the art of conversation

How to BT the competition

This ad has been on posters and in the press everywhere (pic courtesy of Xtreme Information), part of a £30m campaign by BT to promote BT Vision carrying SS1 and SS2 from this Sunday. Apparently.  

OR, is it a covert ‘ambush’ campaign orchestrated by BSkyB to make BT look cheap and tacky? A much more successful ambush than Robbie Earl & Co’s World Cup Bavaria beer stunt.  

Could BSkyB have chosen four footballers with the least possible charisma, ordered their waxwork figures from Madame Tussauds, then photographed them to make them look like Star Trek extras who had just beamed down? The way they are staring off into space and those dodgy strips just give the game away.  

BSkyB would have been aiming to make BT look like amateurs and make their package seem like a pale imitation of the real thing.  

Even more surprising is how they must have managed to get AMV.BBDO involved. Clearly, a dastardly plan hatched at the highest level. Probably by a Chelsea fan.

Hopefully Wes and Michael will get their comeuppance on August 8.

Beach Reading

 It was David Ogilvy in Confessions of an Advertising Man who (roughly) said when on holiday read; but read something that's unrelated to work. Reading will keep the mind ticking over and give it space to de-clutter. 

Asking round the office, we've pulled together some beach reads we will be taking with us this summer to depressurise to some near and some far-flung climes. 

 If you're looking for American urban grit and a fan of The Wire (as quite a few of us are) then David Simon's Homicide and the Corner have come highly recommended. Although looking out to a sunbright sea may be more therapeutic.

 Wolf Hall, Man Booker Prize for 2009, has received mixed reviews by those who have already read it here.  Although giving us a pretty vivid picture of the early 16th Century England some have found it confusing to follow at times. Compared to Joyce's Ulysees though, it's a doddle.  

innocent agm film

Final edit of innocent agm film. Good people. A good day. Write-up here.

Inconveniently Green

Without wanting to sound too downbeat, being a 'green' consumer at the moment is inconvenient. It just doesn't pay. Our 'default' behaviour is to buy what we are used to, what is easy and affordable and what  benefits us - in spite of our good intentions. As Jane Austen wrote, "I have been selfish all my life, in practice, though not in principle".

And most companies of course are geared to deliver profit first and foremost, sustainability coming a distant second or third or lower down the list. And we are not mandated to behave differently by legislation, apart from a bit of recycling, perhaps. It is still just too convenient for us not to be 'green'. What will it take for our lifestyles to change?

These thoughts hit home having bought the Green Living Guide. Great efforts have been made in making 'green' actions more accessible and the guide itself is certainly praiseworthy if wanting to be 'green' is your thing. 

But there is some way to go for sustainable, low-carbon living to become more widespread in the UK . Perhaps because there are so many variables and imponderables, people just don't know what to do and are not motivated to take the lead. 

I think the key issue with communicating 'green' (without 'greenwashing') is there isn't enough 'in it' for the UK consumer, especially in the short-term. Solar panels, for example, require thousands of pounds and grant applications and just sound cumbersome and off-putting.

A Feast of Conversation

 

Theodore Zeldin, our hero and the author of  'An Intimate History of Humanity' and 'Conversation: how talk can change our lives', was interviewed on the Today programme on Friday to discuss his 'Feast of Conversation', held on July 3 at the Olympics site in a venue made from old shipping containers. 

Attendees chose from a menu of 25 conversation topics, and talked about what they find interesting. "It is for people who want to have two hours to think about what is important to them".

Professor Zeldin claimed that "we live in an age where we don't know what to talk about" hence his idea to "have a new kind of conversation where we are trying to discover what we think and to discover other people ... [which is] the most exciting adventure of our time ... to discover who inhabits the world". 

The professor bridled at the suggestion that his event was like speed dating. He felt it was the opposite of the inane babble of speed dating or something like Twitter (ahem) "...It is about thinking, not jabbering".

We look forward to reading the reviews.

Not on Twitter, though.

Insight Show 2010

 
We've been busy preparing for the Insight Show at the Grand Hall, Olympia, 29th and Wednesday 30th June, where we have a stand (D410, in fact). 

Here we are hard at work, setting up yesterday morning.

 

We're presenting two case studies under the title of 'Seeing is Believing, Latest Developments in Ethnographic Research', on Wednesday at noon in the Henley Suite.

The first study was with Virgin Trains who reveal the strategy behind their new ‘modal shift’ campaign. We demonstrate how filmed ‘co-discovery’ interviews deliver unique insight into the Virgin Trains passenger experience.

The second talk focuses on a new, ethnographic app Siamack has frequently blogged about. 

The edl APP is a brand new mobile phone application (iPhone and Blackberry), an innovative capture tool and a means of editing and collating real life events via video, pictures, audio and text. We discuss how it works in practice and why Coca-Cola are rolling it out globally as an in-house tool.

Both talks will be put on the Insight Show website some time soon, we shall link to this as and when.

In the meantime, if you can, do drop by stand D410 to say 'hello' and see what insights (and some surprises) we have on show.

Simon

Exclusive! World Cup Ad Shoot Out

The World Cup kicks off today (in case you hadn’t noticed). The advertising stakes are high, with Nestle courting controversy with Mars. 

How did the sportswear brands do? Adidas bagged the official sponsorship, Nike is the outsider (again). So, who won the advertising penalty shoot-out?

First up is Nike: 

The creative idea of sportsmen taking (or not taking) their chances may not be original (think Guinness, Believe) but that is a minor gripe. This 3-minute extravaganza took up the whole ad break and is breathless and highly re-watchable. It must have cost as much as its heroes' combined monthly salaries. So confident, such swagger, an amazing piece of film.

A shame that ITV managed to cut the ending the first time it aired. What a Nikemare. 

Our verdict: spectacular goal. Back of the onion bag. 

Then there's Adidas' effort:

It is contemporary, eye-grabbing, in a Sin City style. But as Rooney Carruthers writes in Campaign: "I've watched this ten times now and I still don't get it. Zinedine Zidane bombs about in a retro car. Lionel Messi and David Villa do some great foot tricks and that is it" 

Verdict: Fluffed it. Stuttering run-up, tried to be too clever then bobbled it straight at the keeper. 

So Nike is the clear winner and deserves to be - hang on a minute, a fan in an England shirt has just run on to the pitch and is about to take their own penalty...

