Sri Lankan marketers need the service of anthropologists

A few years ago, a leading mobile service operator in Sri Lanka had a problem when a new package was introduced by another mobile service operator with the help of the Government. Some ‘loyal’ customers suddenly switched onto the new package because of the price factor. By responding to this, we have witnessed an effective marketing campaign to regain and retain customers. 

It is common in business that the ‘black box’ of the customers cannot be interpreted with given formulas. Even if you have ‘good’ clients, they will leave you without ‘known’ reasons. There should be a new way to read the customer from a different perspective. This is important to achieve sustainable competitive advantage for any business while identifying core competencies. 

In this context we should identify the role of anthropologists as many leading companies in globe get their service to ‘read’ and understand their present customers as well as potential customers.

What is anthropology and who is an anthropologist?

“Anthropology is the study of humans, past and present. To understand the full sweep and complexity of cultures across all of human history, anthropology draws and builds upon knowledge from the social and biological sciences as well as the humanities and physical sciences.”

American Anthropological Association

It is important to ‘read and study’ man and “an anthropologist is a person with an extensive knowledge of anthropology who uses this knowledge in their work, typically, to solve problems specific to humanity”. 

In Sri Lanka, when we talk about anthropology, we cannot forget the name of Professor Nandasena Ratnapala. Professor Ratnapala lived for long periods of time among many communities, who he tried to understand during his research. The most well-known of such was his living among beggars disguised as a beggar, which was the result of the well-known classic ‘Beggars of Sri Lanka’. 

Not so well-known are the times he spent among pick-pockets, sex workers, criminals, as a waiter in a hotel, as an assistant to an illicit alcohol brewer and even among Rodiyas and Veddhas. These short-term excursions to closed communities had given Professor Ratnapala experiences which various communities go through, which no other social anthropologist in this country can ever lay any claims to (Hettiarachchi, 2012).

Marketing and anthropology

If you go through the success stories in the world during the last two to three decades, you can see many examples of the way businesses have used the service of anthropologists. In 1991, Business Page of New York Times carried an article by Claudia Deutsch, as narrated by a few (but by implication increasing) anthropologists employed by major corporations. 

Meanwhile, according to Baer (2014) in Business Insider: “Google hired an ethnographer to ferret out the meaning of ‘mobile’. Intel has an in-house cultural anthropologist and Microsoft is reportedly the second-largest employer of anthropologists in the world.”

More interestingly, the same article discusses the case of Adidas about how they were able to understand the ‘world and life of customers’ in an anthropological lens. See excerpts below:

“Take Adidas, for example. The brand has always been associated with elite performance: Jesse Owens, Muhammad Ali, and Zinedine Zidane all wore the brand. Founded by cobbler and athlete Adi Dassler in 1948, the assumption within the company had been that people bought athletic gear to gain a competitive edge. But in the early 2000s VP James Carnes noticed something strange: He kept running into people who were jogging around the city, headed to the gym, or on their way to yoga. While they led the active lives of potential customers, these people weren’t training for a competition. ‘Is yoga a sport?’ Carnes asked in an offsite meeting in 2003. 

“Trying to figure out the disconnect, he brought in a consultancy called Red Associates, which has a client list that includes Intel, Samsung, and Carlsberg, the European beer giant. Unlike elite consulting firms such as McKinsey, Red isn’t in the business of big data and management science. Instead, it focuses on arriving at insights that can only be found through the applied liberal arts, or what it calls ‘the human sciences,’ a strategy that is detailed in its new book ‘Moment of Clarity: Using the Human Sciences To Solve Your Toughest Business Problems’. That’s why most of the Red’s 70-some employees aren’t MBAs; they come from disciplines like philosophy, sociology, and anthropology. 

“When Red collaborated with Adidas, it trained members of Adidas’s design team in conducting anthropological research. Design staffers spent 24 hours straight with customers, eating breakfast with them, joining them on runs, and asking them why they worked out. As detailed in the Economist, a Red staffer sent disposable cameras to customers, asking them to take a picture of the reason they exercised. Thirty women responded, and 25 of them sent a picture of a little black dress. A little black dress is quite different than a marathon finish line or gold trophy. To use a favourite word of Red partner Christian Madsbjerg, the little black dress shows an ‘asymmetry’. The traditional thinking at Adidas was that people bought their gear to help them win. But after observing their behaviour through the lens of anthropology, it became clear that customers wanted products to help them lead healthy lifestyles, not win competitions. 

“How had Adidas misunderstood its customers for so long? Because Adidas executives thought they understood their customers’ motivations and lives, but they had never observed them closely enough. Running, mountain biking, hitting the gym, going to yoga — people did these things to live healthier lives. But these ‘urban sports’ weren’t like the traditional competitions that the company was originally organised around. That was Carnes’s realisation: His consumer’s definition of ‘sport’ had changed, and his company had to change along with it.

“As described in ‘Moment of Clarity’: If urban sports are on par with basketball or soccer, Adidas must then deliver on products with functionality, aesthetics, and quality. Adidas must lead, not copy in this whole new category of lifestyle sport… The company went from being a sports brand exclusively for athletes… to becoming an inclusive brand inviting all of us to join a movement of living a healthier and better life. It went from creating corporate credos aimed at high-performance sports aficionados, such as ‘Impossible is nothing,’ to sending democratic, yet aspirational message like ‘All In’. With the help of Red, Adidas was able to understand the world of its customers. 

“Interestingly, it’s the human sciences — literature, arts, anthropology — that allow for understanding the unique worlds that people live in. By observing people’s daily lives and the ways in which they interact with products, consultancies like Red are able to discern what products mean to customers in a way that big data can’t determine.”

Future of marketers in Sri Lanka

It is important to understand that in post-modern business what we think as business executives, about customers and what customers want from a company (or product) can be totally different, as it should be read from the perspective of an anthropologist. It is also important to note that many people in Sri Lanka question the output of arts graduates and their employability. But again we need to question from the corporate world whether they have the exposure of multidisciplinary nature of reading business and customers from a holistic perspective. 

Anyway, it is too early for Sri Lankans to conclude whether we are applying ‘marketing concept’ or ‘selling concept’ in the current business landscape.

(The writer is a Senior Lecturer and Chartered Marketer .You can reach Dr. Abeysekera on [email protected].)