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Why Ethnography (originally published in Comunicas Magazine)

In the fall I presented an ethnography seminar in Barcelona in partnership with a company called Brain Ventures.  The audience was a lively assortment of marketing professionals.  During the session, I relayed stories of media-producing eleven year olds, rap industry insiders who vehemently denied the validity of a client’s research, and stuffed animal nostalgia that offered insight into grown up identity. It was a mixed bag to say the least.  But that’s what I do; I wade through the messy reality of contemporary life in order to find the nuances that offer opportunity and change.

Ethnography comes from anthropology. It’s a style of research writing where the author privileges discovery over verification and provides a deliverable that takes the viewer on a journey instead of presenting the client with one big rational conclusion. Counter to traditional market research protocol, subjectivity and flexibility is crucial to the value of this kind of work..

My own history with ethnography emerged quite by accident. In 1999 after getting a degree in cultural studies from the New School with a thesis on Vogue Magazine and a few editorial jobs, I started a pre-blog era website called Girlonthestreet.com where I published an obsessive list of the deals swarming around the tech and media sector and combined those with observations from the streets of New York.  I was driven by a desire to connect the dots.  Over time I amassed a following of likeminded creative young entrepreneurial women and a social network. Marketing firms and ad agencies caught on.  They hired me to dig for insights and translate them into business terms.  Eventually I became an account planner at ad agencies and while I gained the discipline to transform fresh insights into strategic positioning, it was a struggle to get the powers-that-be to give much credence to my immersive approach.

It’s a tough sell, proselytizing free flowing research methods when the marketing department needs numbers, measurement, and proof; but that is precisely why ethnography is a discipline that serves marketing, development, and operations, all at the same time -and is a case for why these areas should work more closely together. Discovery leads to insights. Insights lead to action and measurable testing  – much easier to do in small doses in today’s manufacturing and communications environment – and in the end, all parties from the consumer to the board of directors, can gain clarity and renewed focus.

The key three principles of this type of research, boiled down, are: become a participant; be aware of your own subjectivity; listen without prejudice.

The benefit of unfiltered observation is that you can see things that people are simply unable to tell you about their behavior. For instance, someone in a focus group might tell you they sit down with a salad every day at noon but spend time with them, and before you know it they’re wrist-deep in a bag of french fries exiting a McDonalds drive through window.  When people get comfortable, they start to be themselves. They might intend to eat a sit-down meal every day and really think that’s what they do but the reality could be far different. This insight might lead you to create a product like the guys at Jamba Juice did – a healthy delicious smoothie with energy boosters available at convenient, hip, and clean Jamba Juice locations all over the U.S.  It’s a lunch you can have in transit or at your desk. Or you could create a food storage system with a chilled component, or compact healthy meals to eat on the go, and so on.  Ethnography is a way to find out how people really live with existing products.  Most often products have a second life not intended by the manufacturer. Keep your eyes open for discoveries. Then, and only then is it really legitimate for you to start to develop your theories and test them.

So how do we get there? How do we get inside? First you find the right people. Be as strategic about this process as any other. Not just any subject will do. Small samples are encouraged. It’s quality and depth, not quantity and breadth, that count.  Find insiders who are articulate, dynamic, and demonstrative.  You can find them through natural networks, through recruitment companies who will pinpoint the people leading purchases and cultural shifts, or through an ethnographer who has the resources to do both.

After you’ve found your group, open your mind and be humble. You’d be surprised how much people want to share with you if you show sincere curiosity and respect for differences. An ethnographer goes in one end somewhat blank and come out the other end full of new information.

When you embark on ethnography, make sure you are recording not only your observations, but also your changing thoughts and feelings.  An ethnographer should be part of the research and be transformed by it. For a loungewear brand targeted to young women and older teens, I researched the role of stuffed animals because it tied into the iconography of the brand.  I gathered a group of young trendsetters and opened up the exploration.  What emerged was an interesting connection between childhood nostalgia and young adult romance.  I explored how cuteness becomes sensuality and what that meant for the equity of the brand. This led to rich storytelling opportunities that lent depth to the brand.

The purpose of ethnography is not to justify a preconception, nor is it to rationalize a company’s existence.  If you try to push an agenda, it’s the waste of time.  For a classic men’s fashion brand, a trip around the U.S. brought out the insight that your average ‘Joe’ between the ages of 28-35 working in middle management with traditional expectations for marriage and job advancement is just not comfortable with the amount of pressure being put on him to be fashionable too.  We looked at how this could be an opportunity to relate to men, however uncomfortable it was to present to the client. The result was a campaign unlike any other men’s fashion campaign out there, one that used the vocabulary that was most natural for the group we spent time with.

We’ve experienced a sea change in the way we live. As our framework continues to splinter into finer threads of communication and stimuli, we have to look at the market as an ever-flowing continuum of give and take. We have to stop thinking ‘us’ and ‘them’. That old divide no longer exists. We have to look at our consumers as the people they are instead of as the bottom line or a demographic that will respond to a message. The social network universe is an ideal place to start.

Take a highly successful teen anti-tobacco campaign for example.  It had been awhile since they’d done any teen research and they weren’t sure they really needed to. Psychologically, teens are not that different decade after decade.  But culturally, they absolutely are.  I picked ten teens from around the U.S., boys and girls from 11 to 17 years of age.  I asked the kids to keep a daily diary of all of their media and technology activities for one week and to observe two of their friends in the process.

What I got back was robust, revelatory, and visually rich material. First off, everyone was obviously technology obsessed. The sixteen and seventeen year olds sent a lot of texts, downloaded a lot of music, and put pictures on Facebook. But it became clear that the younger kids were the most active producers of digital content. The thirteen year old skipped school and pretended he was sick so he could keep making his “Dragonball Z fan video”. He wrote: “At my grandmothers, saw two movies and fell asleep early.  It’s so boring being away from my computer. I can’t wait to go home and finish the video.”  Meanwhile, the eleven year old handed in a multimedia DVD of her life, complete with a music soundtrack. These younger kids and their friends were the most at ease with the tools of technology and the least passive. The boundary between producers and consumers was blurring and it was evident in just the span of one teen generation. That was 2005.

The bottom line is that you need to be standing next to your consumer serving their needs, not selling them smoke and mirrors.  The future is theirs and they are just too smart for that. After all, they’re you!

As an ethnographer, my desire is to work more and more on the client themselves, opening them up to the insights within their own company, their products, their services, the quality of life at the office, and day to day operations. Together with immersive consumer research, companies are simply more prepared for the future.  If you want to learn more, please contact me at chaunceyzalkin@gmail.com and visit me at www.whatwomenmake.com where I focus on ethnography, design, and female entrepreneurship.

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from the article I authored published in Comunicas the magazine of Spain’s leading financial paper, Expansion and this year’s winner of the Gold Quill.

-Chauncey Zalkin

Want to see the whole article easily but you don’t subscribe to Spain’s financial paper, Here it is.

Friday • June 4, 2010 • by Chauncey Zalkin

Category: Blog, Chauncey Zalkin, Design Thinking, Essays