It is not competing with Nike and Adidas in budget but we suspect it has every bit as much impact. As Jon Howard says, there's not an overpaid football star in sight. It's about us, not them. It uses the national anthem but it is not portentous or grandstanding. (It's possibly not as re-watchable, either.) It's a penalty taken in slow motion. We watch, spellbound. The ball trickles over the line.

Verdict: an ad for the Age of Austerity. The excessive creative brilliance and money-no-object arrogance of Nike is going the way of Britpop or Lehman Brothers. The trouble with creative excess is for every Nike hit there are seven adidas flops. Or worse still, you get something like those Olympic mascots. 

This is toned down, scaled back, ever so Umbro.

And it gets our vote (some of us at least). 

So What?

‘So what?’ is the question that researchers are increasingly encouraged to ask of every chart in a presentation.

It’s a way of forcing your mind to go beyond reportage, ie not just to report what people say but what it means for the business. It’s a way of isolating findings which may be interesting but have no application, finding the most relevant points which really make a difference.

‘So what’ thinking used to be incorporated into research presentation charts as an output. The research findings would typically be in the top part of the chart, then the ‘so what’ or the implications or conclusion would run along the bottom, as the ‘bottom line’.

The latest extension of ‘So what?’ thinking is to put the conclusion in the headline. So a busy executive looking through the presentation on a screen can just read the headlines, the bottom line - now at the top.

Can you spot the flaw in this process?

The problem is that the researcher might leave out the more interesting implications. We may sacrifice quality and texture in the drive for answers and simplicity.

The researcher is now serving up 'convenience food'  instead of a gourmet meal where you can taste the individual ingredients.

The risk is that the client pays lip service to ‘consulting the consumer’ instead of actually listening and taking the feedback into account.

‘So what?’ is also the name of one of the most famous jazz tracks ever recorded on the ‘Kind of Blue’ album by Miles Davis. It’s brilliant, atmospheric, and highly emotional. It has no bottom line.

I know what you’re thinking: ‘So What?’

Dominic

 

Inside the innocent AGM

I spent last Saturday (sunny!) in a warehouse on an industrial estate off the Goldhawk Road. It was the innocent AGM and I wouldn’t have missed it for anything.

This was no ordinary AGM, despite featuring one quite interesting graph. But innocent is no ordinary company and their third 'grown up meeting' is quite hard to describe. Imagine a cross between a jamboree, a comedy gig, a hall test and a CBeebies awayday.

There were large bean bags to sit on and smoothies and veg pots to try (including new recipes, details of which we couldn’t possibly divulge for less than six figures). There were treasure hunts, talks, smoothie demos and games to play … all sorts.

Dan was the compere of the event and claimed to be its originator. He was a great host and was very funny (he writes innocent’s jokes). He also looked a bit like a pirate on a day off.

Innocent's three founders have been called hippies but they're too sussed for that. Plus, did you ever meet a hippie who played tennis, or worked for Bain and Co?

Mind you, innocent is quite beardy, especially the blokes - not only Dan, but Joe the good-looking one (tests prove it). Even Richard seemed a bit wispy on the day.

They say never trust a man with a beard but innocent admit to their mistakes. Like making a veg pot which was not suitable for vegetarians. Or sending supermarket buyers fermented fruit juice which exploded. Or getting into trouble for joking that one of their smoothies contained ‘two plump nuns’ when it didn’t.

Or forgetting in 2008/9 to ‘keep the main thing the main thing’, as sales dipped dramatically. Not helped by a global financial meltdown. 

WHAT'S A PICTURE WORTH?

In 2006 I went to South Africa to raise money for SOS Childrens Villages, the world's largest orphan charity. I'd just bought a Nikon D50 and hoped to sell some prints and donate any proceeds. 

I took pictures of children in an SOS orphanages and in nearby townships, including these ones:

.  

I was struck by how incredibly resilient and seemingly content the children were. Extreme poverty and hardship was usually portrayed as so downbeat, resigned, hopeless. I called the exhibition Child's Play. Original post here.

Then, nothing much happened. Except that my wife gave birth to a child of our own (nearly two-and-a-half now).

Until last week, out of the blue, I got a mail from someone representing a very large, global company who wanted to buy the rights to these images, for cash. All uses, in perpetuity.

I had to ask a professional photographer friend what this meant. I had never heard of a release form before this point, never mind had used them in South Africa.

But it made me think, what is the right thing to do? Take whatever money is offered and give it to the charity? Drive a hard bargain, negotiate on the rights and the cash offered, then pay the charity? Or should I try to ensure the individuals in the photos be recompensed financially? Or again, would they be thrilled just to know that they could become slightly famous and appear in the world's media?

The people who want to buy the images know that any payment would not go to me. But not having release forms is a bit of a problem for them. The kids could sue. The chance has probably passed.

Just a little story. Notice that I spared you the thousand words.

SHOCK HORROR ! FOCUS GROUPS IGNORED!

According to Tim Montgomerie's analysis of the Tory campaign:

'For a period, the 'Big Society' was put at the heart of the campaign. Amazingly, the Big Society was never tested in focus groups and it failed on the doorstep. One leading adviser to the campaign complained of a 'cavalier' approach to research. 'They latched on to research that backed their views and ignored any research that challenged it.'

Hmmm, the Big Society, also described by adliterate as an 'overcomplicated planning thought', seems to have been less than popular with the Tory faithful. They were probably asking the sort of questions people ask in groups such as 'What does it mean?' From David Cameron, the heir to Blair, it sounded like a Big Promise, to go in the Big Promise section of the manifesto, and to Sound Good, but without meaning anything that costs money. However as Kate Fox rightly pointed out in Watching the English, the national catchphrase is 'Come off it', so trying to put one over on the British is tricky at the best of times never mind at an election.

But I digress, this post is really about the use of focus groups in politics. Here is a respected right wing commentator complaining that policies were being put forward at an election without first being 'tested' in focus groups and without an impartial approach to research, which respects challenging findings. Halleluiah ! We researchers have come a long way since the dark days of Tony Blair when focus groups were seen as a left wing plot akin to witchcraft. One can argue with the word 'tested' but that's just a quibble really, the point is that politicians of whatever party now openly acknowledge that policy can be clarified and even improved by consulting 'real' people. Now, that is a step forward.

Dominic

NEUROSCEPTIC

The day after the General Election and the overall winner was the exit polls, which predicted the outcome with uncanny accuracy. Evidence of the enduring value of asking the right people the right question.

But if you’d gone to the annual research industry’s conference, Research2010, you’d have thought that asking people things was an outdated and frankly useless idea.

