As anthropologists, we help clients situate their consumers, brands and products in wider cultural context. As marketing specialists, we focus on implications of our analysis for your business. Cultural analysis provides key insights for advertising and communications and strategic direction for brand management and new product development.
Anthropology, Cultural Analysis and Ethnography
Ethnography: Being There.
People are meaning-makers - and so we believe that products, services or brands are best seen and understood in the contexts of life-as-lived, where meaning is created. We spend time with individuals in their own lived settings — homes (or offices, parks, museums, stores) where they are surrounded by possessions, connected to colleagues, friends or family and immersed in life. Engaging with research participants in their environments, not ours, provides the groundwork for insights about who they are, and how a particular product, brand or service is integrated into everyday life - practically, emotionally, symbolically.
- Examples: Cleaning practices, the meaning of gold, ideas about health, the activity of investing, living with art, the rituals of meal times, how cars fit and don't with life values, dollar stores in life, the ideology and realities of owning a small business, life of the endurance athlete
- Applications: Bringing market segments to life, product positioning, product development
Diaries (Audio/Photo or Video Documentaries created by consumers)
Whether diaries are created with audio or video tape, a notebook or a camera, these media extend the ethnographic encounter and provide a more nuanced accounting of consumption experiences. Diaries privilege consumers' voices, not ours. We benefit from consumers in situ perspectives, thoughts, reflections and willingness to explain it all to us - wherever they are and whatever they are doing.
- Examples: Life of pickup trucks, the onset and progression of headaches, integrating hi-tech into work and home life, what a kitchen is today, using electronics in life, food in the lives of 20-year-olds, buying candy (click on audio file examples below)
"Monday to Work"Making Sense of Place
Our work takes us into stores, museums, homes, offices, or wherever — because these are the spaces and places where cultural and symbolic meanings and values are lived or practiced.
- Examples: Shopping with research participants for groceries, clothing, shoes, electronics, etc.
- Analyzing retail spaces, e.g., car dealerships, computer or electronic retail environments, bookstores, supermarkets, restaurants, clothing stores, dollar stores.
Deliverables
Illustrated Analytic Reports
We provide clients with a cultural analysis of the ethnographic data. We give insight into the cultural themes which frame the category, the brand, and consumers' lives and map out the implications of these themes for the client business. At the heart of our analysis are the telling details of the consumers' world, details brought to life through photographs, words and stories. These visual and narrative details provide clients with a rich source of knowledge about the context in which their products or services are consumed.
Ethnographic Video
Our reports include edited video taken from our fieldwork and/or respondent video diaries. The edited video provides a further window into the worlds of consumers and illustrates the cultural themes identified in the analytic report. We construct our videos in the ethnographic tradition of cinema verité, thereby providing clients with the feel of 'life as lived' by their consumers.
Really Hungry "Must Eat"(Short Version: 1:36)
Interactive Presentations
We always include an in-person presentation as part of our deliverables for our anthropological research. In conversation with our clients we decide the best form for their team and the project at hand. Sometimes this means multiple presentations to diverse audiences, sometimes it means facilitating whole day brainstorming sessions for ideas and implications, sometimes it means a more formal presentation of a PowerPoint and video, followed by question and answers - it all depends on the project, the audience, and the questions at hand.