Media, Mediation and the Curatorial Value of Professional Anthropologists

GALLERIES OF EVERYDAY LIFE

Retailers own a powerful potential role as cultural mediator and curator, and professional anthropology can play a supporting role in shaping mediation strategies for retailers, among others. Working with retailers to develop brand, retail and/or design strategies is one potential pathway where a professional anthropologist—or others with similarly anthropological, ethnographic or, perhaps, para-ethnographic sensibilities (see Powell 2015, Marcus and Holmes 2008)—can play a role in shaping design projects and even entire organizations. As professional anthropologists play a role in mediation—influencing transactions and helping guide the movement of images, discourse, persons and things—one of the powerful ways that we can steer mediation, among others, is through curation.

To curate is to select, organize, and look after the items in a collection or exhibition. The term is most famous in the art world, where since the late 1960s, curators have been transformed from humble custodians into luminary superstars. This is part of a turn towards demystifying the production of art, and placing it in political, economic, social and global contexts (O’Neil 2007). Curators are increasingly recognized for their newfound prominence, while also often criticized for becoming too conspicuous. Debates have emerged around the proper role of the curator, whether a behind-the-scenes scene-maker or a public artist in their own right. The curator’s task, much like that of the anthropologist, requires deep readings and thick understandings of dynamic and shifting cultural and historical contexts, in order to produce significant shows that can permanently shape the trajectories of artists, art communities, galleries, museums and art history itself (Obrist 2008).

In this increasingly powerful position, art world curators today are recognized as mediators for collectors and other audiences. They take the vast and seemingly chaotic world of artistic production and organize disparate works into narratives that may tell a story, or alternately may stir debate and challenge audiences.

As Pierre Bourdieu has theorized, regarding the cultural production of artistic value, the value of an artwork is not purely or straightforwardly created by the artist herself. Instead, Bourdieu turns our focus to the larger network of actors and institutions that all have a stake in this, which includes the curator:

The subject of the production of the artwork — of its value but also of its meaning — is not the producer who actually creates the object in its materiality but rather the entire set of agents engaged in the field. Among these are the producers of the work of art, classified as artists…critics…collectors, curators…in short, all those who have ties with art, who live for art and, to varying degrees, from it, and who confront each other in struggles where the imposition of not only a world view but also a vision of the art world is at stake, and who, through these struggles, participate in the production of the value of the artist and of art (Bourdieu 1993: 261).

While curators do not necessarily play the ostensible leading role in the field of cultural production, their role may be considered singularly unique in shaping the art world without ever necessarily calling attention to themselves. Regardless of where anyone stands in this debate over the curator’s proper role, it should be recognized that with so much art in the world today, there is a great value in a curator who can isolate certain excellent works, juxtapose works in compelling ways and help us make sense of things.

As a parallel, if the grocery store could be recognized as a curated collection of cultural products, a gallery of everyday life, then product brands are surely the famous artists. And though product brands are most often celebrated and have come to represent how brands work—think Coca-Cola, Folgers, Tide, Mr. Clean, Oreos or Wonder Bread—I want to place product brands in their larger context of the consumer world, including the retail shelf, the supply chain and the retailer, more generally. Doing so highlights the often overlooked role of the retail brand as curator, mediating diverse interests, institutions, histories, traditions, practices and brands.

Food retailers are not neutral access points for food. Rather, they have the capacity to shape or even create ways of living for their customers through, among other things, the products they curate. This practice of curation includes the process of selecting products, excluding some products from the shelf and combining products in space.

One simple and provocative example of the brand as curator is Whole Foods Market, not just in the way this natural and organic supermarket brand sources and brings together unique natural and organic product brands for healthy meal and snack solutions, but also, tellingly, in what they refuse to put on their shelves. In particular, Whole Foods does not sell Diet Coke, even though Whole Foods could generate enormous revenues from Coca-Cola products. The Whole Foods retail brand acts as a curator that filters out the product brand, arguing that Diet Coke does not meet their standard or align with their philosophy. Through curation in this vein, Whole Foods mediates their customers’ relationship to the food world, much in the same way that a curator mediates the museum-goer’s relationship to the art world. It begins with acts of presentation, emphasis and omission.

Arguably then, the retailer’s role as curator and mediator poses a provocative question: In a situation where supply (i.e. the vast and always expanding potential catalog of product brands) outstrips demand (i.e. the limitations of physical retail space or the limitations of time and attention online), could the act of retail curation be considered as valuable as the products themselves? And in particular, might curation that is sensitive to cultural context be of special value? In the past, when retailers failed to carry a product brand, it was considered a liability or a negative value, a failure of trust. Today, when retailers consciously and deliberately exclude a product brand, it may be a core strategy for creating value. Similarly, we can even look to the symbolic and cultural value of curation as equal or perhaps even greater than curation based strictly on financial accounting.