 As MRS Conferences go, Research2010 was Really Rather Good.  Hats off to co-chairs Simon Lidington and Nick Coates, not least for mentioning Roland Barthes in their introduction (that must have been a bet).

Trending strongly were co-creation, ethnography, online communities … and ‘brain stuff’.  The first three of these approaches build on what people say and are essentially generative or productive approaches.  All good stuff.  You try to learn from people-as-people, holistically.  There are no easy answers, interpretation is everything. 

But using fMRI scanners to show parts of people’s brains light up as they perform various tasks, is trying to replace what people say and is entirely reductive.  It treats people not as people, nor even as consumers, but just as lumps of grey matter. 

Presumably, brain scan advocates would exit poll by wiring up voters’ heads, to overcome the ‘limitations’ of verbal research techniques. Ethnographers would watch people while they queued then went into the private booth to vote. And co-creationists would invite voters to take part in a workshop, do some collage work and write about their experiences on a blog.

Instead, MR rivals GfK NOP / Ipsos MORI talked to people. (17,607 of them, working collaboratively with each other and with the broadcasters). 

The pain of election leaflets ...

 

I was woken at 6:15 this morning with my letterbox snapping loudly. Mistaking it for a knock on the door, I went to answer it only to find an election party leaflet asking me to vote for their party today.  

Mildly incensed to be awake so early, I added the leaflet to the ever-growing stack of political leaflets in my recycling bin and returned to bed.

Living in the Lewisham East constituency, this election has proven a battleground between Labour and the Lib Dems. Having predominantly been a Labour constituency since its formation in 1974, the current  Labour MP, Bridget Prentice, is standing down. With no incumbent candidate, this has meant the Lib Dems believe they have a real chance of getting a seat and both parties have been going hammer and tongs to get votes. 

Unfortunately, this has resulted in relentless leafleting (even at anti-social hours). And often they are the same leaflets as the week (or even day) before and end up being binned. 

Arguably, this does create excitement. There is a feeling of the political rumblings of 'change' happening on your doorstep. And from the parties' perspective, they will want to be getting clear, consistent and sustained messages to potential voters over the course of a campaign.

But the effect of repetitious (and somewhat intrusive) leafleting may be opposite to the one desired. For the overwhelmed electorate, feeling saturated by information and pestered by parties may discourage political engagement. 

At the next General Election, my vote would be for fewer, better timed communications, a more creative, considerate and voter-centered approach that encouraged a better conversation between party and electorate. And, hopefully, I'd then get a better sleep. 

Simon

P.S. some votes just in ...

Fancy a Cwoffee? Or a Tipple?

 

What's your poison? A Cwoffee or a Tipple?

Well, if you're looking for either, and for it to be related to work, then there are two events running that may be of interest.

'Cwoffee' at Lantana, Charlotte Place (just off Charlotte Street in AdLand) runs alternate Fridays. It is a meeting of Planners and Researchers over an early morning, piping cup of coffee. It's a chance to meet informally with other like-minded people, chat about  ideas on projects / initiatives; exchange blog IPs, Twitter IDs and business cards etc etc. Started by planner  Will Humphrey, it has been running for a year or so and attendees can drop in at any time between 8am until 10am.   

If early morning coffees don't suit, then an alternative event is happening during the evening. Aimed at mid-level and junior researchers (from all qualitative agencies), the aim is to share a drink (or more), but also to have a research focus on bettering qualitative thinking by  sharing / discussing examples of 'good qualitative thinking' (e.g. from articles, papers or personal experience).

The first meeting is in Roxy Bar, 6:30pm-8pm in London Bridge on Monday 10th May. It will be a kick-off  social event, whereby we get to know each other over a tipple and chat about what we want to get in detail from the following events. And that includes a name. Perhaps 'Tipple Tattle'...

So, drop me an email if you would like to come along to either at simonl@wardlemclean.co.uk (or just leave a comment below). 

Would be pleased to see you.

Simon

In Praise of ... Magners adverts

We've been impressed by the current Magners ad campaign, 'There's Method in the Magners'.

Developed by Red Brick Road, the campaign plays on the cider-making idiosyncrasies of the community of Clonmel, Tipperary, where founder 'Willie' Magner began making cider in 1935. The two TV ads, 'Straight' and 'Catch', are stories that have a 'quaint Gaelic charm' and a quirky odd-ball style. Kind of Father Ted meets Napoleon Dynamite meets Jack Daniel's.  The campaign even brought one viewer to tears who left the following comment on YouTube:

    "I just watched this on TV. Don't ask why but it made me cry. Such a beautiful ad ... and believe me, I don't go looking for adverts on YouTube just to compliment them"

This is a noticeable step from Magners 'Time Dedicated to You' advertising where the current campaign positions the brand as different and premium  compared to its competitor ciders (e.g. Strongbow, or Blackthorn ). Interestingly, Scrumpy Jack have launched a campaign about Scrumpyshire in print and online, which also plays on setting, 'local-ness' and expertise - although arguably with less charm and humour.

Magners also seem to think about  their customers online. We are told that Magners' master tasters, including Billy who has been with us for 35 years, keep constant check on the whole process to  ensure each sip of Magners cider is as grand as the last.

    Magners' recent tactical print ads sticks two fingers up to the Treasury and nobly informs its customers that Magners have taken the financial hit on the increased alcohol duty itself, instead of passing it on to the customers. 

So a hearty thumbs up to cider-that-cares with an impressive campaign.

Magner-ifique. As they don't say in Clonmel.

Simon

The Planning Fallacy

 

 

If a group of people aim to get the same plane, they will arrive at the airport at different times. Some will be early and some will be on time; others will leave it until just before the check-in desk closes. 

This doesn't just happen when catching flights, of course. The completion of the new Wembley Stadium was delayed by over a year, from a March 2006 opening date until May 2007 ready for the FA Cup Final. Even the Sydney Opera house was planned for a 1963 opening, but opened 10 years later.

Why is this? Why do things take longer than we want?

In Kate Fox's 'Watching the English', she calls this 'the Planning Fallacy": people underestimate the time it takes to complete a task. Fox suggests it is because we have an emotional bias that leads us to wish for a goal that in practice is unrealistic. We may want to please someone or be under pressure to meet somebody else's deadline. Or we may not take in (or want to take in) all the external factors (like staff holidays or traffic jams) that may delay our plans.

IN THE KINGDOM OF THE BLAND ...

