With markets changing and society constantly evolving, people’s interests and the things they seek also change on a daily basis. The very dynamic nature of the workplace and consumerism is the essence of how old methods slowly fade out as new ideas become introduced. Through technological innovations and modern research, new products are created and new information is constantly presented to the larger audience of consumers. Along with these changes also comes changes in beliefs, changes in necessities, and changes in what people want to purchase. As a result, companies and large businesses face the issue of needing to rebrand themselves, to change their business approach to better please their intended consumers, and more importantly the consumer’s changing needs.
They must implement creative strategies and design new outlooks in order to catch up with the evolution of society. In what Christian Madsjberg and Mikkel B. Rasmussen describe as “sensemaking” in their book titled The Moment of Clarity, this kind of problem-solving method involves a less straightforward tactic to navigate human sciences and the general population. The evaluation of cultural shifts and understanding human behavior is essential to “setting the direction of the company, driving growth, … and finding the path in new markets” (Madsjberg 5). Intel, Coca-Cola, and Xerox are three such companies that utilized ethnography to make sense of their approach. These three different companies applied similar ethnographic methods to analyze their audiences and better direct themselves to meet the evolving needs of their targeted consumers.
Known for their omnipresence in the technological business sector, Intel seemingly dominates the digital world with their computers, data processors, and Internet-using devices. In 2017, Intel noticed that sales in the desktop market had been steadily declining, due to the shift toward PCs and the innovation of more powerful, yet portable devices at prices lower than ever. Desktops appeared to have become obsolete, with their original purpose as data processing and storage centers now consumed by cloud storage software. Seeking to revitalize that business, Intel and their Desktop Business Unit sought to target a new market for which the high-end computing of their powerful desktops would serve an important role.
In effect, their team found the opportunity to reach out to digital content creators, a gap in the market that the company was in a distinct position to fill. Intel’s corporate marketing department determined that digital content creators had essentially the same technological needs as those who played video games, not to mention that many digital content creators were already video gamers themselves. They saw the connection between the professional creator who used expensive, high power machines to produce work material and the casual mainstream consumer using cheap, lower quality devices for basic projects. Thus, these people could be approached with similar products and strategies, with super-fast devices that could process a lot of information at once. The Desktop Business Unit decided to focus their attention on these mainstream consumers, promoting higher-end computers to the casual user who, for example, would create home videos or family pictures. While these people had lower computational needs, they comprised a much larger market and, therefore, would give the highest number of sales.
Intel put together a group of social scientists, known as The Pathfinding Team, whose purpose was to evaluate the content creation market. The Pathfinding Team worked to determine behavioral shifts in content creation and realized they were dealing with a very young and upcoming field. Most of the individuals occupying this area fell within the Gen Z era, or the generation born in the mid-1990s to today. The rise in the professionalism of digital content creators brought about a larger workforce that demanded powerful desktops to conduct such work. The team found that the design of current data-processing desktops at that time were insufficient to meet the complex needs of the professional work performed by the young digital content creators. Since the primary goal was to sell more high-end desktop computers, The Pathing Team decided to focus their efforts on addressing the needs of real professional content creators, and later expand to the average parent making home videos.
The Pathfinding Team defined professional content creators as people who made a living creating such content or a hobbyist Gen Z creator with professional aspirations in the field. These kinds of busy, creative individuals required a high computational power machine, and not something for casual use. Jobs that fit the description included filmmakers, music producers, and graphic designers. The research team conducted studies in Los Angeles, Shanghai, and Seoul as diverse hotspots in the technological world that also emphasized growth in digital content. Over a 3-month time period, Intel interviewed 55 participants: 25 from Los Angeles, 18 from Shanghai, and 16 from Seoul. This sample contained a diverse range of experiences that included 3D modeling, virtual reality building, social media broadcasting, and graphic design & photography. These kinds of professionals were of interest because their work focused on the creative production of material and necessitated the best tools and resources to achieve that.
Each member of the study participated in a three-hour ethnographic interview in his or her primary workspace, whether that be home office or company cubicle. All participants were asked to detail their personal and educational backgrounds and how it led to their current professions, as well as provide examples of their produced work. Study coordinators also asked participants many of the same research questions such as “What motivates your content creation?”, “What new technologies and new interaction modes interest you?”, and “What capabilities do they currently lack?”. Research participants also completed a card sorting task in which they were asked to rank the challenges and obstacles they faced in their current devices. Each point was marked with a level of annoyance and the frequency with which it was encountered. By doing so, researchers could make insightful observations on the different work behaviors and also evaluate what types of trade-offs and focus points their newly designed desktops should incorporate.
Additionally, a substantial amount of time was spent with research participants outside of the interview process and their work. Team members attended conference meetings that discussed content creation projects, had lunch with the workers, and even went shopping for new computers with participants. These in-depth, open-ended conversations, as well as the casual interactions, uncovered useful information like the level of computer processing power needed and the types of software applications used. Making use of this knowledge, the team learned how digital content creators understand the role of technology in their work. After completing their fieldwork, the Pathfinding Team organized and analyzed the collected data by creating profiles for each participant. Profiles highlighted their unique stories, including quotes and relevant details on the role of technology with regards to their work.
By comparing such information, the Pathfinding Team made use of their qualitative, in-depth research to better grasp content creators’ behaviors, motivations, and attitudes. In doing so, several common themes emerged. The team identified similar frustrations with software systems the creators currently had, and different motivations for different kinds of creative work. Depending on the individual’s values, some emphasized an artistic sensibility like graphic designers, whereas some musicians simply wanted to feel successful by efficiently producing a tangible product. That being said, the pervasive notion was that content creators just wanted the best computer to finish the job quickly and efficiently while consuming as little of their attention as possible. As one developer stated, “It is about how much power we can have in a single workstation. Having stable, reliable computers that are powerful is paramount to what we do” (Anderson 435). It is these ethnographic insights that directed Intel’s desktop development plans.
