Behind the Two-Way Mirror

Making a hash of customer dialog

2012-01-25T05:50:00.000-08:00

I just saw a story in MediaPost this morning about how McDonalds optimistically introduced a twitter hashtag (#McDstories) and invited its customers to talk about how wonderful their McD experiences were. As the story points out, they should not have been surprised that there were some very unpleasant stories posted, mainly having to do with incidents of food poisoning. In fact, you should avoid reading the tweets close to mealtime.

I suppose there are two possible lessons from this cautionary tale. One, of course, is don't do that. Don't hand your brand over to your customers and assume that they will be kind to it. Other people do not love your brand like you do. To you, it is a precious child. However, to at least some your customers, the brand will seem an uncaring behemoth that has royally messed up.

The second lesson, though, is more optimistic. If you want to engage with your customers about your brand, do it in a true dialog. That means engaging people in settings where you can have a real conversation, answering their complaints and concerns responsibly, with a human voice. Twitter, as we have just seen, is a street-corner soap box where the loudest, grossest, or funniest voice is amplified at the touch of a button. Other settings (your own branded community, or even Facebook) offer you a much more confined space and greater opportunity for conversation.

The bottom line? It makes sense to listen to your customers' gripes; after all, they will be sharing these stories with others, even if you don't hand them the megaphone. Just do it in a setting where you can provide real help, correct misunderstandings, and nurture relationships.

Mirror, mirror...

2011-12-22T06:58:00.000-08:00

As a recent Yahoo!, Mind Share and
Added Value study points out, people from a wide variety of ethnicities (basically, everyone who is not white) do not "see themselves" in advertising or digital content. Having worked with many a client and creative team, I can assure you that hours are spent trying to address the issue of diversity. Most major brands have strong policies that demand ethnic balance. Why is this effort not perceived as effective?

In creative research projects, I have nearly always heard one primary objection to images of the consumers used in ads: "that's not me." This objection could arise because of choices made about a model's age, gender, even style of dress--not necessarily race or ethnicity.

Small wonder, then, that ethnicity is difficult to reflect. If you so much as put a shirt on the model that just feels wrong for their culture, the respondents will not perceive themselves in the ad. Once you add factors like age, gender, and region, reflecting diversity becomes a painful struggle. No wonder, then, that so many advertisers just select a model from a particular group, put him or her in June Cleaver's world, and declare the job well done.

But it's wrong to complain about how much consumers demand to see "me" in our ads. In fact, it's a compliment. As we've discussed before, people really want to believe that the brands they buy understand them and care enough to show it. They want to see themselves in your world--is that really so bad?

User created content is one way to address this problem, but only one. My primary advice is to use ethnography to create more realistic environments to show your brand in use. Don't fear your customers' reality, but embrace it. The better you mirror their world, the more they will love your brand.

Occupy their point of view

2011-11-18T08:00:00.000-08:00

NOTE: I have been watching the Occupy movement from two perspectives: as a citizen, and as a marketer. It's in the latter capacity (and only in that capacity) that I'm writing this blog.

Among the many issues we Boomers need to confront as we ease (gracefully or not) into our golden years, is who our children are. With parents from the Great Depression, many of us reacted against the notions of frugality and respect for authority that were so close to our parents' hearts. We raised our own children indulgently and encouraged them to question authority. We also raised them to respect other people's feelings, and avoid violent outbursts. Zero tolerance policies on schoolyard fights, for example, were our idea.

The results were not, of course, entirely what we expected. Our children, given the option, made many childish choices, such as becoming rabidly brand-conscious little materialists. However, many of our values were absorbed, such as concern for others' feelings--the wireless bill alone shows how much they like to text their emotional support to one another. As I look at it from a mom's perspective, I don't think we did all that badly in conveying our values.

What we're seeing in the Occupy movement, for me, perfectly captures how our generation impacted this one. I feel nostalgia when I see them protesting the way we did when we were young, with signs, chants, and music; Crosby and Nash actually serenaded them the other week. (God, those guys look old.) But there are some fascinating differences. Get this: they are protesting over material concerns, as in where all the money went and how they are going to get their piece of it. Their decision not to appoint leaders or worship rock stars, but rather operate by consensus, shows that their respect for individuals and concern for one another's feelings far surpasses ours. When you look at their behavior and their issues, the Autumn of Occupation feels very different from the Summer of Love.

Yes, Boomers, we succeeded. Each generation has its own window on the world. As older marketers, we need to understand that we raised these young people to feel entitled to fair treatment and consideration. They are dedicated, practical materialists who just happen to believe in sharing. That doesn't fit our idea of either right or left-wing ideologies. It's a whole new thing--their thing. Marketers and brands had better get on board--it's their world, now.

How Netflix went from winner to loser

2011-09-20T05:31:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, there was a really, really successful startup--which means that though it's still pretty small, it had a skyrocketing stock price. And it was doing really well--in a recession! Awesome, Netflix!

Alas, something happened. Netflix thought it could always do better. (There's nothing like the sight of lots of money to make someone want much more money.) So it made this decision: it pulled the rug out of its customer base by forcing them to pay way more for the service! In a recession! Not so awesome, Netflix.

Netflix wasn't stupid; it knew that lots of its customers would leave. But, alas, more of them left than Netflix expected. So its wonderful stock price went down.

But Netflix didn't give up! No, it sent an e-mail to all of its customers It even sounded like an apology! How PR of Netflix!

Dear Victoria L,

I messed up. I owe you an explanation.

It is clear from the feedback over the past two months that many members felt we lacked respect and humility in the way we announced the separation of DVD and streaming and the price changes. That was certainly not our intent, and I offer my sincere apology.

Oh, if only Netflix had actually followed through with "respect and humility". Alas, the rest of the e-mail was spent explaining that because of some operational considerations that Netflix's customers don't even begin to give a damn about, in order to make even more money, Netflix had decided to pxxx off, (sorry children, "disappoint"), all of its remaining customers by spinning off the DVD half of its service into a different company with a goofy new name, Qwikster, thus undoing the whole convenience aspect of its brand promise.

At the end of the e-mail, Nertflix followed the PR rule book and invited comment. And boy, did Netflix get it--much of it not respectful. Kaboom.

In my crystal ball, I see what will happen to Netflix. It will be trounced by its vastly larger competitors--Amazon is the smallest of them. To prevent the receipt of yet another self-absorbed "apology", it will be unsubscribed by many, many people who used to send it money every month. Eventually Netflix will be bought by one of its massive competitors, but for much less money.