 

The launch of Kellogg's new cereal Krave has set me thinking. It looks delicious to me - mmm chocolate and hazelnut. But I was wondering whether people want to eat something so scrummy when they are blurry-eyed in the morning. Perhaps it's a cereal to be eaten during the day as a snack? Or back from the pub?  

I was looking at some figures for breakfast cereals and the massive players are the bland ones - the ones that don't engage the 'this-is-yummy' bits of the brain but let the eater come to in their own time. Corn Flakes, the Kellogg's variety, has about 11% share and Weetabix has about 9%. Porridge is doing pretty well, too.  

It seems that it is easy to add on, to make something more delicious, more complicated, and much more difficult to pare down and to reduce. And yet it is the plainer, simpler products that have stood the test of time. Perhaps because of versatility? Or maybe because there's only so much eating time in the day to devote to massively delicious tastes?  Plain crisps sell more than flavoured; plain biscuits more than the chocolate sandwiched with …  

Market research militates against the bland, too. Tasting in groups favours the stronger, sweeter, saltier product variations, because respondents have such a short time to try and the product that makes the most impact tends to be the one that is preferred. Tasting drinks is a case in point. We are able to quaff great quantities of blander drinks, with the stronger and more indulgent flavours reserved for the rarer occasion. So cup of tea anyone? Or would you prefer a hot chocolate with marshmallows and swirls of cream?  

Judith

Research 2010

It was an inspired opening. The first keynote speaker at this year’s annual Market Research Society Conference (Research 2010) was Armando Iannucci.

He was interviewed by Marc Brenner, who was at pains to avoid ‘doing an Alan Partridge’. (He saved this for the Big Thinkers session later.)

Armando has done lots of radio and TV series (eg On the Hour, The Day Today, The Thick Of It) and recently made an Oscar-nominated film, ‘In the Loop’.

He is also very funny. And thoughtful.

He told us about his (incomplete) PhD on Milton’s Paradise Lost, whose opening line matches the rhythm of the Flintstones theme tune. He took it as a sign that comedy may be his calling.

Although he also applied to join the civil service. And considered becoming a priest. I suspect he is a bit of a radical and dislikes being typecast.

So he probably would not much like the Daily Telegraph’s labelling him “the hard man of political satire”.

Thinking about it, he is a bit like Michael Moore. Michael Moore in disguise. A very good disguise, admittedly. But the similarities are there for all who don’t see too well.

They both make films. They both nearly became priests. They are both smart and funny and maverick. They both probably hate fatuous comparisons like these.

More to the point, Iannucci believes that playing films and clips to an audience is the best research you can do. The audience may be cruel and critical and fickle, but “if it doesn’t get any laughs, it hasn’t worked”.

His opening keynote address certainly worked and got the Conference off to a flying start.

NEW RESEARCH TECHNIQUES

 

As Simon Sylvester pointed out in his article Day of the Clones, everybody is pursuing ‘best practice’, and ‘benchmarking’ but this is another way of saying, doing the same as everyone else!

The result is that brand differentiation is becoming the main issue for brands, as in sector after sector, brands are offering the same products, to the same people, in the same style.

Part of the problem is that everyone is doing the same research, in the same way, using the same research companies.

We held a seminar last week on new techniques in qual research. We called it panning for gold, (hence the old timer above) and we focused on trance interviews (hypnosis) and ethnography.

The point is that to come up with new ideas and new ways of differentiating a brand it helps to open up your mind to some new research techniques. After all, as they say, if you always do what you've always done ...

Dominic

In Praise Of ... Ecotricity

 

It's been a while since our previous 'in praise of...' article. Shame on us. Step forward, Ecotricity - 'the world's first green electricity company'. 

Having just signed up to Ecotricity, this risks being tainted by a certain smugness, feeling a bit pleased about 'doing my bit' to reduce my carbon footprint. However, the intention is to praise a company worth its weight in ... um, carbon. If you haven't been put off by the Climategate email scandal and if you want to reduce your carbon footprint, check them out.

Firstly, it is easy to switch. You can either apply through the site OR (as I did) go to the Green Electricity Marketplace website. You can compare different tariffs, green-star ratings and ROCs. The switch is done between current provider and Ecotricity and all I've had to do is ask for my final bill and provide an up-to-date meter reading.

You Can't Put Me In A Box

(Picture by Treehugger)

We did a project for think tank ippr last year, on post-identity politics in contemporary Britain (Discuss), as reported here. The report based on our research, amongst other sources, has recently been released.

In "You Can’t Put Me In A Box”, the report’s authors Simon Fanshawe and Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah argue that Britain is not only more diverse than ever before but that diversity itself is growing more diverse. Today, identities are more complex and fluid than they used to be, reflecting shifting interests and allegiances.

The report explores how discrimination and disadvantage do not map easily on to orthodox ‘strand-based’ identity definitions and while it aims to provoke rather than answer questions, it concludes with some implications for policymakers and data collectors, amongst others.

One day, all research projects will be this interesting.

We remember Rover

"What kills a skunk is the publicity it gives itself" - Abraham Lincoln. 

We came across this front cover from Research Magazine. It is from the period just before Rover was taken over by the Phoenix Consortium in 2000, five years before Rover's demise.

It is ironic that although Rover is not around, 'focus groups' are. There were many reasons for Rover's decline, poor product development and strategy, greedy board members and lack of state intervention (to name but a few). But it is a brave or a failing brand that boasts about not listening to the public.

MyDavidCameron.com

 

We recently stumbled upon MyDavidCameron.com

It is a site using crowdsourcing to create their own online spoof advertisements, that then get posted onto the site (as long as they're decent). 

The website spoofs the Tory's campaign endline 'Year for Change' and plays on criticism that Cameron's image was airbrushed for their campaign poster. It uses the politics-of-and, which is a form of political airbrushing: you can't cut the deficit and not cut the NHS; you can't cut taxes and have better services (apparently).

Meet Alex. And Andy.

2010 (so far) seems to be the year for technology. After the launch of the iPad in January, February sees the launch of Alex, a computer that makes computers fun and simple to use. 

Alex was launched last night at the Hospital Club in Covent Garden by co-founders Barney Morrison-Lyons, Harry Drnec and Andy Hudson (father of Simon our Field Director, as seen on the video).

Alex has been developed in response to people's anxiety around computers: confusion about how to use them, fear of breaking down etc. Alex's founders hope to have found the simple answer to those looking for more reassurance in simpler performing technology. 

