Ethnography of Change: Change in Ethnography

Change is a constant in the business world. Consumers’ tastes shift, new products enter the market, and even established brands must reinforce their position against competitors. Change is also relative to creating difference, and difference is the key feature of branding in marketing. In business vernacular, developing a sense of difference from competitors is thought to add value to a product or service and differentiate a brand as unique to consumers (Davidson 1992). This difference is variously called the USP (unique selling proposition), brand equity, and point of differentiation. I claim change can also be a model for success in ethnographic research.

Since maintaining difference keeps rivals from co-opting a brand’s position, change may appear merely as a byproduct of the need for constant improvement and innovation. Yet, value is created in change itself (Appadurai 1986). The circulation of ideas, desires, insights and innovations among ad agencies, corporate teams, consumers and products is what creates value. Branding, then, is not about creating uniqueness as much as it is about sustaining difference for the sake of value, and value is created through perpetual change. In this light, branding is the constant motion of its relational parts: consumers in motion (constantly buying more, so market share grows); advertising in motion (so campaigns never become stale); trends in motion (against which brands identify); corporations in motion (employees continuously shift within a company); and especially ad agencies in motion – their high turnover rate ultimately brings new people, new ideas.¹

So what creates successful ethnography within a corporate setting from the perspective of change? Indeed, even the best marketing studies on consumers, brands, and competitors make a brief impact before they are supplanted by newer studies, newer techniques. I claim success is created by changing the brand “ethnography” along with the corporation’s views on change, thus keeping its value in motion. This can be accomplished simply by changing what we do objectively in an ethnographic study (adding self-reporting gadgets such as pagers, camera phones, or fashioning more MTV-like video reports); better still, it is accomplished by changing subjectively the way we impact our clients and the way they think about what we do – making them smarter.

We are at a critical juncture in the business of ethnography. Its novelty is waning. New “ethnographers” saturate the market. Change in ethnography is about keeping it in motion, maintaining its value as the anthropologist’s brand of human-centered research. The wave of gadget-laden pseudo-ethnographers may indeed signal a need for change in the changeling of business ethnography itself. Where the pseudo-ethnographers often succeed in marketing their ethnography is in bringing “actionable” practicality to insights. When qualified anthropologists succeed in ethnographic research it is because they translate cultural principles into practical issues. If we lead by informing our clients with thoughtful, culturally-based insights, we can foster lasting relations with smarter clients who will see beyond the veneer of gadgets. It is then our clients who will demand more, since informed clients means more informed ethnographies.

Timothy de Waal Malefyt is director of Cultural Discoveries at BBDO Advertising, and adjunct professor at Parsons in New York City. He holds a PhD in anthropology from Brown University. His volume, Advertising Cultures, (2003) is available through Berg Press. He is quoted in Business Week, NY Times, USA Today