Moral of the story: In the age of social media, why do brands go from winner to loser? Because they act like a jerk. Oh ye companies, hark unto me: you make money because people choose to give it to you. So don't p-, um... "disappoint" them.

Be careful what you know: 3 techniques for keeping an open mind

2011-02-03T08:15:00.000-08:00

Two stories came across my social media screens today: one from Pew on how what you "know" about budget deficits is influenced by your political affiliation, and another from Time on how the myth of the independence-seeking male and the marriage-seeking female is a.... myth. It just goes to show that you should be very careful about what you know.

I am fascinated by what it takes to think creatively, and the most important tool is a knack for keeping your mind open. It turns out that your frontal lobe is better at openness, and your temporal lobe is better at closing off debate. Well, if this is a contest that takes place in your brain, then you can be the referee.

Much of the time it makes sense to learn from experience and apply existing patterns to new problems. If we didn't listen to the temporal lobe, we'd never have moved on from the invention of fire, because we'd have to keep inventing it over and over again. However it doesn't always make sense--if it did we'd never have moved from open pit fires to gas heat.

In other words, you need to re-examine the world from time to time and come up with new ideas, or you're just as stuck as the person who doesn't learn from experience. For example, when you look at competition do you consider that you are competing for people's time and attention, not just the dollars they spend in your brand's category? Not that you should think of a dad's kids as your competitors, but you should be realistic about the need for a father to turn off the computer or the TV and spend time playing outside on a Saturday afternoon.

Here are three ways you can help to keep your mind open when your watch is telling you to just make a decision and move on:

1) Make a Customer Your Colleague. Look at life through the eyes of a customer. Pick any customer and imagine what their day is like. Don't try to jam your imagination into the purchasing lifecycle, just spend a good hour or two empathizing with what's important to them. Sketch out how they move through a good day, then a bad day. Map out all of the choices they have to make; the joys and frustrations they might experience. Give your hypothetical customer a name and keep him or her with you as you strategize. What would your customer tell you about the problems you're facing in your business?

2) Dream up Scary New Competitors. Imagine that some entrepreneur was going to come out of nowhere and completely change your category. What might they do? This one is fun to do with colleagues. Draw a map of all of the industries that touch your marketplace; where might the new competition come from, and what might it look like? Again, don't leap to any conclusions; keep going until your scenarios are completely ridiculous. (Probably you don't have to worry about competition from alien superbeings; Mark Zuckerbergs don't come along every day. Phew.)

3) Clear Your Mental Desk. This one is different; it's a mental exercise that you can bring not only into your work life but also your daily life. Most of the time, the reason we don't think we have any time to dream up new ideas is that our mind is cluttered up with deadlines, conflicts, and inner turmoil of various kinds. That puts you in survival mode and your temporal lobe in charge. How hard would it really be to clear out even fifteen minutes where you turned to a blank wall and just let your imagination fill it? The more you do this, the easier it gets to flip into frontal lobe territory when you need to.

Your imagination is a powerful thing; it can touch the hearts of your customers, invent a new product, replant deforested deserts or resolve seemingly impossible conflicts with an angry teen. The great news is that you, like everyone else with a frontal lobe, have a great imagination. The key to setting it free is to be less focused on what you already know.

Without Us, We are Nothing

2010-11-24T08:19:00.000-08:00

An excellent, long Pew study on American feelings and attitudes about family, and how our lives have turned out, was released just in time for the holidays. I'd like to focus on a couple of facts and share some Thanksgiving observations:

Most of us are grateful and satisfied with our family lives, obligations and all.
Not surprisingly, we also feel most obligated to those who we rely on the most; for the young that is often their friends, for us older folks that's parents and children.

This says a great deal to me. The role of mutual obligation in our private and social networks is perhaps under-appreciated in this country. There is generosity and sacrifice, of course, but also gratification in the fact that we have something to give to those we love and depend upon. Independence is a fine thing, but abandonment is a tragedy--how fortunate we are that families and friends understand that our independence is not the whole of who we are.

I know that I feel grateful for the fact that those closest to me trust me and understand me enough to ask for what they need, and sometimes fault myself that it's so hard for me to do the same.

This Thanksgiving, let marketers, too, be grateful for the respect that is implied in our obligation to provide safe, healthy, high quality products, and empathetic, honest marketing campaigns. Without us, we are nothing.

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you!

The redefinition of value

2010-10-21T06:39:00.000-07:00

In a recent Nielsen company case study about Greek yogurt (of all things), comes proof that stressed Americans are demanding more value from products, even if the price is somewhat higher. The equation works like this: heavy yogurt consumers eat and cook with yogurt primarily because they are health-conscious. If Greek yogurt is fresher, more nutritious, and better-tasting than lower-priced brands, then Greek yogurt does a better job of providing the core value that is motivating yogurt purchase in the first place.

Still, given the weak economy, why aren't people more focused on price (i.e., so they can save money in case something goes wrong for them, as is happening in so many categories)? The answer is two-fold. In the first place, for heavy yogurt buyers, the product is not a discretionary purchase, but a necessary one. Therefore it's high up on their shopping list, where price is unlikely to prevent them from making a purchase.

Secondly, the definition of value is emotional as well as rational. If money itself becomes (or is perceived as) scarce, then it becomes more valuable. It becomes something you don't want to "throw away" on inferior products. In this situation, people actually become pickier about quality--because they are just plain mad when a product they buy with their hard-earned money breaks, wears out, or even tastes inferior.

This is potentially bad news for down-price brands--watch for them to pump up their quality message loud and clear! TJ Maxx is one brand that is emphasizing designer labels over price, showcasing in its social campaigns that you are getting great value for your money (rather than just saving "cash").

Net message? Message value!

How brands die

2010-09-16T06:54:00.000-07:00

Please see this post from 24/7 Wall Street. As shown by the brands that have fallen hardest in the past decade, there are two ways that brands die:

1) They fail to compete (Kodak, Sony Ericsson). This isn't just a tech phenomenon (see: Kleenex), but in tech you can see Darwin at work. Generally, they lost ground on innovation more than price competition; an interesting point to consider when you consider how much you should be spending on market research.

2) They make their customers mad. The pharma and financial services brands on this list burned their customers and earned their fates. For example, I remember how arrogant Citi's senior execs were back in the late eighties--also crude and rude to work with, by the way.

You can get away with those mistakes for short periods of time, but not forever. Me too marketing strategies, blindness to consumer perception, and an arrogant approach to your market are all signs that you're in trouble.

Ideally, it's the job of everyone who works at a company to seek and nurture insight about customers and markets. Why? Insight has two roles: to help you understand the people you are serving with your products, and to help you know when you need to change your approach to your marketplace. Your culture will remain attuned to your market only if you make customer insight a basic skill.

