Watching the Detectives

Businesses and brands of all sizes depend upon their instinct and acuity to reach whom they perceive are their customers. Many fail, so they employ a research and design agency to help them clarify what it is they do, and whom they’re doing it for. For years, there have been ‘trend spotters’. In fact, a friend of mine was selected to be one these for a slightly dodgy blue jeans company in London several years ago. It involved trailing people around Oxford Street attempting to ascertain what motivates them to buy. Needless to say her feeble attempt at brand anthropology yielded little results other than sore feet and the feeling that she knows less about her fellow man than before.

Behold, a new era of market research or ethnography is upon us. According to an interesting article in NBC Business, companies as diverse as Microsoft, Toyota, and Lego are leaning ever more heavily on this ‘exact science’. What this involves is direct research, by witnessing or filming, customers engaging with their products. This can yield invaluable results for businesses. One might assume that most product manufacturers can glean how their products work by using a simple survey, but the problem is how inaccurate people’s memories are. One famous example cited in the article was with a new mop introduced by Proctor and Gamble. After doing extensive ethnographic research they realized most people spend just as much time cleaning their mops as they do their floors. This realization was the catalyst for a more refined product.

Research, for say Lego, is usually conducted between one and three days, and is more reliant on eyewitness accountability than filming. So, one is led to ask how natural a situation can it be if an ethnographer from a children’s toy company is following your kid around for three days? Well, according to one company called Everyday Lives, who count Coca-Cola, and Mastercard among clients, “most people relax after about ten minutes, after that they don’t care.” Sounds suspiciously like a visit to the dentist. The other key to revealing the true nature of brand desire is that Ethnographers usually don’t tell participants whom they’re researching for. My remaining question is, how much are these guys paying to play Big Brother? Strangely, the article didn’t reveal that either, so we can only guess that one day soon we’ll all be visited by strange men in suits wanting to move in with us, but not clarifying why. I can’t wait.