"We're not talking about the fineries of marketing here," says Shapira. "These women cannot get help because they cannot speak." The tape also helped the creative team get over its squeamishness about the subject. Shapira tells of one copywriter who confessed he was mortified to land on the account. "I was so bummed out," he said. "But now I have never felt more passionate about anything in my life. These women just reach out and grab you by the throat and make you want to make the world okay for them." Depend ads are still in testing.
Ethnographic research is not a panacea. For one thing, it's expensive. A typical study includes 6 to 10 subjects, each paid as much as $500--and that's a fraction of the total tab. The process is time-consuming: Start to finish on an average-sized study customarily takes Ogilvy's group four to six weeks. Even then, the results don't provide clear guidance to a client accustomed to more quantitative methods. "You won't come away from a Discovery film saying, 'Okay, then the marketing plan for next year should include a 30% buy on billboards,' " Shapira says.
Paco Underhill, whose books Why We Buy and Call of the Mall are classics of modern retail ethnography, confesses to a bigger concern: How does this research translate into sales? "Advertising is some of the finest visual communication our culture generates," he says. "But ethnographic research is still at some distance from where rubber meets the road in terms of sales."
Bick concedes the point. The Miller Lite ads, for example, got high marks from audiences for their entertainment value and emotional resonance. But they weren't as successful in driving sales. "What people got from that campaign was that it was about time with your best friends. The emotional side was very powerful. Its downfall was that it didn't work on a more fundamental level." That is, it didn't connect the emotional appeal with a compelling enough product message.
But Bick isn't complaining. Indeed, he thinks it may be time to deploy another team to revalidate the initial findings and discover what's new. In fact, he's considering similar research for Miller Genuine Draft, Miller Lite's sister brand. "So much other research is done in isolation of social groups," he says. "But brands are adopted by a tribe of users." Ethnographic research "helped us to understand the Miller Lite drinker and his friends as genuine people." Now, he just needs to figure out how to sell those guys more beer. nFC
Ethnographic research is more than just a guy with a video camera channeling reality-TV guru Mark Burnett. Here's what you need to know before you hire a researcher.
Check the bona fides. Make sure the researchers you hire have graduate school credentials in anthropology or sociology. This is a specialized discipline that goes beyond traditional market research.
Allow enough time--and money. Recruiting appropriate subjects, filming, and analyzing data isn't an overnight project. A typical study takes four to six weeks to do properly, and costs in the neighborhood of $50,000 to $100,000.
Match the technique to the problem. For many problems, focus groups or surveys work just fine. Call in the ethnographers when you need a more detailed understanding of how consumers use your product.
Fast Company senior writer Linda Tischler drinks Zinfandel.
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