Back to the Future, Part II

2010-09-13T14:19:00.001-07:00

I went to Cattaraugus County partly to find out what might happen to American attitudes about brands and buying if the recession doesn’t lift any time soon. You can’t generalize from one region to the entire country, but I did find trends that are supported by other studies.

Cattaraugus County has been in economic decline for decades, so much so that the current recession isn’t all that noticeable for them. One woman we interviewed told us, “Some people here have suffered because of this recession. But most of us haven’t really noticed it. We’ve been there for a long time.”

As the boom and bust cycle of more urbanized areas passed them by, the people of rural New York State learned to live by tapping into the resilience and values of the past. As I discussed above, they do things for themselves, buy less, keep fit, and focus on family. In talking to them, I discovered that hard work done well is not just something you have to do, it’s something to be proud of.

We stopped by the side of the road to interview one man who was cutting cords of timber alongside his home, and he happily gave up half an hour to talk to us about what he’s done, how he’s coped with challenges. He told us that he cares for his mother and his sick brother, and recently had to sell his truck when his mother got sick as well; the financial and health stresses are significant and scary. At the same time, he’s proud that he’s found a way to expand his business, despite everything. He’s proud to display his skill, explaining about different types of timber, showing us how he cuts logs into size by hand before he puts them in the splitter, a skill he learned from his father. As we spoke with him, three separate times people driving by shouted hello to him. He has very little; certainly nothing extra, but he deserves and has respect in his world.

Of course, the Cattaraugus example only goes so far: we can’t all magically become rural farmers or woodcutters and live the simple life. Yet, according to a MetLife study, we collectively are shifting priorities in the direction of family, community, and frugality. Helping and receiving help from family members; saving more when you can; and above all making do with less are present realities for a majority of Americans. Community comes into the mix, perhaps because selfishness is understood to be bad math: 68% of respondents said that they’d take a 10% pay cut if it would prevent layoffs, which is sensible if you could be one of those who loses a job.

That sounds more like the Depression-era America my parents grew up in, where neighbors knocked on your front door and asked if you could spare a cup of sugar, or lend them your lawn mower. Helping your neighbors was natural, and you felt free to ask for help in return. Then, being successful was less about being sold to, and more about the life you had built for yourself; you might buy just one house and one car in your entire life. The dream, if it was a dream, was to succeed based on hard work and ingenuity, and the benefits that can bring to your family. It sounds corny, but it’s simply true.

If you’re busy building a life for yourself and your children, why spend energy choosing among hundreds of brands that all basically do the same thing? One example: our hotel room in Salamanca had samples of Breck shampoo. When I was a kid, we always used it, along with almost everyone else who was too old for Johnson’s Baby Shampoo. Their ads showed a mother with a little girl, with the implication that if you used Breck, you could have hair as soft as a child’s. Using it again forty-odd years later, I found it simply clean-smelling, compared with the silk-infused natural plant oil mink fat protein cornsilk dead sea salt stuff they peddle today.

I am a typical consumer, so mea culpa. I try a new shampoo brand every few months, just because I can. It’s kind of nuts, actually. It wouldn’t kill me to just keep on buying Breck my whole life, would it?

The proliferation of products is on one hand a sign of entrepreneurial energy, on the other a sign of market decadence, with products sustained by advertising, not true demand. I also work in advertising, so mea maxima culpa. In my own defense, I have always tried to live by the principle that if a product doesn’t meet a real human need, it isn’t worth selling. Yet I have been as seduced by the power to seduce as anyone in my industry.

This is not the time, fellow marketers. As it turned out, people buying things they don’t need with money they don’t have was not healthy, and right now the wounds are fresh. If the economy continues to lag, here are four trends to keep in mind:

• Pseudo-luxury (i.e., over-priced) brands are already on the consumer’s must-to-avoid list, but growing suspicion will also be directed at brands and stores that sell on price. It may seem counter-intuitive, but if you can only afford to buy one of something you can’t afford to buy something that’s going to break or wear out too soon. Quality will matter more, not less.

• A return to “buy American” is in the cards, with a tip of the hat to the quality of American products. Partly this is anxiety: most people understand that when a neighbor loses a job, they suffer too, with lower home prices and shuttered local businesses. But it’s also a realistic attempt to reassert control over quality given bad news about imported products.

• Servicing cottage businesses that help people to make a little extra money—for example by sewing, making repairs, or going back to the land in some small way--will feed the growth of companies that are smart enough to support and enable small-time entrepreneurs.

• An emphasis on heritage as a value in itself will emerge, as a firm foundation when so many institutions and brands that embodied prosperity let you down. Heritage is a vague concept, sometimes rooted in family, sometimes in institutions or companies; look for it to wear many different masks. In its simplest form, though, it’s about our own past; most of us had grandparents who got their hands dirty. The heritage that matters is the one that’s embodied in real memories.

Some American advertisers are already detecting a swing in these directions, responding to it with varying levels of insight:

Worker-Centered Americana. The POET campaign, which promotes ethanol, has two characteristics that set it apart from what you might expect in the energy category:

• It stars the workers. In general, energy companies use high-gloss campaigns that lecture you from a place of authority (what I call “shouting from the mountain top”). By contrast, POET shows you ethanol industry workers making personal statements on a busy street, among the rest of us small people. They are presented as proud, strong, and perceptive; the way we feel about ourselves when we’re feeling good about ourselves.

• It is brazenly pro-American, with one scientist proclaiming that she wants to let you “tell those middle eastern nations where they can put their tankers.” Indeed.

Home Comforts Americana. The Kraft Foods campaign for its American cheese (sorry, couldn’t find a video) is pure, pandering Americana, with a shot of a very cute kid looking supremely confident in a home-made Superman costume, as well as other scenes of ordinary people doing ordinary things and looking happy about it. They claim that their cheese could only be made in America, making the most of the fact that it would probably be banned in many countries. But in times like these, eating the pasteurized, processed, individually saran-wrapped food of your childhood is comforting. And it does contain at least some milk, very possibly from American cows.

Inspirational Americana. “The things we make, make us.” The best I’ve seen of this trend is the 2011 Jeep Cherokee ad, which has shown in movie theaters. The spot shows old footage of people building railroads and skyscrapers, gravely voiced over by a man touting American values such as craftsmanship and hard work to a sound track of hammers pounding on steel. In this America we go back to making things; there’s no more room for silly celebrities or dysfunctional elites. At the end of the one-minute ad we are told that the whole Jeep Cherokee was thought up and made here in America, where we still make beautiful things. Out of metal.

