Posted by

Barry Siskind

Community manager

 

You are developing a campaign to attract visitors to your fair or conference. You have completed all the demographic and psychographic studies and now believe you have a good understanding on what will motivate the people you have targeted to come to your event. You then commence to implement your marketing program and yet your results do no better than industry averages. For example with direct mail or e-marketing you might expect a 1-2% return. If you have a really highly targeted and qualified list that number can go to 10 – 20%.  But what if you want to achieve above average results? The answer is that you need to add a new tool.

 

Robert Berner recently wrote an interesting article in Bloomberg BusinessWeek called, “The Ethnography of Marketing.”  This is a good read for anyone interested in expanding their reach to new attendees.

 

http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/jun2006/id20060612_919537.htm

 

Ethnography is defined as a “scientific description of specific human cultures.” Put simply, if you are marketing to attendees in India which has over 100 languages or China which has numerous cultures or in America where the attitudes of someone living on the west coast differ greatly from someone on the east coast, how do you target your message properly?

 

In his article Robert Berner mentions two academics, Drs. Patrick Whitney and Vijay Kumar who have developed an interesting method called “User Insight Tool” specifically for businesses.

 

Companies, according to Professor Whitney face an innovation gap. “They have the tools of technology to make virtually anything, but lack the tools of empathy to understand what consumers really want.”  What he proposes is something called “Design thinking” which offers businesses greater, deeper, and faster insight into users’ lives.

 

Ethnography has until recently been something of concern to anthropologists. There is even a scholarly journal called Ethnography, which is published quarterly. But now the focus is turning to business applications and tools like Whitney’s “User Insight Tool.” Greater insight into potential delegates can have a huge impact on results. This is definitely a trend worth watching.