Well.
This has been a fascinating exercise. I think the task was really interesting, some answers were brilliant, some weren't quite.
And personally I've learned a lot about admin. I'm going to insist from now on that there's only one format for replies. Managing multiple filetypes just makes it too hard.
Then there was a moment of confusion from Grant - Russell, in my usual madcap way, I forgot the assignment, and read some of the assignments as it they were reporting (not inventing) a lifestyle. This will be especially confusing in the case of Themers. Sorry. Am happy to rewrite my comments on that and other submissions. Let me know. Best (and sorry), Grant Having read through everything I didn't have the heart to make him rewrite, I think the comments are helpful anyway, but perhaps bear this in mind when reading stuff.
And as a special bonus, and as a way of giving overall feedback Grant has given us this pdf here. It was designed as a template for people documenting life in NYC. It represents the kind of thing Grant was looking for and is a good checklist for you to check your stuff against.
My big admin difficulty is that I can only seem to make Grant's comments show up in the word docs, not in the Powerpoint, so I'm only posting the Word submissions for now. I'm going to find out what I'm doing wrong and try and post the Powerpoint stuff tomorrow. And if anything's got lost in my email folders and not got posted let me know and I'll hunt it down and stick it up.
Sorry about that.
And let's all give it up for Grant and show our appreciation in the usual way - by buying some of his books or driving traffic to his blog.
2.doc 4.doc 6.doc 7.doc 9.doc aggregator.ppt new world.ppt nightlighters.ppt rebachelor.ppt
There's also a contribution here. Though being as it's a blog entry it's hard to inject specific comments. But here's what Grant emailled to me -
Russell, had a look at it, and this may be my favorite piece. It doesn't really document the lifestyle, but it captures tone beautifully and this is plenty to illuminate the emotional life and lived experience of the consumer in question. I left a laudatory comment for Amy (is it) on her blog, and there I said something like she has a wonderful ear, and I think that's half the challenge for the ethnographer/planner IMHO. It's a tiny bit repetitive in places, but as I say she has captured very nicely the tone of surprise, disappointment, hopefulness, chagrin. This is the kind of thing I would want to have as my briefing for certain marketing undertakings.
So, well done Amy, but next time - remember the rules.
Thanks everyone. I'll get the powerpoint stuff up as soon as possible.
Wow. Thanks to both of you -Russell and Grant -for such a stimulating project. At first I had to really fight a particular voice in my head that was saying, "You can't just make this up!" So much of my research training was about getting out of the way so I could really listen to people instead of just hearing what I'd like them to say. But this approach is a brilliant way to pay attention to culture. I can see now that the clothes, jargon and habits of these more 'obvious' subgroups work as clear symbols of the values and motivations running through a time and place. And at the very least, it fleshes out that box on the creative brief that asks "who are we talking to?" Thanks!
Posted by: Emily | March 15, 2006 at 01:59 AM
Snoors
Stunning
Posted by: Nishad | March 16, 2006 at 04:01 PM