of conceptual and theoretical tools. Being able to articulate these tools should be an central element of how we sell our services.  An ethnographer should be able to talk about their analytical process and provide details about how they go about making sense of the data they collect.  Should we bore the client with all the details? Probably not. But we should be able to succinctly explain the rationale behind how we gather and make sense of data. Again, this comes back to a simple point – it differentiates the practitioner and legitimizes the work. It articulates the quality of work and therefore the quality of the insights.

Listening, Not Preaching

Finally, and perhaps the most obvious, is to focus on the client’s needs.  Why are we in the room?  Taking the time to differentiate ourselves along lines of methodology, analysis and results is important but means nothing if what we are doing is simply talking about ourselves.  Every time we talk with an existing or potential client we are conducting a mini-ethnography of sorts.  Rather than selling our services we need to uncover what the client wants and needs – not just what they tell us they want and need, but what the subtext tells us. Selling anything has become increasingly difficult over the last decade.
Prospects have less time but decision makers are receiving more sales calls than ever before. Buyers are often better educated about various competing methodologies than ever before. Clients don’t need information from us as much as they need vendors to help them define their problems and uncover solutions.

A good ethnographer will work with stakeholders to plan a research project that is designed around your business objective. This includes having a willingness to challenge clients.  This isn’t about being confrontational, it’s about making sure the client gets the best research plan and insights possible. Being willing to do what is right rather than what is expedient is a significant selling point that we often overlook.  It differentiates the practitioner and legitimizes the work. It articulates the quality of work and therefore the quality of the insights. Honesty ultimately has its advantages, not necessarily today but over the long run. The more we can articulate our desire for a collaborative partnership rather than just a check, the better we position ourselves to say “hire me.”

 

 

 

 

Serving Up Findings: What Insight Is For Dinner?

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It is worth noting again that the people employing us are generally indifferent, at least initially, to our concerns about holistic approaches, theoretical positions, etc., often because they are not familiar with anthropology as a field of inquiry.  The information we provide must be made familiar enough to draw them in.  If this means simplifying our findings, then the risk is worth the reward.

In the eyes of the corporate consumer, there is no such thing as anthropological research. The first step in successfully entering the business community is understanding the natives’ emic vocabulary.  This isn’t to say that we abandon our own language in favor of another, but it does mean understanding how and why we translate what we say into something meaningful.  A business executive wants market research, futures forecasting, strategic planning advice, new product design, packaging design, or some form of business oriented information.  The anthropological aspect of the research is only tangential in as much as it can bring fresh insight to the situation.

“Anthropology,” “ethnography,” and “culture” have meaning insofar as they vaguely represent ways of gathering and contextualizing information that can be readily applied to specific business situations.  Consequently, it is imperative that we understand the language of the “native” and explain anthropological methods and findings in ways that will be easily understood.

“This audience treats fieldwork as merely a method among methods, and while normally respectful of the work, this audience judges it by how well it informs their own set of interests.  These readers are not reading ethnography to be entertained, challenged, or enlightened about the nature of social science.  They wish only to be informed about certain facts the fieldworker has unearthed” (VanMaanen  1988: 30).

Our work is, regardless of the setting, meant for utilization by our peers and our employers.  Discussing work done in a meat processing town, the following analogy was brilliantly stated:

“…workers extract information from live animals and then transform it into words and numbers, which are in turn built into new narratives.  These are further processed into texts, which are then published (hopefully) for consumption (Van Maanen’s third ethnographic moment) by professional colleagues and others.  They, too, chew our words.  We want readers to swallow, digest, and be nourished by them.  But there are times they spit them out, only to chew us up instead.” (Erickson and Stull  1998)

With this in mind, we cannot forget that we produce a product for consumption by a wide range of people with specific needs.  While it may be tempting to produce text that reflects our disciplinary history, we must recognize that to do so may well backfire, leaving a bad taste in the mouths of our employers.  Making the text palatable for general consumption allows us to eventually change the tastes of our readers.

 

Gavin

5 Strengths of Emerging Agencies

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Times are hard in the marketing and advertising world and there seems to be consensus that things won’t be getting easier. The old agency model is on the road to extinction, but no on seems quite sure how to survive. There is agreement that agencies need to adapt and transform from “integrated ad agencies,” to some new type of organization that is defined by broad thinking, flexibility and a more strategic approach to problem solving. The problem is that this sort of thing is easier to talk about than to achieve. Becoming skilled in conversation marketing, insights generation and digital marketing requires more than the addition of new skill sets inside the agency, it requires a fundamental shift in how we think and operate. Whether you are an agency trying to reinvent yourself or a company in search of a more effective vendor, it is more important than ever to think about how you will promote your brand in a meaningful, sustainable way.

Doing that means working less on a one-sided story and more on creating experiences. Experiences invite participation and engages people on emotional, rational, and cultural levels.  They inspire people to drag their friends along and share the experience with the world. Experiences can exist as a webpage or phone app. But doing this requires a different kind of thinking and an agency that is willing to throw off its typical processes and embrace something new. So what are agencies to do?