Incidentally, Alex was named after Alexander Graham Bell who remarked the telephone's great feature was it could be used intuitively by anyone.

Nila Watch 3

John Pilger, Michael Moore, Peter Tatchell, move aside. Our own campaign against questionable food service delivery van advertising, is really starting to bite.

One of our very first blog posts in 2006 (sexist or effective?) alerted the world to the strange case of the photos on Nila delivery vans.  

(Our poll, however, revealed as many people thought it was effective, albeit in a gratuitous way, as thought it was sexist or offensive.)

Moving swiftly on, we then noticed that the Park Royal organisation had (possibly) responded to our blog and revised their whole art direction and creative strategy. Maybe they held a pitch and got a new agency in. 

The new phase of the campaign saw bikinis and innuendo being replaced by a tasteful couple smiling very close to some beans on toast. Toasty!

IN THE MEANTIME, A GUILTY PINT

 

I went on a brewery tour, organised by my neighbours in Greenwich, to a micro brewery on an industrial estate near Charlton, home of Meantime Brewing and learnt a whole new philosophy of beer. 8 out of 10 pints drunk in the UK are fizzy chemical piss, according to the owner, who is doing for beer what Green & Blacks did for chocolate. Having tasted the brew I have to agree with him. Like all quality products it takes some getting used to, but once you do so it's worth it. And they make light coloured beer as well as dark; true lagers because what is sold in pubs is not really lager at all.

The owner believes the beer industry has taken a wrong turn in putting all their investment into brands and advertising while cutting back on the maturation time of the beer.

Brands eh? Well if it's a crime then I'm guilty, but I have to admit he has a point. Let's hope we also have a culture of innovation where new brands offering superior quality can break through for the benefit of all.

Dominic

iPad later

Apple's launch of the iPad was announced earlier this week and here in the office, we've been wondering what to make of it. 

The general consensus has been to wear our steady-Eddy hats until the next generation of the iPad comes out, when all the technical creases have been ironed out and the enthusiastic early-adopters have tried and tested it. And when, as our colleague Siamack has noted, they make one with a camera built in.

Expectations are high, of course. Apple have transformed certain products into must-have status symbols. Take what the iPod did for MP3 players, what the iPhone did for the Smartphone; will the iPad do the same for tablet laptops/e-Readers?

No doubt, we shall be blogging about it when it does (or doesn't!)

Simon

A Glass Half Empty

Unless you've been on the moon this week, you won't have missed the news about Kraft's takeover of Cadbury's.

As British brands go, Cadbury's is/was one of Britain's most iconic. Reports in UK media have all been rather negative and admittedly it is hard to see the positives for Cadbury's. Trawling through articles, there is talk of threats to the product taste, to the manufacturing base, to ethical standards and to job security, while the government is powerless to intervene (not the case in America, perhaps).

Better Conversations

Last night was the Annual AQR's 'Not the Christmas Party' at the prestigious 'Hospital Club', near Covent Garden. Between sipping beer, wine and champagne conversations flowed from early evening until near to midnight.  An interesting conversation developed about the qualitative research culture: we are not so great in talking agency-to-agency and sharing our thinking.

Unlike planners and brand consultants (and so on), qualitative researchers aren't as forward in inter-agency conversing, either online (through blogs and Twitter etc) or face-to-face (like Will Humphrey's 'Cwoffee' meetings with planners/media strategists/brand consultants etc). The more we talked, the more we felt this a strange notion. This is because qual. researchers are in the unique position being the lifeline between client and the consumer and have a great deal to offer to the development of brands, communications and marketing as a whole - an area we felt should be capitalised on better. 

Why are we not more forthcoming? Here are our hypotheses (at least those I can remember):

Product Placement for UK TV

The snowy weather has meant too much time indoors. To stave off cabin fever, a glut of DVDs have been dusted off and played to divert attention from the jaw-chattering conditions. One of them, the latest 'Quantum of Solace' film, we see in no uncertain terms Bond's watch-of-choice is Omega, just as his car is an Aston Martin. Following such positive exposure in films, it came as no surprise in the news recently that product placement is certain to extend from films to UK TV, as a paid-for model (following our American cousins) and is estimated to be worth £140 million. Reading in the recent Campaign, advertisers and wider public bodies are voicing concern, and McDonalds are odds on as a 2/1 favourite to appear in Coronation Street, Emmerdale or Hollyoaks.

So what will this mean for UK TV and how will this impact on consumers and research? 

A New Year Message: Be Brave

 A happy new year and new decade (apparently dubbed 'The Teenies')! 

Although it has been a short while since our last post, we thought we would begin our first 2010 post about an article we have written and had featured in this month's Research Magazine; it is on the subject of  bravery in research and is based on a 2009 post 'Brave Research'. 

Although the article is not yet online, we will post a link to the Research-Live website when it is. Until then, take a look at the January 2010 issue for the article "The guts to do the right thing".

Best wishes for the year ahead.

Simon

'This is Not Just M&S Food'

 

News this week that Marks & Spencer has shifted from its 50-year tradition of only selling own-label products to including 400 big name brands on its shelves. In a direct challenge to its closest rivals, such as Waitrose, M&S will sell famous brands like Kellogg's, Cadbury's and Jack Daniels for the same price as other supermarkets.

This move is a sign of the times - M&S has seen a decline in sales whilst other supermarkets have seen increases. It is also one of the 'next big things' M&S could expand into, in spite of the economic climate.

Will it also begin to reposition M&S more towards everyday food than just simply premium food, or will it harm perceptions of M&S's uniqueness and perceived premiumness?

At the same time, ironically, Waitrose has announced that it will be selling own-label products in Boots.

It seems like downturn has made even the most polite brands like Marks & Spencer bare its teeth, roll up its sleeves and slug it out.

All is fair in love and war. And retailing.

Simon 

Surfing Google's Wave

It has been in the pipeline for a while now and is creating extensive online buzz, despite a minimal commitment to a release date. It is, of course, Google Wave. The detail is fairly complex but the implications are huge.

If you are not fully aware of this new Wave, think of it as an online tool that allows multiple users to communicate together in real-time whilst exchanging video, image, text, audio and link-based (VITAL) information.Google Wave enthusiasts, who have been lucky enough to be invited to preview the application, have already crowd-sourced a Google Wave manual, (called the Complete Guide to Google Wave) using a Wiki open-source platform; Google themselves have released a 1 hour and 20 minute video(!) explaining how it works. Here is the 10-minute abridged version:

People's Peperami

In August Unilever announced it was crowdsourcing its new Peperami advertising, ending its 16-year relationship with its agency, Lowe. Hearing recently that Unilever is looking to extend crowdsourcing to other brands is an even bigger surprise.