I have a simple piece of advice for you: think about what makes your customers strong in the face of adversity and fear. If you work for a heritage brand like Jeep or Kraft, rediscover your own roots and talk from there. It’s fine to make ’em laugh, but don’t sell fluff. If you don’t work for a heritage brand, I suggest that you think about what values and concerns your workers have in common with American workers and start from there, like the POET campaign did. What are they, and your business, doing to work through your own struggles? Working longer hours? Trying to make a better product?

These messages resonate now, and they may become a permanent feature of our collective understanding of brands. From what I saw in Cattaraugus County, if we Americans can make things and fix things on our own, we are several miles out from Helplessville.

And that’s a great message to be able to deliver to a stressed-out America.

Back to the Future, Part I

2010-09-02T10:18:00.000-07:00

I took an unusual vacation this year: to Western New York, specifically Cattaraugus County and the town of Salamanca. I chose this area because (as you'll see below) it is the polar opposite of a consumerist community. Though it was economically and industrially dynamic for the first half of the twentieth century, upon the decline of the great railroads it became a stable, primarily rural economy.

Why is that interesting? As the downturn lingers and people start cutting up credit cards and re-learning grandparent skills like canning and sewing, the halls of economic power are quietly facing a serious issue: what if we go the way of Japan? In Japan, where the recession lingered for more than ten years, consumer spending has simply never returned to prior levels, leading to a very slow-growth economy and persistent deflation.

That could be bad news, it's true. On the other hand, when you think of your customers as human beings (or yourself for that matter), is it really so terrible to hop off the consumer roller coaster? That's what I went to Cattaraugus County to find out.

One of the first things you notice as you drive along the Southern Tier Parkway is how rich the land is. Lush fields; grazing cows; hearty plantings of corn, soybeans, vegetables; broad streams flowing down to wide brown rivers filled with life-giving mineral silt... Agriculturally and aesthetically, this is paradise, with prime bottomlands folded among low green hills of Appalachian hardwoods, nurtured by wide, generous creeks and winding rivers.

Soon, though, you also notice how poor many of the people are. In grandly-named Salamanca, once a busy railroad hub, a burned-out furniture factory towers behind houses with badly weathered paint, mossy roofs. Still, the homes are large and welcoming, the yards neatly-mowed with small but thriving vegetable gardens and bright flower patches, the front porches furnished with comfortable chairs.

Drive into town, or walk—it isn’t far. Main Street features lovely warm brick buildings named for their builders and proudly labeled 1808 or 1857; it’s unblemished by the tinted glass of modern architecture. (Though it is blemished; when you look closer, you see that a once-staid bank houses a tattoo shop, or is discretely boarded up.)

All of the Main Street clothes shops are consignment stores.

Wow. Where I come from, it can take you ten minutes to find a good space in a mall parking lot, and buses top things off by streaming the auto-deficient in from outlying areas.

Here? The nearest Wal-Mart is in Olean, the largest town in the county (with all of 15,000 people), and that’s probably a pretty good hike from where you are. Of course, if you need something, you can go to Family Dollar or Dollar General, which are proud to offer “basic goods”(1). Or, if you want to throw your cash around, you can go to an antiques store; there are lots of those and the prices for some genuinely nice collectibles and old farm implements look like bargains to my jaded eyes. Beyond that, you’re on your own.

One last oddity for a spoiled urbanite: there is take-out Chinese food, but it can be hard to find a restaurant that serves breakfast. In one small city, we asked a young woman if there was a coffee shop nearby. She looked at us with an are-you-lost expression and said, “No, there’s nothing like that here.” Apparently unless you’re a tourist, the question of where to get your morning eggs and coffee seems kind of… clueless.

That’s the tourist’s take. What’s it like to live here? So far we’ve determined that those who live here don’t shop for sport. Even those who lack the wherewithal to paint their houses keep their lawns mowed and gardens thriving. Some of them must have tattoos, though I didn’t notice any serious piercing or Goth action. They make their own breakfast. What else do they do?

One obvious answer is that they stay fit. You see plenty of healthy young people in fields playing soccer, lacrosse, football, baseball, softball, and so on. Their elders, too, are slim; they may take good advantage of the ability to walk to the store and eat fresh vegetables from their back yards, or they may do physical kinds of work. Whichever or both, they do not confirm the cliché image of obese poverty.

They have Friday Fish Fries. With a tip of the hat to Catholicism, on a Friday we got a huge piece of very fresh halibut battered and deep fried to perfection for $9.95, with fresh rolls, French fries, a cup of clam chowder, salad, and coleslaw(2). (One place we drove by offered “Friday Fish Fries Every Day”.) They also have a sandwich called “Beef on Weck”, named after the roll it’s served on. They have awesome pies. With fresh, local fruit, such as raspberries, in them. For lunch, if you want it. Trust me, you want it.

They work. Unemployment is the New York State average (8.2% in May, up from 6.2% in 2008), which is very good considering how many empty storefronts and abandoned old brick factories you see. They work part-time or seasonally in the tourism industry, or commute the 40 miles to Buffalo if they have to. Out in the countryside, everybody seems to have a cottage business, such as keeping bees, fixing farm equipment, or cutting wood. Incomes are low by Northeastern standards; the median is about $41,000 per year, which means that half of households make less. Clearly it’s not because people don’t work—it’s because work doesn’t pay all that well.

And they are law-abiding. Check this chart out; statistics are for Olean, NY, Cattaraugus County’s biggest city (the one with the Wal-Mart, and also beautiful St. Bonaventure University). That is a very safe place to live.

One possible reason for the low crime rate is that the countywide cost of living is low: it indexes about 80, where 100 is the U.S. average. Though the household size is above average, households here spend less than average on absolutely everything.

They spend less for food at home as well as out of home. There’s not much taste for the exotic and expensive here, and in any case there’s local milk, local vegetables, and local meat.

They spend way less on apparel. (Note to self: jeans, sweatshirts, and comfortable shoes can be worn a long time before they need to be replaced.)

They spend less on entertainment too. Hell, if you want entertainment, just go outside. It’s beautiful and it’s an outdoorsman’s heaven.

Computers and software? Well, if you’re looking for someone who’s still running Windows 3...

And they index abysmally (or gloriously) low on telephone expenditures, so they also save a fortune on counseling for Blackberry addiction.

The list goes on and on. Medicine (even though lots of them are older), housing, insurance, transportation, investments (they don’t), travel… it’s all really, really low (3).

But another, very important reason that there’s not much crime must be that social cohesion is high. They know their neighbors, look after aging parents, carry on small businesses they learned from their fathers. Or they moved here believing that there was something especially worthwhile about this life.

