Beyond the City Limits

Before You Talk, Learn How to Listen

More and more companies understand the importance of talking directly to people in urban markets. But the problem is that urban dwellers, while very influential, tend to be very opinionated as well. They are very sensitive to issues around them, but they are also extremely critical about things. They are bombarded by marketing messages -- which makes their sensory perception very high.

So how do you talk to such people? First, by listening. It's hard to know what to say to someone when you don't understand what that person cares about. One way that we connect to consumers is through our "Street Spies" -- a network of people in urban centers whose main job is to listen. They are shadows, information gatherers, flies on walls. Their job is to differentiate reality from perception, information heard last week from information heard this week. They are our eyes and ears at critical points of fusion in major cities.

You certainly can't listen by relying on focus groups. Intercepting people in their natural environment and talking to people one-on-one is much more powerful than gathering a panel of consumers in a conference room. Once, I held a focus group for an insecticide company. We did lots of prescreening to make sure that the participants (all women) had dealt with infestations in their homes. But once we started asking questions, none of those women would say that they had ever had pests, rodents, or roaches in their homes. Not one! The women didn't want the others to think that their homes weren't clean. Then, when we spoke to the women individually, they all reported the worst pest problems in the world -- which, by the way, were always their neighbors' fault. That's pretty typical.

Recently, Johnnie Walker Black Label scotch whiskey hired us to figure out how to increase sales to young people in cities. We didn't do traditional focus groups or hire hip-hop stars to make endorsements. Instead, we organized events and sent our Street Spies to listen. The result was a new mixed drink, called a Johnnie Blaze, that is lifting sales of Johnnie Walker in New York and Chicago -- the two cities that we focused on.

Don't Just Listen to Customers -- Live With Them

Great marketers don't just listen to customers; they also understand them -- personally and emotionally, as well as rationally. That can be a challenge for people who have had few encounters with people outside of their suburban demographic. What's the best way for our clients to understand what's really going on in cities? Not by letting us simply tell them about that environment but by immersing themselves in it. That's why we designed our "Urban Think Tank" -- to immerse our clients in the realities of urban life.

I'll give you a great example: We're working with a company that makes laundry detergent. So we had a bunch of folks from that company spend several days in Laundromats. They did laundry. They hung out with and talked to other people who were doing laundry. Then they went into people's homes and did laundry there. Now, laundry may be a small chore, but it's also kind of sacred, because it's so personal. Our clients learned so much about how people do laundry and how they choose detergents. One thing that they found was that a lot of young people, and some members of ethnic communities (particularly older African-Americans), don't wash their blue jeans. They have their jeans dry-cleaned instead. Our client was blown away by this revelation. Here was a big piece of the urban market that doesn't launder jeans the way that most people do.

Our clients' challenge is to figure out how to immerse themselves in the lives of urban consumers, so that they can understand the world from the urban point of view. That's also our challenge as an agency. If we're going to stay ahead of the curve, we've got to be right there every step of the way. I think that you'll be seeing Vigilante outposts across Leo Burnett's network. Could there be a Vigilante team at Leo Burnett London? Absolutely. At Leo Burnett Tokyo? Sure.

We don't need separate offices, but we do need teams that focus on urban movements in South Hampton, England, or the Piccadilly Circus area of London, or Berlin, or Paris. As the expansion of urban areas continues, we're going to have to change and evolve. And the only way to do that is to immerse ourselves in city life -- to live it, breathe it, roll around in it. That's a big challenge for us as an agency.

Anna Muoio (amuoio@fastcompany.com), a Fast Company senior writer, has no plans to move to the suburbs. Learn more about Vigilante on the Leo Burnett Web site (www.leoburnett.com).