Small Data Page 26

  As LEGO found out more than a decade ago, the question “What are you most proud of?” can yield surprising and transformative answers. It could be an old guitar; a handmade quilt; a contemporary painting; a set of vintage wineglasses. Ask respondents if you can look through old photo albums or iPhoto collections. Explore the refrigerator and the kitchen and bathroom cupboards before moving into the bedroom and the bedroom closets. Determine how people want to be perceived by the rest of the world by asking them to show you their favorite piece of clothing. Determine the age of their Twin Self by paying close attention to the musical playlists on their smartphones, computers or streaming music services. Do they subscribe to any iTunes television shows or movies? If applicable, what films and TV shows are in their Netflix queues? (In this way, you can determine their shared cultural references.) What evokes the strongest emotion in them? Is it pride? Is it the memory of a loved one? Is it a pet? Is it a child? Finally, I ask people to answer two questions: What is most important in your life? and What worries you the most?

  Don’t be discouraged if at first you don’t find what you are looking for. Such is the nature—even the definition—of detective work.

  Connecting, or, What are the consequences of the emotional behavior?

  By now, you probably have half-a-dozen or more pieces of small data in front of you. You may find yourself, as I did with Lowes, in a culture that prohibits touching, and whose downtowns empty out at 5 p.m. every afternoon and where there is a striking absence of community and belonging. In the case of Trollbeads, by this point I had discovered that the brand’s fans were aware something was missing from their lives; and that consumers attracted to Roombas were staging their homes using a technological gadget as a conversation piece.

  Ask yourself: Are there any similarities among the clues you have accumulated? Are the clues beginning to tilt in one direction? If you had one, are you beginning to validate your initial hypothesis?

  Remember that a clue might be physical (an extravagantly patterned shirt that doesn’t fit with the rest of a respondent’s wardrobe) or emotional (a respondent is obsessed with U2). You are seeking an emotional gap—too much or too little of something. As is the case with many homes in Denmark, if you enter a home where nothing is out of context, you know you’ve struck gold. If you are on the right track, the body language of respondents will often show unease or outright discomfort, in which case you will know you are onto something.

  The next step is to Small Mine—distill and analyze—the clues you’ve accumulated

  Illustration by Ole Kaarsberg

  Causation, or What emotion does it evoke?

  For Lowes customers, the routines of their lives had become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Trollbeads consumers were experiencing a sense of deep insecurity, whereas Roomba customers found the product a way to fill a vacuum of loneliness and insecurity. It’s now time to gather your findings in your office or place of work, and begin the process of Small Mining.

  Generally, I mount a time line consisting of photographs and observations on a large bulletin board. It is here that your wall reflects the emotional DNA that you have found, as well as the correlations you’ve identified along the way. Place all these observations and photographs together and seek out the commonalities.

  Ask yourself, “What emotion will this evoke in a human being?”

  At this point, it’s essential to put yourself in the shoes of respondents. If you were he or she, how would you feel? What would you want? This isn’t a particularly easy question to answer, especially in cultures alien from our own. If it is too challenging, it might be a good time to call, or revisit, the cultural or local observers you interviewed before beginning the clue-gathering process. Present your observations to them. Ask them what they think.

  Correlation, or, When did the behavior or emotion first appear?

  In the correlation stage, we seek evidence of a shift, or change in a consumer’s behavior, otherwise known as an entry point. When did this change take place? Did it happen when she got married? When she had her first child? When she got divorced? An entry point, or personality shift, can be expressed via clothing, or by adopting a new set of friends, getting (or losing) a partner, sending children off to college or any other major milestone or career transition.

  As I wrote earlier, we are too close to ourselves to observe what is familiar. For this reason, often during the Small Mining process, we need to reset our own perspective by reaching out to one of the respondent’s friends or family members. Contact this person so that he or she can help validate, or add to, your thinking during the latter part of the interview.

  Compensation, or, What is the unmet or unfulfilled desire?

  Having found evidence of a shift, it’s now time to distill it to its most emotional essence: desire. What is the desire that is not being fulfilled? What is the best way to fulfill it? With Lowes, the answer was to create a strong sense of belonging within a physical setting. Trollbeads fans needed to reconnect and rediscover what it felt like to belong to a group; and Roomba fans needed a way to show the world their humanity.