Is the reason for this 'creative abuse' purely budgetary? Or is it the case that, as far as Peperami is concerned, the brand is strong enough to appeal to the popular vote? The judges have been fired, now the public have to decide. 

But how Unilever will sort through 1,185 entries? It will be interesting to see whether Joe Bloggs is the winner ,or an advertising freelancer pitching for the $10,000 prize. Like Doritos' user-generated 'Tribe' campaign,  it's a cheap and engaging way of putting power to the people. 

Although Unilever envisages crowdsourcing as the way forward for Peperami, when the brand's equity starts to run dry and Peperami could yet be knocking on agency doors asking for help once again. 

Simon

Hand from Above

Hand from Above from Chris O'Shea on Vimeo, as seen by us on Adverblog.

Commissioned by FACT, Liverpool City council for BBC Big Screen Liverpool and the Live Sites Network,  artist/designer Chris O'Shea created this impressive outdoor digital display called 'Hand from Above'. Its implications for outdoor digital advertising must be whetting Kevin Roberts's SISOMO-coated lips.   

The idea is to have us question our daily routine by having a giant, intervening hand stop us in our tracks by being 'tickled, stretched, flicked or removed entirely in real time by a giant deity'. 

Creative Review posted a brief excerpt from an interview with O'Shea plus accompanying diagram on the technicalities of how the display works.

Just as flash mobs stretched from social networking into T-Mobile adverts, perhaps it won't be too long till we see some branded hands from above. 

The next display is in Cardiff at the BBC Big Screen, 22nd-24th October. If anyone is attending, we'd be interested to know how it goes.

Simon

Flakey Branding

We read the news this morning that Kellogg's has put their logo on to its individual Corn Flakes in an attempt to fight against the threat of own-brand Cornflake labels. 

"There has been an increase in the number of own brands trying to capitalise on the popularity of Kellogg's Cornflakes," claims Helen Lyons, Kellogg's lead food technologist. "'We want shoppers to be under absolutely no illusion that Kellogg's does not make cereal for anyone else.

However Warc reports today that consumers are still trading down, going for own-brand or promotions, as they still hit by tight purse strings. So will the high tech authentification startegy work?

Braver Research

 

Adliterate this week blames clients for advertising's creative stultification. Could a similar problem apply also to research? Are clients less open to less conventional research methods than they claim, given their frequent appeals for imaginative and newer research approaches?  

Many people say that nowadays, for brands to find distinctive, differentiated propositions requires distinctive, differentiated processes in terms of research and planning. 

The much-maligned group discussion can be the right tool. (Mr Huntington may not like to admit it but he seems to be a frequent 'groupista'). But so can online. And so can ethnography. 

But there is pressure to fall back on 'tried and tested' methodologies to win projects, even if we feel that other approaches may be worth trying. Not because groups are more profitable, but because they represent a currency and a process that clients understand and are comfortable with.   

Groups work when the the conditions are right and the conversation is honest. But even honest discourse and self-reflection cannot provide universal access into our motivations. Sometimes it helps to see for yourself what is going on, rather than to go by someone's account of this.

So one approach we have been developing through our ties with EverydayLives is the 'co-discovery'. First we watch and film someone doing what they do, then we go back and ask them to provide a commentary on what was happening. We 'co-discover' it with them.

Seeing their own behaviour encourages honest self-reflection and can add a new layer of insight and more texture. I doubt whether we would have understood this person's sense of their 'work/life balance' in anything like as much depth had we only interviewed him:

Clients have to be bolder, take a leap faith, if they want to make headway in an over-saturated, ever more competitive market. It is our duty to support and encourage them in this.

Simon

Setting the Standard

 

"Freeeee-evnin' staaanad" may be a new sound for London's workforce as they herd their ways back home after 12th October this year.

But will the news that the Evening Standard is to become 'London's first quality newspaper in the world to go free' mean good quality journalism and a claimed increase from 250,000 copies to 600,000?

In other news it seems that a second evening freesheet, London Lite, may disappear, following the demise of the London Paper. Shame. Reading them on the way home was about as productive and pleasurable an experience as poking yourself in the eye with a fork.

So the Standard's only real competition as a London paper will soon be the morning freebie, Metro. Will the Standard come across as an examplar of 'quality journalism', comopared to the Metro, when both are free?

The Standard is as much part of London life as the Congestion Charge, Tube strikes and over-priced restaurants. It used to be like the Daily Mail with more restaurant reviews and before its takeover by Russian billionaire Alexander Lebedev for the price of two issues, did some good campaigning and had some good journalists. And Michael Winner.

More Joy

BMW's Ode to Joy is another example of the One Word Brief Based on an Emotion. In the 1980s we planners tried to focus creative work more single-mindedly by reducing brands to 'essences' and reducing creative briefs to single-minded propositions. The idea was that you would get more cut-through if you tried to say one thing effectively rather than communicate a range of benefits. Someone told me at the time that BMW had been reduced to Cold Precise Perfect, which I thought was rather good. And was clearly the inhuman opposite of Joy.

In the Noughties planners have gone too far. One word is not enough, even if your name is Saatchi (we like this take on that venture). Particularly if it is a bland and blancmange-y word like Joy rather than an interesting and edgy word like Killer (our brand essence at the time for a household bleach). I can see why one bland word goes down a storm at the global sales conference. But really it's an abdication of responsibility. It can lead anywhere from gurning vignettes to gorillas.

And a brief that can lead anywhere is really no brief at all.

Dominic

OH JOY

We like to be positive here at the Art of Conversation but every so often we see ads like this. We can’t decide whether it is patronising poppycock or just twee twaddle.

The Joy campaign seemed to start out as a rather good campaign for the new Z4, ‘the only vehicle in its segment to combine classic roadster proportions with a seating position close to the rear axle’. So there.

The agency GSD&M from Austin, Texas was apparently responsible for the original campaign, which featured a BMW Z4 painting circles on an enormous canvas. (A move which saw the ad being banned in Australia on the grounds that it promoted irresponsible driving. On really large canvases, presumably.)

Then some clutz somewhere decided that, if Jack Daniels owns September and Coke owns Happiness, BWM can own ‘Joy’. We’ve got Wagner and Schiller on our side, they might have argued.

