I’ve never really been “hip” per se, but I like to think I’m on top of the major trends and have a idea as to what’s going on in the world. Until I got smacked with a clue-by-four last night.
When Did the 80’s Come Back in a Non-ironic Way?
My wife and I went trick-or-treating with our 16-month-old son. Our first stop was our next-door neighbour, whose 17 year-old daughter babysits Ryan regularly. She comes to the door dressed in the following: black leggings with hot neon pink legwarmers, long oversized sweatshirt, big hair pulled onto an off-center ponytail and blue eyeshadow. I start making cracks about the 80’s look, needs a cinch-belt, bangles, etc., etc.
As we’re walking away, my wife leans over and says “Dave, I don’t think that was a costume. That’s what the kids are wearing now”. (She teaches tweens and teens, and is a little more up-to-date on teenage female fashion).
It was at that point I realized I am old.
In an attempt to save a little face, I will try to turn this into a marketing lesson.
The Marketing Lesson
Without talking to people outside your immediate cultural sphere, you cannot know the subtlties of different cultures, and therefore you cannot effecively market to those groups.
Cultures (or demographic - choose your term) defined here as any group with fairly homogeneous lifestyles. This is a very broad definition encompassing very small groups. I am a late-30s, suburban dweller, mid career wage earner with one small child and a first marriage of less than 5 years, which is different than a late-30s suburban dweller mid career wage earner with two teenagers and a 18 year marriage. I see the world differently, my current needs and wants are different, and I see marketing and advertising in different ways.
And unless you are me, without talking to me to find what I need, you cannot market to me effectively.
A Current Case Study
I am the web guy (marketing, design, coffee-making) for a staffing firm with a strong online presence. The company is a bit unusual; the two owners are guys in their mid-30s & early 40s with pretty good technical savvy. Most staffing firms are heavily female oriented, and most of the candidates we place and the client we have are women, 20-50 with generally low technical/web interest.
Four technical guys between 30 and 40 sit around trying to figure out what women want out of the web site. We don’t actually go out to talk to these people (too much effort? too little time? not enough money? lots of excuses…), but we make guesses as to how we should build the site. We do research, but there’s only so much you can get out of a white paper. And we wonder why we don’t have the success we think we should.
Social Media Success
We are starting to see some small gains through talking with our people online. Through various social media channels, we can talk to people in our target demographic and get some feedback on the web site. Plans are in the works to expand this, more for marketing and for research.
By opening up channels for conversation (Facebook group, forums, etc.), we can get the feedback we need to do our jobs properly. And the best part is that it doesn’t take too much effort, time or money.
And I still have a couple of years left until my son doesn’t think I’m cool anymore. I’ll take advantage of that…
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November 1st, 2007 at 10:52 am
Dave … you make the case nicely for corporate ethnographers (and other examples of ethnographic research in the corporate world here).
November 1st, 2007 at 11:34 am
[…] DesignWalk wrote an interesting post today on When did I get old? A lesson learned in life and marketingHere’s a quick excerpt I’ve never really been “hip” per se, but I like to think I’m on top of the major trends and have a … this into a marketing lesson. The Marketing Lesson Without talking to people outside your immediate … effecively market to those groups. Cultures (or demographic - choose your term) defined here as any group […]
November 1st, 2007 at 12:17 pm
The idea of corporate ethnogrpahy is fascinating, but don’t most people just call then market researchers?
Seriously, I’d be interested to see how many marketers have some cultural anthropology/ethnography experience. Most marketing programs I know of don’t have an ethnography course (at least in name), but I can see it being a critical aspect of the overall marketing knowledge base.
November 1st, 2007 at 2:00 pm
Dave … I think that what corporate ethnographers are doing is very similar to market research. And, my feeling is that the use of ethnographic methods in business is an important part of getting past the limitations of surveys and focus groups. I’m not convinced, however, that most marketers are trained in ethnography — qualitative research conducted over the long(er) term — but that may be changing. To that change, some of the most intriguing examples of corporate ethnography come from people who are spending long periods of time conducting ‘participant-observation’ with the people they want to observe using specific products like cell phones. (See, for example, the recent TED.com video about a Nokia cell phone researcher. Also, see the delicious links in my previous comment.)
Moreover, if you google design ethnography you get a lot of information about people who use ethnographic methods in the design of consumer products. And, I fully admit that I don’t understand precisely how these people use ethnographic methods.
I am alarmed, however, at idea of rapid ethnography . In my mind, ethnography is not something that can be done rapidly. Still, anthropologists could be accused of being overly protective of ethnography as a research method — perhaps to the point of elitism.
At the risk of sounding self-serving, I have tried to document stories about the use of ethnography in business on my blog. My students are very interested in this and I applaud the efforts of anyone who started in anthropology and moved into the design of consumer products. There are useful connections to be made here. And, if this is a topic of real interest, I’d call special attention to this post about the debate over whether ethnography is something that people can use effectively even if they aren’t trained in doing it.
November 1st, 2007 at 6:06 pm
you can have as much demographic information you like but if you don’t know how to create copy for it then you lose.
Take a look at www.thebaldchemist.com go to articles and find out the groups,how and what they react positively to.
More importantly how to address them.
Good luck.The Baldchemist