  Often, by poring through people’s photo albums, you will find the answer. As you review the pages, look for the happiest moments in people’s lives. Use them as reflections of a time, or a moment, when people felt most in harmony, on top, at peace and emotionally fulfilled.

  Inside these two poles—where people felt emotionally fulfilled versus where they are right now in their lives—is where you will find desire. Does the desire you have identified complement the cultural and local observations, as well as the clues you observed inside respondents’ homes?

  Concept, or, What is the “big idea” compensation for the consumer desire you have identified?

  Take your observations home and mull them over. As I wrote earlier, my best ideas come as a result of swimming laps in hotel pools. I fundamentally believe that “creativity” involves combining two ordinary things in a completely novel way. LEGO Mindstorms—the company’s brand of customizable robots—involved merging LEGO building blocks with a computer chip. Uber involved combining a private car service with a social media network. In my own work, Lowes 2.0 came as the result of combining a supermarket with entertainment and community, while Tally Weijl 2.0 mixed and matched social media with the traditional dressing room.

  Ideas, remember, are less likely to germinate under pressure. They come together when we least expect them. So swim, bike, garden, walk along the sand.

  I’m often reminded of the most memorable interview I have ever conducted. The reason it was so revealing, I realized later, was that I got the time of our appointment wrong and showed up an hour before I was supposed to. When I rang the doorbell, the respondent, a middle-aged woman, greeted me at the door. She had just gotten out of bed, her hair was uncombed and she was wearing a loose blue bathrobe. She didn’t look at all pleased to see me. I apologized repeatedly for getting the time wrong, and told her I would come back in an hour, but she insisted I come in anyway.

  What followed was the most honest interview I’ve ever conducted. The woman had had no time to get ready. She’d had no time to prepare her face, or clean her house. I was seeing her, for all intents and purposes, naked. Accordingly, there was no point in deception, no point in telling me what she assumed I wanted to hear. Two hours later, I left her house reminded of the sheer hours of our lives we spend putting on masks to greet the world.

  Based on the findings of a recent qualitative survey carried out in Switzerland, in fact, most of us have up to ten discreet interdependent social identities—identities, the study concludes, which are often in conflict.16 Let’s imagine a middle-aged bank teller living in Pensacola, Florida. He is a father, a son and a husband. He is a Floridian. He is a bank employee. He is also a bicyclist and a recreational runner, and at night, drinking with his friends, he is “the funny one.” He is also a v
egetarian, an amateur guitarist, and on weekends he helps coach soccer at his daughter’s high school. Then there are his online identities, including his Facebook, Twitter and Instagram selves. Most surprising is that the man’s ethical mind-set, honesty, sociability and even level of social engagement changes from personality to personality. Imagine that in his professional role, for example, he may be primed to dissembling, or outright deceit, while simultaneously, as a dad, he finds dishonesty repellent. My role—the role of anyone trying to make sense out of small data—is to understand not just one single personality, but all of them.

  Which is why in the end the secret behind any ethnographic research will never be found in any methodology, even mine. It begins with yourself. Who are you? What are you like when you’re by yourself? When you post a status update on Facebook, or “like” a piece of music, what are you telling the world about yourself? When you buy a pair of pants, or a new brand of shoes, when you hang a set of bamboo curtains across your window or cherry-pick photographs to tack onto your refrigerator, or leave out a bottle of facial moisturizer in your bathroom, what are you communicating? In our small data, now and forever, lies the greatest evidence of who we are and what we desire, even if, as LEGO executives found out more than a decade ago, it’s a pair of old Adidas sneakers with worn-down heels.

  Acknowledgments

  A Chinese proverb I once heard says that people get three opportunities in their lives—and that if they take advantage of them, they might very well receive another three. I’ve somehow managed to grab a larger-than-normal share of these opportunities in the course of my life, and while not every one has panned out, I must confess that at least in my case, this proverb makes sense. Twenty years ago, a colleague asked me why so many opportunities seemed to float my way. I told her that, in fact, we’re all exposed to an equal number, that it’s more a matter of recognizing opportunities when they’re in front of us and, crucially, converting them into action.

  The ability to spot options and possibilities comes not only with age and experience, it also takes place when we open our minds. In this case, I’m not talking about politics, or religion, but, rather, about letting down our personal guards, leaving behind our well-appointed offices, and moving in with strangers, all the while not revealing anything about our backgrounds, achievements or talents. In this situation, we become no more and no less than observant human beings, people whose only mission is to observe how other people live. It is only when we experience what it feels like to have nothing that we can realize and appreciate the true value of our personal brand.