So they compiled this piece of ordure, with its cheesy, sub-M People soundtrack, its series of gurning drivers and clichéd car porn visuals and ‘say-banana-show-banana’ vignettes with an uber-irritating voiceover which reads out the strategy ‘at BMW we don’t just make cars we make joy’. Thanks for explaining, I never would have got that.

What I don’t get is what it’s got to do with BMW’s eco eD thing, as we see a 4x4 twirling on an ice cap trying to run down a polar bear.

It comes across as a planning-free zone. As a planner friend of ours said, it’s fluffy and forgettable, does not resolve any need, will not get talked about, remixed or passed on, has no traction conceptually, has no creative distinctiveness ... and it really undersells BMW.

Apart from that, good effort!

(Our normal, positive service will be resumed next week. Or possibly the week after that)

Art & Copy

Following the success of Madmen, it would appear that putting the advertising industry on screen is becoming somewhat fashionable. 

We came across an edgy, creative-looking documentary trailer for Art and Copy - a new film which (according to Spout blog) "is a tribute to legendary creative minds in advertising, and the process through which they made their most iconic ads". And we were so excited we wanted to make you aware of it (if you weren't already).

The film was released on the 21st August this year and has won a few accolades already, including an award for Best Documentary Director at the Atlanta Film Festival. Take a sneak-peak below.

Simon

Pipe and Slippers - and Bling

A recent article from WARC reported our beloved Beeb as “prioritizing popularity” and marginalising its older listeners. If you are over 35, it would seem your radio tastes are considered second place.

But radio is a heartland medium for older generations. It’s what they grew up with and had to make do with, along with wire hangers for antennae and jumpers for goalposts. By contrast, young people nowadays have an over-abundance of media available, including radio.

But broadcast radio has a difficult future attracting young audiences with online music providers such as Spotify or Last FM arriving on the scene. Users now expect to ‘self-DJ’, 'self-generate' radio content whilst exploring and sharing new music. “Young consumers don't have that need that we older folks have to have someone knowledgeable about the music tell them what's new. They have their social network to tell them what's cool” says Jerry Del Colliano, Professor of Music at the University of Southern California.  

Are the BBC more concerned with chasing younger audiences at the expense of forsaking older audiences?

Surely chasing popularity and ratings should not be what the BBC stands for. It is one thing for commercial broadcasters to seek high ratings to attract advertisers, but the BBC has a duty to provide quality content to all audiences, as a license fee supported public service broadcaster. They arguably have a grander, implicit responsibility too, in leading and enriching the public’s tastes, rather than matching and following public taste through a populist agenda.

The BBC should not cast out pipe and slippers content just yet.

Simon

THE SCIENCE OF CONVERSATION

Conversation is our theme – see our essay, Conversation as the New Model for Qualitative Research, or the shorter Powerpoint version, with pictures, here.

But, are we qualitative researchers ‘conversation experts’, or is what we do a pale imitation of what ‘real’ conversation experts do? There is a growing field called Conversation Analysis (CA), which was the latest subject of the AQR’s excellent In Depth. (This post initiated by a review commissioned by AQR last week).

Why should any of us bother to learn about CA? As Ailean Mills says, we should ask ourselves if our methods actually help or hinder ‘naturally occurring conversation’. For example, the number of questions we typically ask, the discussion guide and the role of the moderator, these may hinder, not help: ‘the moderator… can determine and distort the discourse of a discussion from the very outset …The choice of language, and its structure, will be quickly mimicked by participants’.

The focus in CA is on ‘naturally occurring conversation’ and all the examples quoted come from real-life examples of conversations, such as a doctor’s interaction with a mother in a clinic and a telephone conversation between two friends. Most groups and depths, of course, are far from naturally occurring!

Which raises two key questions:
1.    Should we all be incorporating more ethnographic methods, getting out there and listening to what real people really say (without their realizing we are listening in)? If we did this, though, how long would it take before we learned anything about Pedigree Chum (or any other brand)?
2.    Are only naturally occurring conversations ‘real conversations’? Can an ‘artificially created’ conversation (ie all focus groups and interviews) not contain real conversational elements and therefore valuable insights?

Pictures and meanings (again)

Turns out it's a film, this year's summer blockbuster maybe. The Time Traveler's (sic) Wife ... He Came From The Future, Upside Down!

WHY exactly is this poster portrait format? Is it to do with the sites available? I honestly thought it was advertising a book, not a film, maybe because the poster is book-shaped, not film-shaped.

I know, it says 'cinemas August 14', but I was so absorbed by the bloke (Eric, presumably) dangling down to cuddle Rachel (presumably), that I missed that detail.

An astute media observation, or just a bit stoopid. You decide.

All very trivial, but our first blog post via iPhone!

Introducing Twitcam

21st July saw the launch of yet another Twitter themed application: Twitcam.

The idea is similar to Qik and 12seconds whereby you post a comment or a tweet audio/visually as opposed to text (as per standard Twitter fashion). Alongside each tweet via Twitcam, Tweeters are able to post text comments alongside what they see and hear. 

There is also the possibility of a live webstream from your computer so fellow Tweeters can not only follow you for longer but get a real sense of who you are. To give you an example, here is a still of Siamack and Kevin trialling Twitcam's livestream here at EverydayLives Towers:

This is just another example of the many Twitter themed gizmos available at the moment (of which we are currently enjoying Twitpic, Twibes, Tweetdeck, Twitter 101). Take a look at the Twitter Book for a useful summary of other Twitstuff.

    

A point was raised a while back at the Tuttle Club about the direction of social media comms being VITAL (visual, image, text, audio, link) based. It seems Twitter are trying to move beyond text.

Interesting to see how Google deals with the expansion and potential threat of Twitter and its applications, as Google looks to continue its development of applications within similar online territories.

Simon

 

In Praise of Everyday People

On Monday this week, Antony Gormley's fourth plinth exhibit opened, titled 'One and Other'.

The purpose of the project is for the general public to occupy the fourth plinth space 'normally reserved for statues of Kings and Generals' and to 'become an image of themselves, and a representation of the whole of humanity.' The plinth will be filled for 24 hours a day over the next 100 days.

We took to the exhibit because of its promotion of the everyday person from realtive obscurity to publicity and celebration. It tells us that we are (to some extent at least) fascinating and worth paying attention to - something core to our belief when it comes to interviewing and observation.