MULTICULTURALISM IN THE CENTER STORE

The center store of the supermarket consists of aisle after aisle of boxed, bagged and packaged products. Often feeling like a warehouse of food, many shoppers perceive the area as highly functional in contrast to the more enticing perimeter food departments, such as produce, meat, bakery and prepared foods. Arguably the most tedious and disliked experience in the entire shopping experience, center store sales have been relatively stagnant in recent years, industry-wide.

As we walk the center stores in supermarkets around the United States, most if not all offer a so-called “ethnic aisle,” which has been around for decades now. An official history is lacking, but some industry reports suggest this grocery store category began not in response to America’s long history of immigration and diverse range of cultural traditions, but rather as the “Hispanic aisle,” filled with products from Mexico that might appeal to growing audiences of Latino shoppers in the later 20th century (McTaggart 2003, see also Davila 2001). In grocery stores around the United States, there are a variety of different configurations of ethnic aisle—some smaller, some larger, some skewed towards demographic profiles by neighborhood, some guided by culinary trends in food culture. Some are focused on food from Mexico or Latin America, others more focused on food from various Asian countries. Today, the supermarket industry is “evolving” the ethnic aisle, mostly in response to a broadening food culture in America that is more interested in food variety, but also in response to changing demographics. But why are these food categories segregated in the center store in the first place? And is there any value to having an ethnic aisle? Further, if the store is a kind of cultural media, and mediums, as Mazzarella (2004) explained, make “society imaginable and intelligible to itself in the form of external representations,” is this an accurate representation of who we are, or aspire to be?

This first case study describes efforts around reshaping category management and product mix strategy in the center store at a medium-sized regional grocery store chain on the west coast of the United States. The project’s central focus was not center store initially, but began with a brand strategy and reinvention project. The firm I work with, Shook Kelley, is a strategy and design firm that provided consulting services, and later worked on design projects for the grocery store chain. The main purpose of our initial project work was to create a prototype store design for the entire chain, thereby changing its direction and vision for the future. Facing competitive challenges, a changing food culture landscape and new shopping habits, the brand was trying to figure out a new position in the market, closely tied to the organization’s roots. As a west coast company and local brand, the privately-owned company was small and flexible enough to both adapt and react in a sensitive way to changing demographic and cultural diversity trends within the region. This was something the chain had done in the past, but lost sight of during a process of business rationalization and day-to-day operational challenges. Meanwhile, larger food retail competitors sought to develop “neighborhood” strategies but ultimately lacked flexibility for regional variation because they were managed as national brands and had to limit their variation in order to fit into their larger chain organizations.

In the aftermath of the prototype store design and renovating existing stores, one key sub-project initiated by the client involved rethinking center store product mix to reflect a multicultural strategy. In effect, the goal was to deconstruct the “ethnic aisle.”

As noted, center store sales have struggled in recent years, while the supermarket industry has sought ways to innovate the experience. Larger format competitors and warehouse stores have picked up ground on these sales, as shoppers opt to purchase bulk versions of these less-perishable packaged goods and dollar stores find ways to offer them at cut rate deals. As a result, fewer shoppers walk these aisles and sales are relatively stagnant.

Meanwhile, much public sentiment has turned against the products sold in the center store. Many health experts, nutritionists and public health advocates specifically suggest not walking down these aisles, for the sake of our health. Take, for instance, “Rule 12” of Michael Pollan’s Food Rules, which urges readers to steer clear of center store (Pollan 2009: 27):

Rule #12: Shop the peripheries of the supermarket and stay out of the middle.

Most supermarkets are laid out the same way: Processed food products dominate the center aisles of the store, while the cases of mostly fresh food—produce, meat and fish, dairy—line the walls. If you keep to the edges of the store you’ll be much more likely to wind up with real food in your shopping cart. This strategy is not foolproof, however, since things like high fructose corn syrup have crept into the dairy case under the cover of flavored yogurts and the like.

HEALTHY SNACKS IN A CORNER STORE

While the first case study considered the impact of curating an existing product mix, sometimes the curatorial challenge is how to introduce the new, and mediate potential conflicts with existing customers and partners. Here, we turn to the role professional anthropology might consider in addressing this question, based on another instance where the anthropologist is in a behind-the-scenes position.

This second example comes from a corner store conversion project in South Los Angeles serving a low-income “food desert” community. In addition to redesigning and rebranding the store, a new curation strategy for the store’s product mix focused on providing more healthy snacking products for targeted audiences. The branding, strategy and design team consisted of a small group: an experienced retail architect, environmental graphic designer and a cultural anthropologist. This team worked closely with the corner store’s owner and several community development organizations that work on food policy, food justice, community finance and urban renewal. The store’s operator owned two stores, under different names and in different areas of the urban area. He had a couple decades of experience operating food retail and was quite competent with the business, but struggled to advance and had little access to capital in order to make improvements.

