get this week's new yorker

You should get this week's New Yorker. (April 10, 2006) (last week's if you're actually in New York.)

There's a splendid article about Muzak. Lots of good thinking from people who actually have to think hard about the non-verbal, non-wordy aspects of a brand. How does a brand sound? Does it like funk? Why does Armani Exchange get beatmatched segues where Ann Taylor gets a couple of seconds of silence?

And there's a great Malcolm Gladwell review of Why? by Charles Tilly. 'Why?' is about the reasons we give each other for the stuff we do and the type of reasons we give. It sounds like essential reading for anyone doing research about communications. Gladwell's illustrations sound just like the kind of mismatch you get when talking about communications with people. Their frame of reference is completely different to yours or the brand's so you get this failure to communicate - because we're thinking about different types of reason. I'm not making sense. Read the article, or better still the book, then you'll realise how clever I am for pointing it out. Honestly.

But the real reason for mentioning it is to sing the praises of Gladwell again. At the end of this review of this dry, academic book he almost had me crying on the tube. He's a genius. (Or I'm in a bad way.)

Comments

[Jason]

Hey Russell -
I just read that review of "Why?" yesterday, and I also started thinking about different types of explanations in communications research.

If how we feel about a brand is usually explained by a fantastically complex set of factors (memories from childhood, brands our peers use, ads from 10 years ago), it's probably best explained as a story - we may both buy a Sony TV, but there's a different history that brought each of us to choose it.

But in market research, the answers people give sound more like what Gladwell says "Why?" calls conventions: "It's a good value", "my family likes it", "it's reliable." And most market research probably encourages people to answer in conventions (for some of the reasons Gladwell talks about in "Blink"), and doesn't encourage the telling of personal stories. Many of these stories are probably complex and somwhat buried such that they are hard to access on the spot in a focus group.

Anyway, that's my half-thought through take on it so far. Make any sense?

[brianaustin]

Re: market research explanations: Most likely it's because "research subjects" speak in market research conventions. That is, they've learned a certain way of speaking when giving research input so that they sound credible, thoughtful, etc. Ultimately this all begs the question of if there's a way of speaking authentically (or absent conventions) - my guess is probably not. Even more provocatively is the notion that "authentic" real speech is itself guided by a set of conventions. Ah - language games! takes me back to lit crit classes....

[Whitbo]

This issue of the New Yorker is also notable for the words spelled out in scrabble tiles on the cover. Among them, Ebola. Coincidence?