They have a proud, sad eye on their heritage. The 150 year-old insignias on the old brick buildings are freshly painted. There are volunteer-run American Legion Halls, VFW posts, historical societies, and local museums (open 3 days a week) filled with high school yearbooks, old World War I or Civil War uniforms and lacy wedding dresses; a shared attic. Memory and tradition are everywhere you go, as well cared for as those tidy yards.

And therein lies the heart of my tale, which will unfold in Part II, next week.

(1) I didn’t make that up. The Google result for Dollar General matter-of-factly states: “Owns and operates retail stores selling basic goods.”

(2) At the Hotel Dudley in Salamanca, NY, built in 1868. Link to Hotel Dudley site.

(3) Cattaraugus County Agricultural and Farmland Protection Plan, Appendix A. See it for yourself here.

When is it okay to take shortcuts?

2010-06-04T09:04:00.000-07:00

There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.
--Beverly Sills

Normally I'd agree, but I'm no longer really sure about that. I've recently been working on a project that is one of the most creative and rewarding I've ever been involved with. In working together so creatively, we have compressed some strategic planning steps, especially research. We're collaborating very closely with our client, and relying on our collective sense of what "feels right".

Normally I'm a stickler for rigorous research, but in this case I'm cobbling together webpage intercepts and fast ad hoc interviews just to reassure the higher-ups that we're not being collectively delusional. Is ad hoc and opportunistic a good process in this case? If I had insisted on the long path process, would the work have been improved?

(I want to emphasize that we had some strong quantitative input going in that ensures that we are well grounded in our target's needs. In addition, our target is in fact part of the marketing industry, and most of us have worked with them in the course of our careers. We're trusting that shared knowledge to let our strategies emerge intuitively.)

To be technical for a moment, our team and our clients are operating in a fully experiential mode-- intuitive, interactive, playful--less rational than usual. Because we're collaborating, ideas and feedback are compressed into very short timeframes. This means that there is an unusually fertile interaction going on that is itself providing a strong strategic framework--just not in a rational format.

Somehow, I am trusting my instincts. What might seem like scary shortcuts to the rational side of me looks like imaginitive leaps to the experiential side of me. It helps that the casual research we have done has strongly confirmed that our intuitions are connecting with the audience--that increases my confidence that we are justified in taking big leaps instead of small, processy steps.

Being grounded in an understanding of the target created an empathic framework that in this case is replacing an analytic framework. Collaborating closely with our client is letting a strategic framework evolve, rather than be "architected." The research we are doing is being used as a tuning fork, not sheet music.

Wow! This is fun. I may never have this line-up of circumstances again, but in this case, I think being experiential is going to result in really powerful work.

Do brands weave or tear our social fabric?

2010-04-13T10:06:00.000-07:00

"Wherever the citizen becomes indifferent to his fellows, so will the husband be to his wife, and the father of a family toward the members of his household." --Karl Wilhelm Von Humboldt

When we read headlines about greedy bankers destroying the lives of ordinary Americans, what we're learning is that greed makes some people indifferent to the suffering of others. Lo and behold, this extreme indifference is actually a sin! Apparently there used to be eight deadly sins, but along the line we forgot all about one: acedia. Literally, it's "an ancient term signifying profound indifference and inability to care about things that matter, even to the extent that you no longer care that you can't care."

The reason this matters to our social fabric is that acedia is contagious; as we experience indifference from others we become indifferent to others, and it spreads outward from each of us in concentric circles of alienation. After all, if materially successful people are indifferent, shouldn't we all imitate them?

Kathleen Norris, author of Acedia and Me, would like to counteract this trend by bringing the concept itself back to life. She sees acedia in "the plagues of contemporary society -- a toxic, nearly unbearable mix of boredom and restlessness, frantic escapism (including that of workaholism), commitment-phobia and enervating despair."

Even if you don't think it's as bad as all that, she's onto something. Though we didn't have a word for it, many of us have felt acedia's impacts acutely, and it seems particularly modern. During the worst days of the Great Depression, my mother tells me, people reached out to their neighbors to help out. In Haiti, today, I am astonished by the caring and resilience of a devastated people. Yet, we very well-off modern Americans complain of isolation and emptiness. How many of us really know what our neighbors are going through? Do we even want to care?

It's just possible that material success is one cause of our modern indifference. If so, my own field--advertising--may be partly to blame. By interspersing bright, funny ads with anxiety-provoking news and dramas, we may be driving people to use consumption to create a shell of indifference in response to a scary world.

Certainly, wealth doesn't have a great reputation--it's quite literally associated with selfish indifference in popular culture. In movies and on TV, big companies are just bad; cold-hearted, scheming, and brutal. Is this just the tendency to project evil onto outsiders? Or are large corporations actually in some way bad for social bonds? Perhaps in the past, knowing the craftsman or woman who made your product helped to cement the sense that society mattered. Perhaps the anonymity of the large corporation devalues society itself.

Thinking back to research I've done, I'm not really sure. In research settings I encounter some cynicism, but actually more anger or frustration. The desire to be treated as if you matter, as if a company cares about you, is potent. In fact, mattering to others is necessary to survival as well as emotional well-being, so we shouldn't be surprised that people are angry when companies emphasize profit over people.

People do believe that corporations can care, or they wouldn't be angry when they don't. That may be why cause-related marketing is so successful; it helps us to believe that the people who sell us products are more like us, able to feel concern and warmth for others.

At the same time, maintaining a sense of human connection with a company is a real stretch, on both sides of the relationship. We humans seem to be developmentally designed to respond to people we recognize better than those we don't. The larger the corporation, and especially the more isolated from its customers, the more vigilant it needs to be to avoid brand-killing mis-steps (like those of Toyota, or the large consumer banks).

Brands help because they transfer the relationship to the product, which is real and present in the customer's life--so, for example, a can of Coke can be likeable, even if there is no human face to put on it. But again, this can fall apart very quickly if the veil of the brand is pierced by bad news about the manufacturer.

I believe the key is humanizing your brand--literally. Giving it a face or faces will be a great help when things go wrong. A car brand I have worked with, following safety and performance issues, has painstakingly rebuilt customer trust by inviting customers to experience content on everything from new model development to their passion for the vehicles of the past. They make a big point of being accessible, and our research shows that doing so makes them easier to trust.

So I think the answer to the question in the title is, it's up to the brand to prioritize human trust and be creative about building it. Social media may be the silver bullet platform, but the content will be make or break. How open, human, and concerned are you? Because that's the question your customers want you to answer.

