How do you summarise a generation in 90 seconds? In the name of producing powerful, thought provoking stimulus material for events, workshops and suchlike, that's the challenge we set ourselves...
We wanted to pull apart the differences between Generations X, Y and Z in a clear and simple fashion; in a manner which acts as a springboard for lively conversation, sharp strategic thinking and, ultimately, genuine action. Ok, yes, we’ve had to generalise in places. And generational experiences are of course bound to vary based on personal circumstances (location, upbringing, personal interests etc). But nonetheless we’re very pleased with what we’ve cooked up. We hope you like too.
Here's a brief video intro to the topic of global ethnographic work that we pulled together. The featured footage is from a project for Viacom, but most of the principles discussed apply across our ethnographic work as a whole...
To find out more about how we conduct this type of work, do drop us a line
Gay Talese's 1966 Esquire feature, 'Frank Sinatra Has A Cold', is one of the greatest studies of celebrity ever. With insight and innovation in mind, Crowd DNA managing director Andy Crysell explains that it also demonstrates the power of observation over interview...
‘Frank Sinatra Has A Cold’ ranks as a defining piece in so-called new journalism; a painstakingly detailed, powerful and fascinating under-the-skin read. It was, however, a state of affairs forced on Talese through Sinatra – recoiling at soon being 50; experiencing a number of career pressures; indeed suffering from a cold – refusing to talk to him. Celeb gawking aside, it serves equally as a prime example of the benefits of observation over interview (or, in ‘…Has A Cold”s case, in observation alongside only questioning those on the periphery of the scene, rather than the target ‘audience’).
Ethnographic-style reporting, next to visual documentation, brings a richness and a discursiveness to stories that regimented interviews don’t always allow for. Vitally, the broader cultural context becomes clearer and, often, less anticipated and potentially more advantageous ground gets to be covered – something that it can be a struggle to achieve when there’s a lengthy set of highly granular questions to crunch through in a discussion guide.
We’re not prescribing project method designs that are devoid of interviews in all work (sometimes highly granular questions really do need answering through very direct interviewing) – rather to highlight that, when well considered, there can be rigour and process in observation, too. And returning more particularly to the example of ‘Frank Sinatra Has A Cold’, while skilled ethnographers practice observation as a matter of course, exploring the journalist skill-set as well opens the doors to bringing better reporting techniques and a storytelling mentality to ethnography.
Esquire cover
How Talese mapped his stories
It’s this blending of social science and journalism – ethnography with a more potent sense of interpretation – that’s particularly pertinent to how we work at Crowd DNA. Better thinking, being agile, ensuring impact – we like to think that we cover off all three of our guiding principles via this type of primary method.
Sinatra enjoys a rare night out
Talese stays in
Gay Talese’s story for Esquire begins as per below. Click the link thereafter to read the full piece
Frank Sinatra, holding a glass of bourbon in one hand and a cigarette in the other, stood in a dark corner of the bar between two attractive but fading blondes who sat waiting for him to say something. But he said nothing; he had been silent during much of the evening, except now in this private club in Beverly Hills he seemed even more distant, staring out through the smoke and semidarkness into a large room beyond the bar where dozens of young couples sat huddled around small tables or twisted in the center of the floor to the clamorous clang of folk-rock music blaring from the stereo. The two blondes knew, as did Sinatra’s four male friends who stood nearby, that it was a bad idea to force conversation upon him when he was in this mood of sullen silence, a mood that had hardly been uncommon during this first week of November, a month before his fiftieth birthday.
How do you get to great ideas? Crowd DNA's creative delivery knowledge leader, Eric Shapiro, shares some pointers from a recently attended talk which, among other things, referenced Spandau Ballet, Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies and Manchester's Hulme Crescents estate - and yet all made complete sense...
Hugh Garry has one of the more enviable jobs in media. The ex-BBC producer runs Storythings, an agency that helps clients find new ways to tell their stories, mainly through digital media. Recently, he helped Crowd favourite Gruff Rhys develop an app to complement his new book and aided MOMA in New York in improving their online video offering. Hugh’s job involves consistently coming up with great ideas. In the most recent of the increasingly Crowd DNA-blogged Shoreditch House lectures, he turned his attention to this very topic and advised on a few ways of helping us think more creatively and to come up with great ideas more frequently.
Ideas are a complex blend of serendipity, facilitating the connection of disparate experiences, and opening your eyes to the world around you. The most challenging element of Hugh’s talk involved grasping the concept of allocating time to facilitate these processes. Staring out of windows more often was recommended, as was going on long walks and, perhaps more extremely, taking a year’s creative sabbatical away from the office. Good ideas can’t be forced to happen, but there’s things we can do to increase the odds.
Initially, this strikes as very luxurious. It’s a lovely idea to leave the office and go for a walk around, but sometimes stuff needs to get done, right? Well, yes and no. Good ideas hold water, therefore taking the initial time to come up with something solid will save time in the long run. Furthermore, it’s great ideas that keep agencies like ours relevant and worth their salt.
Why the picture of Spandau Ballet? Among a whirlwind of colourfully diverse cultural reference points, Hugh pointed to them as a case in point when it comes to losing the effortless and the serendipitous, and instead forcing the issue; thus gravitating from just about the coolest thing on his radar as an 11 year old, to bland pop filler by his mid teens.
Nobody wants to end up like ‘Heart Like A Sky’-era Spandau Ballet. So maybe I’ll get out of the office for the lunch break after all.
We resurrected this one from our old blog (it's just too intriguing a notion to discard). Data cuisine: bringing research to life in a manner that's humorous and revealing in equal measure, explains Crowd DNA managing director Andy Crysell...
From hacking events to music innovation seminars (and, of course, the odd DJ), the Sonar festival in Barcelona is not short of stuff to get you thinking differently. But we weren’t necessarily expecting to encounter a session on data visualisation – particularly one that involved food.
Susanne Jaschko and Moritz Stefaner’s data cuisine project for Sonar saw them work with a group of 15 people at the Center Of Contemporary Culture Of Barcelona, collecting statistics about the city and expressing them via new recipes, prepared with the assistance of professional chefs. It’s an interesting and radical realisation of the oft discussed challenge of bringing research to life – humorous and revealing in equal measure (though obviously not so easy to knock up when a client deadline is looming).
You can find out more about their work here. Visualisations cooked up to date include a fried dorada, with sections prepared in different ways to represent emigration from Spain (battered fish for the UK, with a wine sauce for France, cooked in beer and parsley for Germany etc); the sex lives of folk in Barcelona depicted through noodles; a cocktail made with measures to represent suicide trends; and an unemployment Pan Con Tomate.
Crowd DNA’s toaster and microwave will soon be put to the test.