The key strategic outcome and goal of this project was figuring out how to assemble a collection of healthier snacks into a small food retail format, thereby attempting to reshape expectations about the occasion for shopping a corner store.

In similar conversion projects carried out by food justice groups nationwide, retailers struggled to reconfigure their perceived relationship to the product brands traditionally found in corner stores, which contribute to an unhealthy reputation and expectation for these sites. In most of these cases, little was done to rebrand or reframe the retail destination. Conversions would focus on finding space within an existing store for healthy products, especially fresh produce, while the overall retail context did not change or did not change in a dramatic fashion. These conversion projects focused on adding new products, without a complete or comprehensive consideration of how the retail brand might act as a curator and mediator. The fresh produce sections typically felt out of place or distinctly separate from the rest of the corner store, rather than an integral part of the store’s business model.

The South Los Angeles store was previously called “$1 Dollar Warehouse,” (though neither a dollar store, nor a warehouse store) and is located on a busy urban thoroughfare filled with a mix of small local retailers, fast food restaurants, corner stores and liquor stores. The $1 Warehouse was located in a relatively new strip mall structure, sharing a parking lot with a donut shop, a self-service laundromat and a cell phone store, among other retailers. The building was constructed in 1993, after the prior retail strip mall on the site burned down during the riots of 1992, which originated less than a mile away.

The project began as an initiative of the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) and later, after the CRA was disbanded by the state of California, became a project spearheaded by the Los Angeles Food Policy Council (LAFPC), a non-profit, non-governmental group. These organizations and their partners offered the store’s owner and operator an opportunity to participate in a program offering financial assistance if he would sell fresh produce in his store. The storeowner had food retail experience working at 7-Eleven convenience stores and alongside experienced fellow Guatemalan immigrant grocers in Long Beach—and recognized that his business could improve with the help of outside assistance. In addition to enhancing revenues, he also wanted to find ways to better his community and make it healthier.

My role in the project included strategic consulting, branding and creating a team of experienced designers who could help translate retail brand strategy into the built environment in order to rebrand the existing store. I drew from my experience with a strategy and design firm that works with many food retail brands.

We launched the project by spending time in the store and exploring the store’s product inventory, competitive marketplace and current customer audience. This was not ethnographic research, though our exploration work sought to situate the store in its cultural and economic contexts. Our main informant in this research was the store owner himself. Despite being located in a “food desert,” the local market competition for food represented a challenge, including corner store competitors, other food retailers, and national fast food brands. It seemed that the $1 Warehouse was closely affiliated with the same expectations associated with other corner stores in the area: a destination for unhealthy snacks, junk food and sugary drinks. Customers used the $1 Warehouse as they would any other corner store, stopping by frequently over the course of the week, typically before or after work, buying just two or three products and spending less than five minutes.

The initial expectations for the project from the food policy group were set by prior corner store conversion projects. But our retail strategy team felt that planting a fresh produce department inside this urban corner store didn’t make sense. That approach did not seem to fit how people shopped this store, and we expressed concern that the produce would need to be thrown away frequently, thereby exposing the store owner to potential financial risks. Therefore, the new strategic direction we developed hoped to mediate our partners’ public policy goals of growing healthy food access in a lower-income neighborhood, with the store owner’s goals of improving business and the general “health” of his local community.

A curation strategy for the store instead revolved around snacking, and the brand would attempt to mediate shoppers’ relationships to their daily snacking habits. The store would focus on offering healthy—or more specifically, healthier—snacking products to the existing customer base, because those people already visited the store frequently and already used the store as a snack resource and destination. While previous corner store conversion projects inserted a generalized fresh produce department into any open space inside of an existing store layout—essentially asking snack shoppers to think about healthy meals and general healthy eating—the redesigned store would focus on healthier packaged snacks and fresh produce considered an obvious “snack.” For example, bananas could be consumed immediately by a single person without preparation, but zucchini required preparation and would be omitted from the store’s produce selection. Further, a wide range of details, including the brand’s new name, its graphic identity, product mix and even the store’s flow and layout, would all be aligned with the snack-focused brand strategy, at least in theory.

A “Healthy Snacking Zone” was designed in the experience, taking up prominent real estate as the store’s first impression. This zone asserted the brand’s role as a cultural mediator. Instead of the existing “blank canvas” approach, where the entire retail floor was homogeneous, and therefore neutral or indifferent to external influences, the rebranding process sought to provide structure to the shopping experience.