A dangerous form of group-think

2009-11-17T11:19:00.001-08:00

You probably know the old fable about the three blind men asked to describe an elephant. The first, stationed near a leg, concludes, "The elephant is round like a tree." The second, who happens to feel the trunk, exclaims, "No! The elephant is long and thin like a snake!" The third, with his hands placed on the side of the elephant, scoffs, "You two are nuts. The elephant is large and flat like a house." The implication of the fable is that each of us has a limited perspective and we should learn from one another before forming conclusions.

Not so for marketing researchers. We want to understand what people think and do as individuals in the marketplace. Our approach is that despite the disagreement, each blind man is 100% right. For us, consensus generates error. You say snake, I say tree, it's all good.

But, well-known fact, people in focus groups tend to try to form a consensus. A typical solution is to ensure that each of the group participants has a chance to form an individual opinion before the group discusses it; for example, they may read quietly to themselves and jot down a few notes before the discussion, or fill out a rating form. I've found that to be helpful, but a recent blog post (about the financial crisis, as it happens) makes me wonder if it's really enough.

Naked Capitalism cited a story about "social validation". Apparently, people in group settings will hesitate to assess the nature of what they perceive until they have checked in with those around them. The story concerns a lifeguard who nearly let someone drown because the the other lifeguards seemed unconcerned. What's disturbing is that he was unable to perceive that the swimmer was struggling because nobody else perceived it. This phenomenon has also been cited in the infamous 1964 killing of Kitty Genovese, in which 38 people witnessed the murder and did nothing to stop it, each concluding that because of a seeming lack of concern on the part of the other 37, the situation must somehow be OK!

I have always assumed that group-think was a kind of self-censorship due to social pressures. But in fact, people in group settings may postpone forming any perceptions until they check in with the group. No self-censorship is needed. Even disagreement with the group may just mean that a participant has an oppositional bias, and is reacting to the social consensus. It's still an artifact of group-think.

At long last, this explains a result I once saw in groups of technologically-sophisticated business people. They were asked to develop categories for a set of product claims. They could come up with any categories they chose, but "service", "reliability" and so on would be obvious ones.

The exercise turned out to be largely pointless. Groups assigned claims to categories very idiosyncratically; there was little inter-group consensus. Frequently it seemed that as soon as any member of a group "perceived" a connection between ideas, the rest of the group also perceived it. ("Yep!" "Yes!" "That makes sense." Even if it obviously didn't.) We in the back room alternated between humor and frustration.

I think on that occasion someone cited the old joke: the IQ of a group is the IQ of its stupidest member divided by the total number of members. That's harsh, but we need to at least keep in mind the possibility that participating in a group dulls the perceptual abilities of its members. Ouch.

What's a researcher to do? Groups will always have social validation issues, no matter how they are managed. Even if you make them take notes prior to discussion, participants are exposed to facial expressions, body language, and so on, which may influence their perceptions. There's no way out.

One solution? Think small. It may seem paradoxical, but in my experience, the opinions generated by smaller groups (three or four) are more diverse than those of larger groups (six or more). It may be that the smaller the group, the easier it is for the individual to feel that his or her perceptions are "equal" to everyone else's. (Would Kitty Genovese have been saved if there had been just a couple of neighbors looking out their windows that night?)

We probably should also address social validation issues more agressively in our research approach. Thoughts:

1) Spend less energy on generating gut-level perceptions, which are questionable, and more time on the internal experience of perceiving. You may even want to avoid having the group articulate base perceptions because once these are formed, they're hard to change. Focus instead on the components of the decision-making process; e.g., emotions, thoughts, what other people say, what you say.

2) Role play. Create scenarios where group members act out operating as individuals, for example, telling a sales person what they want or need.

3) An experiment I'd like to try: instead of the moderator playing "devil's advocate" to a consensus position, challenge group think by asking a group member to take this role. When the moderator does this, the group tends to close ranks around the consensus. It might encourage the group to reconsider consensus perceptions if a group member is the challenger.

You may have better ideas, and I'd love to hear them!

The mirage of quantitative messaging

2009-04-05T13:17:00.001-07:00

I have been reading a wonderful bestseller which you have probably already read: The Black Swan, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. (If you haven't read it, please be warned that I am thinking of becoming Queen of the World so that I can require everyone who has a bank account or casts a vote to pass a test on its contents.)

Taleb is a "skeptical empiricist" philosopher who participates (profitably) in the financial sector. He explains that in our species' drive to predict what will happen, we fall into a number of potentially destructive information-processing traps, because we fail to understand much about the nature of information, or even much about how our minds actually work. Worse, according to studies he cites, experts are blinded by too much information and are even worse at prediction than ordinary people.

Oops. What is it that I do for a living, again? I extrapolate recommendations from data about how people think and feel. In doing that, I must presume that the data has some predictive value and that I am expert enough to interpret it correctly.

Not likely, according to Taleb, unless I am a physical scientist. Human behavior is just too unpredictable--prone to outlier events that he calls black swans. The type of research I do stumbles into two of Taleb's traps: the tendency to attribute doubtful cause and effect relationships between data points (the narrative fallacy), and the tendency to assume that because something has happened over and over again for a while, it will continue to happen indefinitely (the confirmation fallacy).

Narratives are cherished by marketers, because they reinforce our illusion that the data we are able to afford to collect must mean something important. Piles of data are much easier to digest when they are marinated in emotional oomph and salted with just enough cause-effect to be plausible.

For example, if I "know" from a research study that people with less than a college education are more dependent on their doctors for their medication decisions, I am likely to construct the following narrative: "less educated people feel that they don't understand things as well as the more educated doctor, which makes them deferential."

But of course I don't know that at all, I have merely noticed a statistical correlation, and one that is probably not much better than 80%, if even that good. What percentage of the highly educated portion of my customers are dependent on their doctors? Is it 20%? 40%? And what about the 20% of the less educated people who are not dependent on their doctors? If I had constructed my analysis differently, I might find that the correlation with education masks some other factor, such as cultural background or type of profession. Or the correlation may not mean anything at all, in narrative terms. Who knows?

What Taleb would probably point out is that it doesn't matter, anyway, because of my confirmation fallacy. My use of data to predict the future assumes that there are no outlier events lurking over the horizon. In other words, I am assuming that because in a single segmentation study, education level turned out to be correlated with dependency on doctors, that this will continue to be true for some meaningful period of time.

Yet, at this moment in 2009, that is actually unlikely. Right now, our government is investing in medical technology that will help doctors to do a better job of determining which treatments will work best for which patients based on empirical data. I have reason to at least suspect that the publicity about this new technology will change how even our most educated patients view their doctors' expertise, and therefore undermine both my mental and quantitative models of how people behave.

