The Anthropology Of Branding

Photo Credit: Tate Carlson

RITUALS, TRIBES, SYMBOLS, creation stories and rites of passage: standard fare for scientists worldwide. They are terms that live at the more lucid edge of the anthropological spectrum and seem, even to anthropological outsiders, somehow attainable. However, save scientists, concepts like rituals and rites of passage are largely useless in most people’s everyday lives.

And what could be more everyday than advertising? It’s something most consumers are so inundated with that we notice it, maybe, 10 percent of the time. Which is why the notion of an ad agency taking the discipline of anthropology and applying it to their work is so, at least superficially, unusual.

For the better part of the past three years, however, Minneapolis-based OLSON has been doing just that, and seeing tremendous growth as a result. In fact being named one of Inc. Magazine’s fastest growing private companies is just the tip of the proverbial business-success iceberg. OLSON has seen revenue grow from $25 million in 2007 to $35 million in 2008 with a projection of $41 million for 2009.

Founded in 1992 and hailing itself a “non-traditional agency dedicated to building brand communities through innovative methods,” OLSON is “holistic by design” and runs the modern advertising gamut of services: brand strategy, advertising, interactive, social networking, design, public relations and media.

More to the point, though, OLSON makes the claim that “[they] think in social circles,” which is the real entry point of their marriage of science with everyday life: brand anthropology.

INTRO TO SOCIAL CIRCLES

DEPENDING ON WHICH DICTIONARYyou turn to, the definition of “anthropology” usually goes something like “the realm of the broad scientific study of human culture and biology” interested in, among other things, how humans interact in societies, which is where advertising, or at least OLSON’s brand of it, comes in.

“The proprietary part is that we have these 10 dimensions of brand community that were developed through our anthropologists,” says Kevin DiLorenzo, OLSON president, of their use of anthropology. “And some of those things are, ‘What are the symbols, artifacts and languages of this brand and this community; what are the rituals that they engage in? What are the threats to this community? What’s the creation story?’ It’s an element of these kinds of dimensions that start to tell a bigger story. These dimensions really start to enact a richer discovery process for us, and that leads us to a shared belief, [which is] a value that the company shares with a speci c community. And that informs everything from creative direction to product design, to maybe the innovation we look to develop.”

The dimensions of brand community as defined by OLSON’s approach are the essence of what differentiates them from their competitors.

“And that’s where anthropology is really different from other planning and strategic agencies,” says Erin Tait, OLSON’s director of brand anthropology. “A lot of times people say, ‘This is the white space so we’re going to call ourselves this kind of company,’ whether it’s real or they manufacture that kind of belief. Whereas we’re really looking into the ethos of, people are people first, not target audiences … So, in many ways, this is the way a relationship with an agency should work. This is the ideal because you’re creating a greater return and truth to what you’re marketing. It’s been developed specifically with that individual in mind.”

And if OLSON’s approach to brand anthropology seems a bit deep for its mere three-year gestation, that’s because it is, on two fronts. First, although OLSON is among the first to stake direct claim to using anthropology for branding, it’s not like they’ve reinvented the wheel. After all, this isn’t the first time a cultural anthropologist’s lens has been applied to the relationship between consumer and product—it’s simply a rare example of an agency turning this lens back on the process itself. Second, is the fact that, from OLSON’s perspective, they’ve been doing this all along.

“I don’t think there was a moment in time where we decided this was going to be our thing,” says Mark Bubula, vice president and strategy group director. “I don’t think there was any decision other than that to make because it was that built into our DNA. I don’t know if there was an ‘ah-ha’ moment or not.”

As Bubula says, although the notion of communities was engrained in OLSON’s culture, they were looking for better ways to articulate communities until the moment a few years back when they said, “Duh, anthropology is about communities.” At which point they found out more. 

CREATION STORY 101

WHILE AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL APPROACH seems logical when the product/company has a strong inherent community—OLSON’s work with Nike Bauer Hockey and the über-defined community of aspiring pucksters comes to mind—the brand anthropologists at OLSON believe its reach is equally relevant with products that don’t span overt communities.

“It fits with any community,” says Tait. “You just have to identify that community and gure out what it is they share, and then find that overlap between what you as a company believe and what they believe.”

Nowhere is this approach more relevant than with one of OLSON’s newer clients, Imation, on their Memorex brand.

“We call our target consumer the modern mom,” says Jessica Walton, Memorex’s global brand manager. “We weren’t communicating to her. So when we originally interviewed OLSON one of the things that piqued my interest was that they talked not about doing research to get facts but about doing research to get insights. I really connected with their anthropology process.”

