Don't tell me, show me.

My mom was an English teacher when I was growing up, so from the earliest years of my education, certain words were forbidden. Describing anything as “nice,” “good,” “fine” always preceded the reaction, “‘Nice’ means nothing, find another word to tell me how you feel.” I’d search for florid adjectives and adverbs, similes and metaphors. Painting a picture with words became a puzzle that made me learn to love to write.?

I mentioned last week about our combined forces at CFCo and the impact it has on our work; how collaboration between our networks, our analysts, and our video-ethnographers materialises into moments that matter for us and our clients. What we’ve been realising, especially as the research industry feels like it’s contracting and human insights are overshadowed by AI and big data sets, is just how valuable showing, not telling, is for truly empathising with our customers.?

Empathy has been a cornerstone value of our business since its inception. We can’t design products and services that serve an important emotional function in people’s lives without fully understanding their needs, what drives them, what scares them, what gets them out of bed in the morning.?

I sat down with our Creative Director and Head of Visual Strategy, Dani?l Ferreira , to talk about some experiences he’s had that really bring this concept home.?

How important is video-ethnography to walking in another person’s footsteps??

I keep going back to one of my first examples, something maybe not many people noticed, but was one of my first experiences with research visual ethnography. There was a woman in Angola, who was beautifully dressed, very well tailored. She wasn't from such an affluent background, but it was so important for her to be put together. She had her makeup perfectly done and we shot an interview with her head-on. After the interview, when she got up and turned around, the back of her dress was totally unraveling at the seam. It opened my eyes so much, that from a storytelling point of view, you always need to work with a binary and to set up a shot so that it's dynamic, that she is a whole person, and that there's more to tell about her life than what she says in her own words.?

What does research have to learn from film?

We did a project for clothing retail, and there was a woman named Patricia where we spent time with her in her home. With the camera we follow her climbing the fence to her field, to opening the mielies in her veggie patch. We see the bugs that are eating her crop, and simply, visually, we see the challenges she experiences by submerging ourselves with the camera. As a business, you can see the challenges AND the opportunities. If it was just a conversation, or a phone call, you wouldn't see those little, finite details of their lives in full colour.?

Like Dan said, I like to think that we, as an agency, see the world in colour (not just 0s and 1s), and we help our clients to see it that way, too. Marketing strategies may often be defined by the bottom line, but whether or not we know real people with real needs will always be the definition of a successful brand.