And that's just one example.

So here's my plea. First, if you haven't already, read The Black Swan; it's both necessary and delightful. Second, ask yourself some serious questions about quantitative research. It may be--heresy though this is--that qualitative is nearly always a much better basis for the development of marketing messages.

I am not completely anti-quant. Segmentation and behavioral models can lift your results if they are narrative-free (i.e., reflect no assumptions), easy to validate in real-time, and frequently refreshed. However, quantitative messaging studies over-complicate and even distort our understanding of human attitudes and behaviors.

There, I said it.

Why? Qualitative research, done properly (which means more interviews and fewer groups), forces you to deal with the complexity of human reactions in a way that humans are reasonably good at--face to face. In the qualitative setting:

1) You seek the simplest important conclusions. You look for a simple preponderance of evidence that seems consistent or reliable, not "data" connections between human attitudes that are either statistical phantoms or too complex to be replicated in the actual marketplace.

2) You treat the result as temporary. In interviewing actual people, you are confronted with the fact that they are responding to specific stimulus at a specific point in time, and that as the marketplace or external factors change, their responses would probably change.

3) You are somewhat less likely to end up focused on the wrong data or ignoring surprising data. When people are able to speak at length, relevant facts emerge that you would never have considered incorporating in a quantitative study. (That's also why interviews are better than groups.)

To corroborate this, by the way, I have been told that in the case of branding research, decisions made based on twelve in-depth interviews can produce better in-market results than a quantitative study. (I would infinitely prefer to write a creative brief based on twelve in-depth interviews than on a quantitative study, that's for sure.)

Allow me to repeat that segmentation and modeling can definitely lift your results. I have seen some excellent models lift results for my clients. However, the excellent models were refreshed frequently, sometimes based on real-time behavioral data, using actual data from actual marketing activities. They avoided making long-term predictions based on data collected at a single point in time. Also, being purely statistical creatures, they contained no narratives; no assumptions of cause and effect, just correlations. That approach, I think, minimizes both the confirmation and narrative errors Taleb refers to.

You and I could take some comfort in the thought that we marketers might find it easier to correct our bad habits than the academic economists Taleb takes on. After all, we have to get real people to engage with our products over very short timeframes, so we are able to learn from our mistakes. Surely we are more practical and effective than university professors!

However, Taleb points out that everyone believes him or herself to be the exception to statistical rules. So humility is the best policy. I will gently push my clients to rely more on qualitative findings as bases for messaging decisions. And from now on, I pledge to assume that there is something potentially important missing from my analysis: I will recommend that my clients prepare for the possibility that I am wrong. For example, I will strongly recommend that we be rigorous about benchmark and tracking disciplines, and refresh our insights more regularly.

Hold me to it.

Lies and consequences

2009-02-13T11:19:00.000-08:00

"Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on." --Winston Churchill

Let’s get right to the point: the old cynic was right, people lie.

I witnessed a great instance of this as a research neophyte on a project involving credit card use. Our group of heavy credit users (those who consistently owe close to the maximum amount available on their credit line) went around the room cheerfully estimating the number of credit cards they owned at “two or three”. These men and women appeared to be very proper people of the type who brush their teeth regularly and teach their children to be good honest citizens. They all sternly claimed to dislike credit cards, use them only when strictly necessary, and pay their bills as promptly as possible.

Then the moderator tripped them up: she asked them to pull out their wallets and count the actual number of credit cards they found there. They all had at least seven (this was the eighties, by the way). Self-righteousness gave way to red-faced laughter. They turned it into a joke, competing to see who had told the biggest lie: one particularly elegant woman who counted twenty-some separate cards was proclaimed the winner.

So why do people lie in research studies? What’s in it for them?

It’s obvious from their embarrassed laughter that my credit-line maxers lied mainly to avoid embarrassment. Although the focus group I describe was completely confidential, although the others in the room were strangers there was no obvious reward for impressing, the participants lied to preserve an appearance of responsible frugality befitting their clean clothes. That appearance clearly mattered deeply to these people.

This kind of ''irrational" lying is a common problem for more than just researchers. A study of Mexicans applying for state assistance found that though applicants under-reported their ownership of cars and other items they feared would disqualify them, an act of rational self-interest, they also over-reported having items like toilets and concrete vs. dirt floors in their homes—to avoid embarrassment about their abject living conditions. In this case, their embarrassment could potentially cost them dearly. (1)

What does it all mean? In keeping with my project in this blog, the fact that other people lie isn’t where this is going. In order to learn from this, I need to turn the two-way mirror on myself.

Urk. Um. Shouldn’t I be doing something important, like flossing, which I do after every meal? Or practicing my flute (I do that every day, religiously).

To make this a little easier, I am going to employ the pronoun “we” here forth.

As social animals, we need to trust each other, which you might think would lead us to be honest. But we also need to look acceptable to each other, and one of the main reasons for that is also our need to trust. Disapproval threatens social bonds—you can’t really trust someone who disapproves of you to be kind or helpful to you. Honesty is the ironic casualty of this need for trust.

(I’m not speaking about intimate relationships here—family, friends. The need for intimacy is in part the need to be loved as we are, and that will generally lead us to be more truthful about ourselves to our intimates. It’s imperfect, of course, but it’s generally true, which is why researchers often get more truthful results if they interview people in the company of friends or family.)

When it comes to honesty, we need to search our own souls and be as empathic as possible with other people. If you were put on the spot, would you reveal behavior that is generally unacceptable? While I like to believe that in that situation I would simply refuse to answer a question, I doubt that I am being honest with myself. I’m one of those unfortunates who turn red and choke up when I say something that I know is untrue, but I compensate for this social deficit with some pretty nimble rationalization and self-censorship.

Truth be told, the social interactions we have are not based on honesty, but on trust. Can I believe strangers or acquaintances when they tell me I'm looking great, or that they enjoyed my presentation? Not really. If I want honesty, I'm going to have to turn to those who trust me enough to give me honest feedback. But I can enjoy the sensation of belonging and safety I experience because they felt a desire to put me at ease.

All this dishonesty isn't such a terrible problem. You just have to face it honestly.

(1) César Martinelli and Susan W. Parker; Deception and Misreporting in a Social Program; http://ideas.repec.org/p/cla/levrem/321307000000000120.html; First Version: June 2006; This Version: May 2007

Reasons to be cheerful

2009-02-05T10:24:00.000-08:00

I recently had reason to check out a study on optimism done by a psychologist called Lisa Aspinwall back in 1996. The study compared how people deal with health risk and danger information, depending on their level of optimism. (1)

What it found may be counter-intuitive: the more optimistic people tend to be, the more attention they pay to that scary information about side effects and long-term risks. So your optimist isn't really some pie-in-the-sky, head-in-the-sand stereotype. Instead, they are people with the courage to face and deal with problems.

