Another reason that I love primary qualitative research is the output. Ethnography in its best form is multi-media and multi-dimensional. It’s a combination of text, video, voice, and photographs. Most importantly, a key tenet of ethnography is storytelling.
Unfortunately, I can’t tell you the number of research deliverables or presentations I’ve seen that clearly have no shelf life beyond that single moment in time. They are boring, wordy, and full of numbers. Ad Age recently wrote about how this is hurting the industry here. So tell me, why spend thousands of dollars on research that is a one-hit wonder?
We all know the power of good storytelling. Ethnography and other in-context methods can produce some really amazing stories told through narrative and video. When compiled properly they are not only insightful, but they are inspirational and they live well beyond the research deliverable and final presentation.
It’s amazing how we or our clients can tell a story about one of our customers, but when you hear it from the horses mouth in a video or audio clip, it has exponential power. Time and again I’ve seen stories like these retold again and again, up through the ranks even to the C-Suite of Fortune 500 companies. This is a power that I have yet to see from quantitative research - but I'm sure some people get inspired by numbers :)
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