We captured a few vox pops of people's impressions of the event in which they praise the exhibition of everyday people:

4th Plinth, One and Another, Antony Gormley from Wardle Mclean on Vimeo.

Simon

PICTURES, BRANDS AND MEANINGS (CONT'D)

So it seems we were right, they are models, not tennis players. But there are many more games going on here as well as tennis.

Wimbledon is in full swing and Andy Murray is in the semis (2 July), having survived a tricky post-match interview with Gary Richardson (surely the model for fake sports interviewer, Alan Partridge?)

But what is really going on in this new poster for Evian? Clearly it is all about sex and the usurping of male values and institutions. 'Order, order', the old order is changing. John Bercow must be a woman in drag. 

The picture shows a fragile phallic structure with male legs disappearing out the top of the picture and two women underneath, able to topple the unseen male blazer at any moment. The woman on the left represents women seeking equality in sport, demurely checking her racket and trying to be taken seriously. Her partner on the right is brazenly flaunting conventions and showing off her body, provocatively holding a bottle of Evian to her legs with an expression of pleasure on her upturned face, as if to say, is this what you want? 

The onlookers who are nearly all male, are impassive and self-centred, like viewers of porn, not a sporting spectacle. Everyone is waiting, time is suspended, while the woman on the right reflects back our inauthentic gaze with her fake performance and her partner waits to do the real thing.

Sisters are doing it, for themselves.

And of course the scene links back to The Great Gatsby, in which a bunch of privileged and morally bankrupt characters swan around, drinking heavily and bitching about each other, in the oppressive heat, under the symbolic gaze of the spectacles (here replaced by a pair of legs). Representing the end of the male-dominated era, the absent hero, the arrival of women at last in society.

Of course, Evian's sponsorship of Wimbledon is a clever recognition of the sexualisation of women tennis players and is a celebration of the inauthentic nature of our interest in the tournament. Possibly. They are clearly complicit in undermining the old, male order with surreal, distracting imagery, in order to allow women to infiltrate into the scene. And to support Roger Federer with these mind games ...

Cloud Control

I had my first cloud computing dream last week. A vast cloud hovered over London and the Thames was filled with disused desktops. Londoners were frantically tapping on their keyboards uploading / downloading Tweets, Google Doc presentations, 12Second clips feeding the omnipotent cloud above. Imprinted into the nebula was 'Collective Conscious 2.0'. Then, the people stopped typing and the heavy cloud juddered and collapsed malnourished, crushing the city below.

Of course, just a bad dream; but the development of cloud computing, looks to be on the road towards high levels of adoption. Despite dreams of anxiety, the growth of clouds holds positive and potentially significant changes for our future online behaviour: having our data, software, hardware and processing power in a location far away from our home and offices does not seem an unlikely vision.

Just as millions of us are happily relinquishing ourselves to social networking clouds, so are the likes of General Electric and P&G to the business computing clouds - good evidence that big businesses are not such reluctant adopters. The Economist wrote recently about how different open-source, cloud developers are looking to migrate their clouds into a larger one to allow online software, tools and applications to be more compatible (imagine being able to migrate your Bebo account over to Facebook, for example).

'Body and Soul' in last Saturday's Times highlighted how the growth of our dependency in spending more time online via iPhones or Blackberrys is already changing our behaviours with our face to face personal relationships; being physically present yet mentally absent. Even our identities may well shift further away into a cloud.

It would seem then the dream was about being ready to relinquish control on a more profound scale in the future - something we (individuals, organisations, brands) may be hesitant to do (at least initially) to such large degrees. The prospect of centralisation of control indeed has its Orwellian overtones. 

Or, as Expedia would say, 'let yourself go' (symbolised by a cloud of course).

Bemoan it or embrace it, the forecast looks to be a cloudy one.

Simon

PICTURES AND MEANINGS

It's all Greg Rowland's fault. He uses cultural theory to analyse and develop brands. 

So when I saw this picture today, having met up with Greg at a conference recently, I was suddenly struck by something very odd about it. So I had to look into it. So, in this picture, do you see:

a) a tennis player modelling

b) a model playing tennis (and/or, a model who may actually play tennis)

c) a model modelling

Wimbledon is coming up of course and women tennis players are increasingly celebrated for their glamour and style. Her stance and grip are sort of about right (speaking as a tennis player). And yet...

... the overriding impression I got was not about tennis but about, um, modelling, coming from the overall treatment and 'look' (glossy/plastic, and the pose), the lack of muscle definition... and there is something very odd about the relative size of her and that racket. Is she just very petite, or is that racket an over-sized prop? Is it even a real tennis racket? And that's not really a tennis outfit. Is it?

WALK ON THE WILD SIDE: ETHNOGRAPHIC RESEARCH REVEALED

Ethnographic research and qualitative research, what do they have in common, apart from too many syllables?

More than you might think, to judge from AQR's excellent conference, 'Ethnographic Research - lessons from the edge', held at the Russell Hotel on Thursday last week.

Caroline Hayter Whitehill introduced the conference with an expertly summarised view that many in our industry viewed ethnographic research as anything which is neither a focus group nor a survey. So, a video recorded retail exit interview is called 'ethnographic', which is surely stretching the term beyond recognition.

Ethnographic research is 'the naturalistic observation of people in their environment'. There are a range of methods, from complete observation, through combined observation and participation, to complete participation.

Many years ago I read Nigel Barley’s The Innocent Anthropologist: Notes from a Mud Hut (highly recommended). Some of the same issues arise when you observe and participate in a culture, even if the culture is the Smith household in Buckhurst Hill, rather than the Dowayo people in northern Cameroon.

Nobody knows this better than Siamack Salari of EverdayLives International (pictured), the conference’s main speaker and arguably the world's leading authority on commercial video ethnographic research. His website and his blog are well worth a look, to get a full understanding of how his ethnographic research methods have evolved.

Ethnographic research of the type Siamack practices is a fascinating branch of qualitative research, quite different to the interview-based methods that most of us are accustomed to. As different as growing fruit in a greenhouse is to picking wild fruit from the hedgerows, perhaps. But there are skills in common to both activities (eg patience, care, attention to detail) even if the activities look quite different.

Siamack was a product designer by training and one of his first forays into ethnographic research had him perched on a step ladder in an Esso forecourt shop filming people coming and going. He found that, rather than imitating a security camera, he did a much better job when he came down from the ladder, observed and filmed on the shop floor, on the same level as shoppers.