1. Change the structure of the team

You can hand off elements of an engagement from team to team, but the result will be a continuation of the same old thing. If you want to conceive and execute powerful customer experiences, you need the researchers, creatives, strategists, and interactive designers working hand in hand throughout the entire process. Hand-offs result in muddied interpretations and siloed thinking. Getting teams to work together and share ideas in an iterative way is absolutely essential.  This means developing teams based less on function and more on their passions, flexibility, and willingness to communicate in an ongoing way. This means getting everyone involved from the start. It used to be that everyone waited until the creative team emerged from isolation with the ”big” idea (the message, the spot, the tagline.)  If you get everyone working together from the day one the solution will be more than an ad, it will transcend any one medium.

2. Be genuinely interdisciplinary

Having a broad set of skills on which to draw does not make an agency interdisciplinary. Not everyone needs to be an expert in every discipline, but they need to understand the basics. More importantly, people need to feel comfortable sharing thoughts and ideas without fear of being dismissed by others. They need to be encouraged to have a voice. One simple way to do this is to have client team members sit and work near each other, not in departmental sections of the office.  Don’t isolate departments. Another way to encourage this is to have a shared work space, such as a wall, devoted to sharing ideas and insights. This encourages people to engage in a discussion rather than falling back on the old, familiar way of doing things.

3. Start with the user, consumer, etc.

It may sound obvious, but putting the user, consumer, or target of any stripe at the heart of the solution is crucial. This is easier said than done and it is easy to forget who the user is when we work in isolation. Anything we create, be it a product, an experience, a campaign, or a business strategy, starts and ends with the person, or persons, we’re trying to engage with.  This means understanding a customer’s relationship with more than the brand. It means understanding how they view the world, the multiple reasons behind why they shop, what their social networks are, etc. In other words, start with what is important to the user in the broadest sense and create according to how your brand fits in with their identity and cultural norms.

4. Re-think the creative brief

The creative brief is a relic. With the exception of a few tweaks here and there it has remained unchanged for years. It clarifies the question, “What do we want to say?” but it rarely asks why we want to say it or what the consumer wants and needs. It is better to answer questions like, “How will we create brand advocacy?”  “What things does the customer need to hear from their point of view?” “How do we get people to participate?” “What does the brand mean in the context in which it will be used?” Asking those sorts of questions moves the end product from simply being clever to being smart and relevant.

5. Become a learning organization

While human beings are hardwired to explore and learn, we also have a tendency toward complacency. We get in a pattern once we learn how to do something and tend not to deviate. But with the proliferation of technology and social media networks, increased globalization, and the pace at which access to information is expanding, it is imperative that everyone in an organization always be in a learning mode. This means cultivating a mindset that fosters and rewards learning and going outside individual comfort zones. Create a library, take creative fieldtrips, get the organization to explore the world instead of sitting in an office. The result is more collaboration, fresh thinking, and greater engagement by the members of the team.

What it all means

In the past, audiences were fairly captive.  They were largely passive consumers of advertising as they read the paper, watched television, etc. The model was simple: buy attention and you will eventually convert someone into a consumer of your brand.  But in a postmodern world of global branding and social media, companies can no longer simply buy attention. The best crafted brand stories may be memorable, but only if someone hears them. You may create a commercial that creates a truly phenomenal amount of buzz, but it means nothing if that buzz isn’t relevant and doesn’t produce revenue growth. As consumers become more inclined to co-create the brand through speaking, blogging, sharing ideas, and  adopting brands as part of their public identities, we need to move from simply telling stories and hoping the audience will listen to getting others to engage with the brand and telling the stories for us. In other words, we need to engage our audience in a much more interactive, discursive way.

For agencies that will thrive in the emerging market, gone are days when you gave the creative team surface-level research findings (or simply a clever idea), wrote up a brief and hoped for something revolutionary. Many beautiful campaigns were developed, to be sure, but that didn’t mean they were relevant. This is even more true today. Today, agencies have a wide range of disciplines on any given team (anthropologists, illustrators, interactive gurus, strategists, etc.), but this broad set of skills and perspectives means little if they don’t know how to work together in a way that departs from past processes.

By Gavin

Lying Liars and Lying in Research

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Humans are masters of lying and self-deception. We want others to believe us good, fair, responsible and logical, and we yearn to see ourselves this way.  Sometimes this is overt and conscious, other times it’s a matter of the subconscious directing our actions and words.

When our actions appear selfish, prejudiced or in opposition to cultural norms, we engage a host of strategies to justify our behavior with rational excuses. “I bought that gigantic SUV because I have I have kids.” “I bought myself these extra jeans because no one helps around the house and I deserve it.” “I buy Maxim for the articles.” People restructure situations, from actions to words, to view their behavior in a more positive light.

So what do we do about it?

  1. Listen for cadence and the amount of run-on language when people are answering specific questions.  While there are simply people who talk (and talk and talk), people are trained to take turns in language. When a person talks more than he or she normally does, assuming you don’t intentionally give signals cuing them to speak, it is often a sign of avoidance and lying.
  2. Body language signs of lying give a person away easily primarily because lying is not a natural thing. We respond with hard-wired responses that are subconscious and therefore hard to fake. Or to hide. The simplest thing is to tell the truth and the body knows this. Avoiding eye contact, hand wringing and face touching are signs that consciously or subconsciously, the person isn’t telling the truth.
  3. Recognize that lying isn’t necessarily intentional or negative. Ethnographers do not assume that people are lying during an interview, but that their perceptions and ideals may not correspond to the realities of their daily life. People often “weed out” information that they believe is extraneous, may be embarrassing or that they simply forgot. And that is data.

 

By Gavin