Intel’s ethnographic research into the digital content creation market and the findings by the Pathfinding Team bolstered the creation of future products and helped redesign the organizational structure of their Desktop Business Unit. They learned how to appropriately market and advertise their new desktops and what strategies best appealed to consumers. Their research led the foundation for the up and rising digital content creation market, and how Intel could further expand the market for high-end desktops to more consumers (Anderson).
In a similar case, Coca-Cola, everyone’s favorite soft drink, sought to improve their global outreach in Israel. In 2011, the Coca-Cola Israel department decided that their division of the company needed a change in focus and direction, responding to what Coca-Cola’s world headquarters in Atlanta described as a “global sales crisis.” The marketing department affirmed that a new strategic plan was necessary to address the increasingly growing concerns with regards to childhood obesity and health and nutritional awareness. The brand name Coca-Cola and the notion of detrimental junk food had seemingly become synonymous. With the growing trend toward active and healthy lifestyles, Coca-Cola was forced to devise a new plan to ameliorate their brand image. They devised means of working around the worldwide concern of the health-related negative side-effects from soda and lessen the negative affiliation that their sugary soft drinks contributed to their name.
In response to the negative backlash they faced from nutritionists and health conscious consumers, Coca Cola joined the rising movement aimed at corporations supporting community engagement, known as corporate social responsibility (CSR). More specifically, Coca-Cola implemented a new company-wide branding strategy, which they called “the Active and Healthy Lifestyle” (AHL), that began a massive launch of community-service projects that would both directly promote physical activity and advertise a sense of positivity to their name. The AHL program would bolster the company’s underlying goal of continuing their drive for profits by means of intricate branding strategies and an appropriate response at growing public demands for a healthier lifestyle. More than just a profitable business strategy, the adoption of the CSR approach highlighted Coca-Cola’s acceptance of pursuing socially responsible practices, displaying a corporate capacity to resolve reputational crises and to adjust to changing public demands without compromising sales. It was a business-driven approach that emphasized a growing commercial value aimed at maintaining a good reputation, investor confidence, and customer loyalty through socially-conscious practices.
In one specific example, ethnographers followed the execution of Coca-Cola’s AHL program in Israel and the work to restore their brand positivity in that distinct market. Such ethnography was intended to help Coca-Cola officials determine the effectiveness of their work and evaluate the challenges they might face. The ethnographers of the study conducted 2 years’ worth of participant observations, in-depth interviews, and analyses of inter-organizational materials and documents. Ensuring that their fieldwork covered the entire range of Coca-Cola employees, the interviewees and informants consisted of three groups: high ranked executives, mid-ranked employees, and officials and residents of the Israeli towns. Many of the interviews consisted of detailed conversations with corporate executives and leaders of the marketing and sales departments. Various in-depth interviews were also held with blue-collar employees such as construction workers and service technicians. The interviews were typically split into two parts: first a structured question and answer session using a predetermined list of questions and second an open-ended conversation about varying conceptual and practical concepts that interested the interviewees. A significant amount of additional research was also conducted with the company’s Community Relations Coordinator with whom researchers joined for field-trips and had daily conversations with on a regular basis.
In addition to interviewing, Coca-Cola workers coordinated twenty-eight official on-site observations which included full-day trips to locations sites of program deployment, participation in executive meetings at regional offices, and informal observations at local citizens’ responses to Coca-Cola’s work. These observations included numerous on-site informal talks with Coca-Cola employees, town officials, and local residents. Further data was gathered from various documentation distributed by Coca-Cola for internal and external purposes relating to the AHL program in Israel. These materials included emails, PowerPoint presentations, and newspaper press releases.
With their plan set and general guidelines sorted out, Coca-Cola Israel assumed the duty of defining the needs of the Israeli community in order to promote an active lifestyle, a responsibility they would work toward through better availability of public playgrounds. Through their research process, ethnographers interestingly realized that the construction and implementation of these playgrounds lacked a crucial component of communication between the Coca-Cola and Israeli officials. The design of their community playgrounds had clearly prioritized the company’s needs over those of the community. Many of the meetings between Coca-Cola representatives and town officials became a battle of competing interests and commercial-like negotiations. Town officials originally identified two candidate playgrounds that were in dire need of renovation and repairs. Coca-Cola representatives determined the two sites as unsuitable for their marketing purposes as they lacked the visibility and high foot-traffic exposure their campaign depended on. Many of the poor playgrounds in Israel were open to the public, but located in poorer, less populated neighborhoods.
Coca-Cola nonetheless proceeded to renovate the playgrounds of their choosing: in urbanized areas with more eyes to view their work. Ethnographers quickly realized that the team’s success fully depended on the full cooperation of local government, something that was completely disregarded in the official meetings. Local city officials simply did not have the monetary capital and financial resources to support complete renovations at Coca-Cola’s selected sites. Their limited budget could not afford the man power, equipment, and new materials necessary for such full-on construction projects. Furthermore, due to the improper communication, Coca-Cola did not understand that town officials would not allow the company to erect permanent standing signs in the city blazoning their contributions. Through interactions with local employees, ethnographers noted that locals joked how the poor playgrounds effectively transformed into a “Coca-Cola Zone”. Workers would simply scatter Coca-Cola branded parasols and company flags throughout the playgrounds. They handed out t-shirts, towels, and hats carrying the AHL slogan: “Coca-Cola Active”. This example proves how a perfectly designed marketing strategy can quickly go awry if the communication and cooperation amongst all contributing members is not fully supported (Barkay).
