Understanding consumers and their feelings toward certain products really hits home with Young and Rubicam advertising agency. So much so the New York firm visits people's homes to learn what's important to them, what they value and how those values connect with the products they choose to use.


"We want to generate an understanding of consumers that goes beyond hard data and gets to the heart of the matter," explains Toni Earnshaw, associate research director of Creative Research Services at Y&R. "From those experiences we hope to develop advertising that's meaningful to consumers and gives them the feeling of 'that ad really talks to me."'

The idea to observe and talk to people on the living room couch or from around the kitchen table was spurred by a technique called "ethnography," a term referring to the study of cultures. Ethnography was originally used by anthropologists to understand the norms, beliefs and cultures of peoples throughout the world. To understand a culture, one must be in that culture and live in it, says Earnshaw.

"As advertisers we borrowed the technique and asked how can we apply it so that it would be unique for advertising? Advertising can always be developed by studying quantitative data about people but you really don't know what those people are like until you've met them. Spending time with people in their homes allows us to know the consumer more intimately and to discover nuances you can't get off-site."

To go "on-site" was the inspiration of Susan Giovanni, research director at Y&R, one of the world's largest ad agencies. Ethnography has only been conducted for several years now but already many of Y&R's clients have used it, including General Foods, Eastman Kodak Co. and Frito-Lay, Inc.

Clients who use the technique work with the Creative Research Services group, one of three research departments at Y&R. Creative Research Services is involved in qualitative research. They are responsible for analyzing the data collected in their research and for sharing that information with the production department and the client.

Preliminary research

Before the Creative group makes a home visit, "tons" of preliminary research occurs, says Earnshaw.

"The home visit is the very last phase of the research effort. It is only meant to augment prior research and puts flesh on the bones of the data already generated.”

The process begins by developing a database of participants and conducting both quantitative and qualitative research on the target audience. If the client requests a home visit or if Y&R believes it would be useful and add to the basic understanding of the product being studied, some personal interviews are arranged.

Once the participants have been screened, between five and 10 of them are asked to host one but no more than two researchers in their home. Before the visit is made, Earnshaw usually calls the participants to make sure they fit the appropriate specifications of the study and to get a feel for what these people are like.

The researcher will spend one or perhaps two days interviewing and observing the participants, watching the interactions among family members, soaking up the home environment and perhaps peering into kitchen cupboards and behind refrigerator doors. The conversations are audio taped and still photographs are shot. The point is to remain as unobtrusive as possible, says Earnshaw, and to interview them in the context they feel comfortable with and in the context of the way they live.

Valuable visits

The participants may not feel completely comfortable behaving as if they were alone, but what is observed in home visits has been very valuable to the Creative group.

One such visit was conducted for Y&R's Breyer's Ice Cream account. The objective was to find out what ice cream really means to the ice cream lover. The Creative group photographed people reclining in their favorite chairs while savoring every lick of the frozen dessert. They peeked in freezers, eyed bowls and utensils, watched people spoon on toppings and made note of one woman's ritual of dimming the lights and turning on her stereo before divulging.

The value of this research was that it exposed people's emotional response to ice cream and showed that it's a very sensual, inner-directed experience. It's this type of data which Y&R believes will create more effective advertising.

One recent ethnography study investigated the "new traditional woman" and helped Y&R's clients such as General Foods Corp., Johnson & Johnson and Colgate-Polmolive.

The project involved baby boom women who have chosen not to make their career the most important thing in their life, says Earnshaw. These women were not representative of the 1950s housewife either. The purpose of the ethnography, explains Earnshaw, was to help Y&R's creative people realize that these women aren't stereotypical homemakers. These women felt some ads were making them feel "left out" because they showed women "wearing aprons or carrying briefcases."

The home visits for the "new traditional woman" study also enabled the Creative group to pay attention to the particular needs of their clients. When Earnshaw was at one home, for example, she watched closely as a woman gave her children Jell-O Pudding Pops, one of Y&R's accounts.

"This experience provides an opportunity for discovery that you can bring back to the agency and client," says Earnshaw. "It gives us a true sense for how these products fit into these people's lives."

Option overload

Y&R feels it's very important to understand the connection between the consumer and a product and in discovering the value of that product in the consumer's life.

"The product category is overrun with options, plus there are little product differences," explains Earnshaw. Because of that, it's necessary to explore the product and consumer connection more deeply and "to link the benefits of the product to a consumer value which is relevant to that product."

If that link is accomplished successfully, Earnshaw believes it will bring a richness that's more apt to spark an idea in advertising and to generate creative results that work.

Though ethnography may be an optional step and only a minor part in the research process, its value shouldn't be underestimated.

Remarks Earnshaw, "Ethnography is small in scale but significant in impact."