In asserting its role as a source and advocate for a healthier community by curating healthier snack products, the new strategic direction also mediated the retailer’s relationship with powerful global product brands. Once or twice a week, a leading snack product CPG representative would visit the store and directly stock products on the shelf. The representative would often also directly install signage, promotional displays, and even merchandising fixtures into the store. This is not unique to the store, but is a common practice throughout the well-funded CPG industry, called Direct Store Delivery (DSD). In doing so, these CPG representatives have developed long-standing relationships that are often mutually beneficial to the CPGs and their storeowner partners. These relationships allow the CPGs to play a prominent role in shaping the curation of corner stores.

As a result of the rebrand and the new snacking zone, CPG representatives were limited to stocking products in the rear aisles of the store and promotional signage opportunities were greatly diminished because they did not fit well into the brand’s new in-store look and feel. Representatives’ initial attempts to stock healthier CPG product options in the prominent Healthy Snacking Zone location were rebuffed. As a result, the store owner may have sacrificed profits from the sale of these top-selling products, which were now less prominently displayed. However, these sales were sacrificed in the service of building the new retail brand’s direction.

In comparison to the first case study, the design and strategy team played a more central role in determining the details of this curation strategy and practice, largely due to a lack of organizational infrastructure. Here, my role was highly flexible, and included everything from determining which snack product SKUs might make sense for the Healthy Snacking Zone, to taking trips to a restaurant and corner store supply store in order to source products, and even helping with design decisions and supervising construction implementation. While the strategy behind the rebrand and new retail direction was much looser and less articulated in this case, there was nonetheless an embodied sense of the brand’s new direction shared among team members.

The value of anthropological insights in this project rested in drawing connections and opportunities between potentially disparate people, groups, businesses, traditions and institutions. This included store operations, design, food policy, food justice and corner store retail traditions, not to mention navigating city building codes and permits and supply chain concerns. For example, one unexpected outcome of the project was revealing the challenges any South Los Angeles corner store would face in attempting to source healthier snacks for their store. As a result, one of the community partners launched a new enterprise called COMPRA Foods focused specifically on supplying healthy snacks and produce to corner stores in lower-income neighborhoods of the city. The project lived on and expanded beyond the scope of this one store, and continues to grow today. By drawing these ideas together, new community and business opportunities emerged where frustrations had existed previously.

In the months following the corner store’s re-opening, financial results were not entirely clear. This was largely a result of imprecise accounting standards before and after the project, a strategic problem that was identified but never fixed. However, the storeowner explained to our team that he was able to pull out of debt. He had hired 3 full-time employees. And for the first time in his adult life, he had the ability to take a vacation trip.

CONCLUSION

It’s often said, we are what we eat. Understanding what’s eaten, this is the stuff of ethnography, as traditionally defined. But thinking through the lens of mediation, it might be more apt to ask, are we also where we shop? If food retail spaces are not merely access points for food, then they may actively shape us, as sites of cultural production. Understanding how mediation happens and how media gets formed and designed is therefore also a cultural process. The problem of mediation is what Jay Hasbrouck might refer to as one of the “uncomfortable questions” that professional anthropologists can raise (2015). This is a pathway to provide unique value. By turning the lens of inquiry on the process of mediation itself, professional anthropology might help shift perspectives, reframe challenges and reorient strategy in the organizations we work for and with. Food life is no longer (only) on the outside of the food retail organization, but also implicated or shaped by its own strategy. In essence, we should then be aware of how we, as professional anthropologists, are writing and designing consumer culture (Marcus and Clifford 1986). Professional anthropologists have the opportunity to impact these strategies through our insights.

These case studies hope to explain or at least point to how professional anthropologists might play a role in strategically curating product mixes inside food retail stores. While not applications of ethnographic research or insight, working in a position of cultural mediation makes sense for professional anthropologists, as it builds on our existing set of skills, our attentiveness to cultural contexts and our ability to see connections between disparate organizations, groups of people and discourses.

While professional anthropologists in the EPIC community have debated the role or roles of anthropologists and ethnography within the corporation, this paper tries to articulate a potential ripple effect of our strategic insights. Here, the impact of anthropologically-informed work is followed into other sites of organizational decision-making and strategic relationships (see also Cefkin 2009). Through an understanding of mediation, the EPIC community may discover yet another way anthropologists contribute to the production of cultural and economic value.

Michael G. Powell, PhD is a cultural anthropologist who works for a strategy and design firm Shook Kelley, based in their Los Angeles office.

NOTE

Acknowledgments – Special thanks to Hanna Garth for collaborating on the research and analysis of the corner store conversion project in South Los Angeles. Thanks to Natilee Harren for sharing insights and sources on curation in the art world. And thanks to Ken Erickson, chair of a panel on the intersection of business and food at the 2015 annual SfAA conference in Vancouver, which allowed me to present an earlier iteration of this paper. The ideas here do not represent the official position of Shook Kelley or any of the firm’s clients.