Here's how it works:

1) The optimist believes that problems are mostly solvable.
2) This leads her or him to seek information or resources that can help solve the problem.
3) Information leads to smarter actions, which create a more positive, successful outcome.
4) The initial optimistic tendency is confirmed and reinforced in a virtuous cycle.

I was mulling this over when considering whether to reduce my news consumption, which I have to admit is making me pretty jumpy, not to mention mad as hell. Since I'm an anxious type of person (see prior posts) I definitely don't count as an optimist.

But I wonder if despite my disposition, the optimist's strategy might help me to reduce anxiety even better than turning off the evening news. In general, I'll go out of my way to avoid even potentially unpleasant information (e.g., getting the right medical tests done on time). What if instead of avoiding the problem, I decided to face it square on and deal with it if it arises? What if I had more faith in my ability to cope well given the right information?

When you look at it this way, the optimist is a hard core realist, and anxious doubters like me are the ones with our heads in the sands. Hmmm.....

(1) Distinguishing Optimism from Denial: Optimistic Beliefs Predict Attention to Health Threats. Lisa G. Aspinwall and Susanne M. Brunhart; Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 1996; 22; 993

Life, death, and doctors

2009-01-09T07:48:00.001-08:00

I've been mulling over a recent project in which we interviewed people who are mainly old, and mainly very, very sick. As a fifty+ American, I have the usual anxieties over inevitable age-related illness and my no-doubt completely inadequate insurance coverage. So I'm hardly an objective observer!

Beyond sickness itself and the financial hell it entails, I'm concerned about the time when I will rely more on doctors than I do today. I've never gotten along very well with doctors, who seem to operate more like faith-healers than scientists much of the time. I know it's not their fault; diagnosis is frequently a guessing-game and if anything, all those expensive new diagnostic tests make the guessing more complicated. Unfortunately, knowing that doesn't help me to feel like a competent consumer of medical care; quite the opposite--I feel helpless and suspect that my wallet is being exploited.

Given my personal issues around health care, it was extraordinary to sit behind the mirror and watch a parade of very sick people talk about their medical care. These are folks with mutiple conditions which, in the words of one of them, are going to "get me", sooner rather than later. Most had already encountered Mr. D in the course of prior heart attacks or strokes.

I observed two very different attitudinal groups. (Bear in mind that this is not a quantitative result, just an observation, as most of these blog posts will be.) One group tended to display a faint little smile, sit back in the chair, talk matter-of-factly about symptoms and outcomes, and speak of their doctors with faith. Why didn't they have all the facts about their condition? "My doctor tries to protect me." Why didn't they even know the name of their condition? "Probably he/she said it, but I don't remember." Are they curious about new treatments? "If my doctor thinks I need it he/she will tell me."

The other (a minority) were the angry ones. They sat up straight and did not smile. They wanted to believe they could be cured, but they didn't trust anyone's help very much. So they focus on all of the things they can control, from healthy behaviors to internet searches. When they saw the information we had for them, they asked the key question: "Why didn't my doctor tell me this!!??" (I have to admit I felt a little sorry for the doctors when these respondents left the room.)

Probably--actually, almost definitely--the angry patient receives and will continue to receive better care than the accepting group. That's because they act like consumers of health care, not parishioners in the Temple of Health. They expect and demand clear, accurate information, and that helps them to make better lifestyle decisions as well as treatment decisions. This is the group I identify with.

But which group would I rather belong to? If it came down to a complete breakdown of my health--the accepting patients. For one thing, they are completely right. Probably their doctor is trying to protect them from information that will only make them anxious. Probably their doctor would tell them about any treatments that could really help them, with help defined a little more loosely. Their diseases are going to "get" them, sooner rather than later, no matter what treatment they receive. So "help" doesn't just mean treatment, it means acceptance; being emotionally and physically comfortable enough to enjoy the time you have left.

All of this leaves me with a question about life, appropriate to my middle-aged lifestage and anxiety-prone character: wouldn't it be better to learn to let go a little? To accept that death is part of the narrative that is Me? That it shouldn't in any way prevent me from enjoying the wonders of the universe I've been born into? Would I want to spend my waning days fighting with doctors? Really? Because there are much better things to do with my limited time.

Anger inspires you to work on problems. Acceptance can let you live well despite problems. There is a season for each of them; I hope that somewhere along the way I gain the wisdom to know when the seasons turn.

What's Important?

2009-01-05T05:55:00.001-08:00

As an advertising strategist, I have a strange window on humanity--the two-way mirror of the focus group room. I sit on one side, in the dark. On the other side, people of all types, ages, sexes, sizes talk about ads and products. We ask whether the photo of the middle aged woman in this ad is "relevant". Or if the brochure we are planning to write is hefty enough to be "important". Thanks to trends and fashions, all of this learning is about as eternal and profound as dust in the wind.

Yet after twenty years lurking in the darkened back room, combing through surveys and dissecting research reports, it has finally occurred to me that I was searching for something that actually matters. No matter what I am researching, as a strategist I always want to understand what's important to people. And that's a profound question.

If you watch people's faces as they react and discuss ads (eew! yessss! *yawn*), you soon realize that people bring their full humanity to every decision, no matter how concrete or obvious their reasons are on the surface. Nonetheless, experts in advertising psychology have distilled the rich spectrum of human motivations down to short lists that include things like sex, self-esteem, self-preservation, and greed. Did I mention sex?

Maybe this is basically true, but it's also hopelessly reductionist. (It's easy to boil the soup until there's nothing but brown goop left, too, but you won't learn much about soup that way.) And from my personal point of view, it's sadly dismissive of the actual lives and concerns of all of the individual human beings I've been watching through the mirror all these years. What if you or I were on the other side of the mirror? Would we want our voices to be heard as the grunts and screeches of primitive impulse?

I've watched young people talk about buying their first car and though self-esteem was obviously a big part of that experience, so was everything from childhood memories to their dreams of having children of their own. I've watched older people in the last stages of crippling illness talk about how they manage their conditions and though they certainly still care about self-preservation, they could also teach every one of us about endurance, dignity, and humor.

So this blog isn't about the useful reductions and formulations common in my industry. It's about what I've actually learned about people throughout the years. It isn't scientific, because I am not a scientist. Call it a diary of revelations granted to me by my fellow beings; my personal antidote to the cynicism of the marketplace.