Call them the Margaret Meads of Madison Avenue. Cohen is among a new breed of advertising professionals known in the trade as “ethnographers.” Adapted from the anthropological practice of recording human culture, ethnography emphasizes observing consumers in their natural habitat–and incorporating those observations into advertising. Ally & Gargano, where Cohen is a senior vice president, used the technique to devise an advertising strategy for Tampax tampons and Swiss chocolates. Grey Advertising used it to see how consumers feel about shortening. One product-development firm has even used enthnographic techniques to correlate customers’ buying preferences with levels of self-esteem. Despite its popularity, some advertising professionals view the idea of anthropologic-style snooping with considerable distaste. “Ick,” says Andy Berlin, managing director of Goodby, Berlin & Silverstein in San Francisco. “It seems kind of creepy for the people who do ads to go into people’s homes and see what’s under their sinks. It’s commercial spying.”
The linkage of anthropology and advertising may strike some people as unsavory. Yet Peter Kim, director of research and consumer behavior for J. Walter Thompson, believes the fields are closely allied. “Brands are much akin to the role of myth in traditional societies,” he says. “Choosing a brand becomes a way for one group of consumers to differentiate themselves from another.” With that in mind, strategic planners are placing a little less emphasis on quantitative market research and more on such ethereal concepts as how consumers “bond” with corn flakes. Says Barbara Feigin, an executive vice president at Grey Advertising in New York: “You want people to feel that the brand understands them–where they live, not just in their minds, but in their hearts and their guts.”
In the search for hearts and minds, more and more advertisers are heading into the kitchen. Cohen embarked on a series of kitchen visits to help give her client–a frozen-food purveyor–a better understanding of convenience-food eaters. Her purpose: to drive home the message that consumers don’t often cook meals from scratch anymore but rather engineer them. As if on cue, her first subject “cooked” a dinner consisting of frozen fried chicken, frozen potatoes, frozen onion rings and a frozen pie. In a study geared to helping them better understand buyers of Crisco shortening, Grey researchers watched people roll pie dough and bake cookies. Agency officials returned waxing poetic about “the celebration of baking.” Says creative director Jim Morrissey: “I realized that baking a pie is much like knitting a sweater. I started to think of the dough in the baker’s hands like clay in the potter’s hands.” The result: Crisco’s “Recipe For Success” marketing theme.
Ethnography sometimes inspires entire ad campaigns. A recent spot featuring teenage girls talking about Tampax tampons was the outgrowth of a session Cohen conducted while strolling on a New York-area beach. She found that a major motivation for tampon use among teens was that it allows them the freedom to wear body-conscious clothes. The result of her work: a commercial carrying the tag line “More Women Trust Their Bodies to Tampax,” running on MTV. Another of Cohen’s expeditions became the fodder for a campaign for a Swiss chocolate maker. The exercise revealed that huge numbers of chocolate lovers keep secret stashes of the delicacy hidden throughout their houses. After one subject confessed to stuffing chocolate bars inside her lingerie drawer, the campaign’s theme “The True Confessions of Chocaholics” was born.
Private lives: Some shopper-watchers go to even greater lengths to get a handle on consumer psyches. The new-product consulting firm Kane, Bortree & Associates looked at the private lives of 500 consumers in an attempt to discover how self-esteem figured into buying decisions. The company rated interview subjects as either “high self-esteem” or “low self-esteem” types. They then correlated the results with purchases of such items as dog and cat food, cereals, desserts and frozen foods. Among the findings: high-self-esteem households were twice as likely to buy frozen chicken dinners (which they see as healthier). Low-self-esteem dessert eaters were a ripe market for portion-controlled snack items (because they lack self-control). The latter finding led to the development of a new line of snack cakes from Sara Lee.
At the very least, proponents say, ethnography is a sure-fire way to impress clients. Yet privacy issues remain. Just ask southern California residents Stephen and Maritza French. Last year, after inviting a Japanese researcher for Nissan Motor Corp. into their home on an exchange program, the couple filed suit charging he was spying as part of a research project for Nissan. (Nissan denies the charges.) Berlin sees more substantive problems. “Are the people who let ad researchers into their home really typical American consumers?” he asks. In the end, marketing snoops run up against the same kinds of questions that have bedeviled social scientists: does ethnography provide useful insights into group behavior? Or does it really only tell you what’s in Elizabeth Makkay’s cupboards?
What ethnographers see in Elizabeth Makkay’s purchases:
Brawny brand paper towels
When it comes to paper products, Makkay only considers price. These were a good buy.
Price Chopper can sugar Likewise on pantry staples, she sticks to store brands and discounted items.
The ‘Decadent’ cookie brand
Some purchases are purely indulgent; chocolate chips are a family favorite.
A gourmet barbecue sauce
A two-for-one value; besides being tasty, she can reuse the bottle after it’s empty.
