Category Strategy

For widening the understanding of their own online service, especially how it is perceived by their users, the owners of the text-based football manager game Hattrick and their associates at Tribaling recently called for ethnographic research as one step in the process of making a marketing strategy plan. The research found answers to questions that were not previously thought of and showed new insights into both functional and social values of the game. Thus, the research revealed Hattrick to be more than a strategy game: the inherently versatile online service is shown to be not only a resource for entertainment, personal challenge and a social community but also a unique cultural environment in which users over time familiarize with, find meaningful to engage in and even extend outwardly into everyday life.

- Without a working knowledge of culture, the corporation lives in a perpetual state of surprise, waiting for the next big storm to hit. Without a CCO, the corporation has no way to perform this crucial piece of threat assessment. – Those are Grant Mc Cracken’s words in the introduction to his new book, Chief Culture Officer.

Proofreading of the book about Cultural Branding is done. Identity brands are positioned in the consumer’s daily life rather than in their minds.

One thing Inculture wants to study deeper with ethnographic method is what we usually refer to as generation noll koll. Our expression refer to the notion that we have a younger generation that doesn’t know what’s going on. It’s used as an allusion to how younger people define media, namely “to know what’s going on”, or in Swedish “att ha koll”.

Grant McCracken writes about the difference between ethnography and in-home interviews that many people nowadays define as “ethnography”. Many companies say that if they make interviews in people’s homes it’s ethnography! But they are missing a whole lot of the methodology. McCracken points out 4 important things with ethnography: it’s picking up the telling details, it can see all details at once, see the topic from several points of view and to see the product, innovation or opportunity in a broader context. It’s all about putting anthropology back in the ethnography! Almost all of this value is missing when “ethnography” is simply interviews in-home. Read the whole text at Cultureby.

I talked at Daytona Session vol 2 yesterday. One of my themes was generation noll koll (in English it would be something like the generation that don’t know what’s going on, and it’s an allusion to their own definition of media, namely “to know what’s going on”, or in Swedish “att ha koll”). There are some studies published now that look at the affect of using the digital media technology. I mentioned for example The dumbest generation written by a professor in English at Emory University, Mark Bauerlain. Bauerlain talk about 18 to 30 years old Americans and that they lack in knowledge. Also in Axess number 9/2008 there was an interesting article about how the human brain is transformed by the overload of information. Nicholas Carr writes that in spite of the fact that the information is endless today many studies show that the knowledge is lowered. The super fast media (internet) lead to problems with concentration and deep reading and therefore also deep thinking. Why did I talk about this? Because when we do our ethnographic studies we can see this. In society in general the idea is that technology will improve and make things better, especially the media technology will lead to an “information super highway”. To talk about the downside of this media technology is not really political correct. But the thing is that we have to start to consider this. Most older people (35+) and companies today think that the digital generation is IT-literate; that the youngster without problem can orient themselves in all different types of web contexts and find information. That is not the case. Some of the young media users know perfectly well how to use MySpace, Facebook ect, to communicate with their friends and upload photos, but have severe difficulties finding information outside their “bubbles”. It’s a “generational cocoon” as Bauderlain writes. What I try to highlight is that companies who want to communicate with this group need to understand this and don’t say “let’s use the internet” as the only place to be. And in the long run it will of course be interesting to see if the knowledge capital will be lowered. But to say that a generation is dumber is to take it too far… But some media seems to like to make this connection (realtid.nu)!

Young consumers are extremely adaptive in their behaviour. They listen to their surroundings, social networks, media, celebrities ect, and learn how to consume. What other say is authentic and real is perceived as authentic. It is the social construction of real that is incorporated in their identity and their actions.

I never read the newspapers any more, why should I… so boring and uninteresting. But every day, several times actually, I read my favourite blogs. Only girls writing about what to wear, and what to buy … I know, it’s shallow but it’s so fun. Look here, today I saw that Blondinbella [a popular blog in Sweden] wrote about those pair of jeans [she shows a picture of jeans] and how authentic they are in US … for example, Paris Hilton have several pairs. Hope I found them today. (Elin 22 years out shopping)

To give a perception that consumers think they have taste by virtue of the fact that they are consuming something associated with good taste. Sometimes this perception is the only thing that the consumers experience as different!

Anna is surrounded by the ‘right’ brands, her clothing, her cosmetics and her technology. She puts the cosmetics in the room so all friends can see her good taste. She likes to hold her mobile phone in her hand instead of in her bag. “When I have it like this everyone can see that I have an iPhone, I mean, it’s important for me”. Her struggle with her parents to get an iPhone was not that hard, Anna only said the old magic words “everyone else has one”. (Anna 17 years)

The “symbolic creators”, describing those who make up, interpret or rework stories, songs, images, can by using the imagined and shifting perceptions of authenticity create a new authenticity out of a brand – to play with norms but totally related to the wanted target group. We do not need to assume shared understanding or shared frames of reference in any act of communication and/or consumption. All we need, and may assume, is that there are rough structures of equivalence between creators and consumers. It is all about being in the known with the consumers.

* This one in Swedish

Läste i Svenskan idag en liten text om “så blir året för reklam”. Där fanns bland annat följande med:

Kunden i fokus. Med tunnare plånböcker blir konsumenterna mer nogräknade i sina val, för att kunna tillgodose kundens behov blir det ännu viktigare att känna sin kund. Starka kundrelationer bygger lojalitet, något som inte har varit lika viktigt i högkonjunktur med större volymer. Event och butiksreklam växer.

Så bra då att man kan kombinera riktigt konsumentnära metoder och analyser med varumärkesutveckling. Med hjälp av etnografi är det möjligt att gruppera konsumenter genom att utgå från deras djupare, bakomliggande motiv, deras behov av mening och identitet. Läs gärna lite mer här om Konsumentnära varumärkesutveckling.

Is it something new, that 75% of the consumers say no to traditional advertising?? Well, being involved in consumers’ everyday lives it’s quite obvious; people are tired of old style advertising. Brand communication needs to focus on culture, not the products.

When in Malmö and Moving Images (I know it’s a long time ago now… ) Winston Binch from Crispin Porter + Bogusky talked about how they do relevant advertising. Marketing is a true engagement in popculture. It’s the true emotional sides that drives popculture. And to understand this they work mainly with anthropologists.

When I am presenting our ethnographic findings about media habits amongst the younger generation, it sometimes feels like I am talking about a different tribe. Almost like the old anthropologists, that travelled to Africa or Asia, coming back to describe totally unknown habits and customs from their exotic fieldwork far, far away from home. 

Media people cluster all young people in a group called “young adults” or worse “digital natives” based on age. If media companies aim to create business strategies that will work for the young consumer, they have to understand their actual needs and wants. They need to segment based on meaning, for example, what is news today, is it knowledge, in that case which kind of knowledge is meaningful and why is that so? Maybe we sound like this nice picture done by Per Lublin, talking in strange tribe language…