“What we wanted to do was really think about how moms connect to electronics,” says Tait. “So we spent weeks talking to moms to inform how we build this brand that was around in the ‘70s, and people think of as an audio tape. We had this new audience, moms, and we spent weeks talking to them in their homes and really trying to understand how electronics fit into not just their personal lives but their family’s lives.”

Tait, herself a modern mom, led the charge to define a group and begin the ethnography process—in layman’s terms, analyzing how they go about day-to-day life.

“We assembled this handpicked panel of moms who were creative and liked expressing themselves but hadn’t done it in a research form,” says Tait. “If you go really deep with 10 people you learn tons. More than you’d ever learn with five focus groups of six people each.”

Almost immediately the team made a contrarian discovery. Although they initially figured that the modern mom used electronics for escape, upon initial ethnography, the team discovered what Tait calls “the dark side of electronics”: They’re isolating.

As Kevin DiLorenzo says, “Whereas a lot of agencies start to develop a kind of creative brief, what we do is say, ‘One of the rituals that moms deal with is music in the house and getting the ear buds out at dinner time,’ and suddenly that’s an insight that might not be captured in the creative brief but through living with these women, observing them and seeing how they deal with technology.

“What [people are] realizing is that there’s a deeper level of connection coming from anthropology. It’s not the color or the design—though that’s a part of it—but it’s the experience it can help create. So whether it seems like a big idea or not, the fact that you can put an iPod—which to date has been about individuals with ear buds in—on one of these docking stations and make it a WePod, that’s a pretty big idea. These things are about sharing moments rather than internalizing moments. And that was kind of the discovery with the women, that these electronics had sort of been working against their agenda.”

Consequently, OLSON’s work with Memorex has led them down the path of selling modern moms technology that brings the family together for “WeTime.” And since Memorex’s foray into consumer electronics is still in its infancy, WeTime is not simply a notion that was retrofitted to their current product line, rather a concept utilized in product development as well.

“A lot of times when we do research, we do it to get facts and not really to get insights that drive our strategy,” says Memorex’s Walton. “I felt like OLSON could really help us dig deeper into insights among women and consumer electronics. I wasn’t just looking for an ad agency, I was looking for a partner who could help us develop the brand. I felt like they were really in a position to dive in deep, much more so than any other agency we had worked with in the past.”

The notion of not only helping influence the current product marketing—the first incarnations of the Memorex WeTime campaign hit in late November—but also the development of future products is exciting to the modern mom as well.

“I jumped on it right away because it sounded really interesting,” says Kristen Nilsen Noonan, one of the Memorex modern moms recruited by Tait. “They want to know what makes my life easier, and so I get to play a role in something that, in the long run, will make my life, and a world of people like me, easier, and that’s very gratifying.”

ADVANCED LEVEL RITES OF PASSAGE

MEMOREX AND NIKE BAUER and any number of other OLSON clients are not isolated instances of success, and that has everything to do with OLSON’s genuine adherence to brand anthropology as more than a catchy selling point, but as their everyday reality.

“The value really is looking at it differently and finding different insights to connect at a deeper level, which ultimately will get you to a better hard line on your investment,” says Bubula.

“It’s what we do with the learning that sets us apart,” adds Tait. “Everyone in this building thinks about communities and how to make strong communities. That’s how we’re programmed. So the learning that we get is applied consistently throughout the entire process, and it’s not just at the beginning. Other agencies, I would argue, are applying some of the thinking at the beginning, but then they go back to the traditional model, and the agency is set up in a traditional way. We have a very different, holistic process here.”

Beyond applying anthropology’s lens to branding, as an agency OLSON also lives by the anthropological code. Their 180-person workforce has been divided randomly into tribes that compete in varying competitions throughout the year and, consequently, rituals and ceremonies—even an annual Thanksgiving dinner—have all become standard OLSON fare.

This ability to foster community also allows OLSON to deeply engrain themselves into the communities they study. In fact, the OLSON team members who are invested in the day-to-day study of, in Memorex’s case, modern moms are able to get so firmly interwoven that, although they are outsiders, they become part of the conversation, not simply followers of it.

“Memorex just wasn’t on my radar,” says Nilsen Noonan. “It wasn’t something I thought about and now, after this process, Memorex is de nitely on my radar, because I know that the wheels are turning that they’re working to provide something for me. Although we know it’s a corporation and they’re creating products in order to make a pro t, they’re using the community and they’re pinpointing people who can help them. And then there’s a much greater chance from the consumer’s point of view that this is going to be a product that will really work.”