  That said, I’ve been (undeservedly) lucky throughout my life to work alongside individuals more talented than I am, and to borrow their wisdom, piggyback on their insights and gracefulness—and pass their abilities off as my own(!). This is why you are reading this book, and why I have so many people to thank. The individuals listed below have one thing in common—they have an unusual ability to spot, and grab, opportunities. Without them, this book wouldn’t have been what it is.

  It was in Zambia, of all places, that Malcolm Gladwell planted the first seed that led to Small Data. Malcolm helped me shape my initial thoughts, guided me throughout the process, and gave me the type of feedback that only “a Malcolm Gladwell” can give. Malcolm, thank you so much.

  I’m truly grateful for the outstanding efforts of Peter Smith, my writer, and James Levine, my agent at Levine, Greenberg, Rostan Literary Agency. Together, on the basis of one or two scattered notes, a few phone conversations, a suitcase full of experiences and a dinner in downtown New York, we crafted what would ultimately become the idea behind Small Data. It’s hard to believe the number of iterations we’ve been through to create what I hope in the end comes across as a simple concept! Jim and Peter were instrumental in helping me see clearly even when I began losing the ability to make out the essence of what this book was about.

  Peter, I’m greatly appreciative of your work—we’ve now worked together for a decade—and you continue to surprise me. Along the way I’ve learned a secret word in publishing: When people truly feel a book is outstanding, they typically use the somewhat humble word “Terrific!” Well, Peter, you’re terrific, and an amazing talent. Jim, I can only repeat the same about you. I’m proud that you’re my agent, and that you and I have also worked together for more than a decade. Thank you.

  With Jim comes a large, experienced team. In particular, I would like to point out one person who has helped spread my words to the rest of the world: Elizabeth Fisher. Beth has also ensured that my previous books have been released in languages I barely knew existed, and she has my lasting gratitude.

  Mark Fortier, of Fortier PR, belongs to this same stable of people I’ve worked with for more than a decade. Mark is simply outstanding at what he does, and I don’t say this lightly. Of all the public relations agencies I’ve worked with across the globe—and there have been a few of them!—Mark is by far #1. Mark, thank you.

  Throughout my book I refer back to a mysterious, ever-present, ever-energized and even at times shivering assistant, Oliver Britz. (I know he hated my using this word about him in one of the chapters of this book—and in truth, Oliver almost never shivers.) He is, however, an enormously talented individual who travels the world with me, and has an almost supernatural ability to connect with other people. (During our Subtext Research, people regularly fall in love with him.) Today, Oliver is engaged to be married to a woman he met during an interview—the ultimate tribute to the powers of Small Mining! Thank you, Oliver, for being who you are, and keeping up with my extreme speed, demands and expectations. You’re a true star.

  Not least, there’s one other person from Lindstrom Company who for over twenty years has been, and continues to be, instrumental in building my brand: my assistant, Signe Jonasson. Signe is my gatekeeper, my eyes, my ears, my coordinator, my source of energy and my friend. Thank you, Signe, for keeping up with me, even though you’ve probably never had a holiday in your life since the day we started working together.

  A special thank you to Chip Heath, who not only embraced the idea of Small Data the second I mentioned it to him, but offered to write an outstanding foreword. Finally I’d like to give a shout-out to my “chief researcher” Bobbie 7, who has searched, searched and searched—and found what I was looking for every time.

  The team at my publisher, St. Martins, has been wonderful. Admittedly I’m not easy to work with. We produced almost a dozen book covers before managing to agree on one. And, yes, I even managed to change my mind about the title halfway throughout the process, creating nightmares for everyone. Thank you all very much for your dedication to Small Data, especially my editor, Emily Carlton, Christine Catarino, Laura Clark, Gabrielle Gantz, Alan Bradshaw and the entire St. Martin’s sales force, which has done outstanding work giving birth to Small Data.

  If you’ve watched and enjoyed any of the Small Data videos, or my website, I’m sure you realize it comes as a result of a hard (and I mean hard) work by everyone who works behind the scenes at Juice Group, with whom I’ve worked for more than a decade. Juice came about by coincidence when its owners, Jonathan and Lara Greenstein, unable to secure a visa in the United States when working for clients, moved “temporarily” to Vancouver, Canada. A decade later, Vancouver is still their home, and Juice is thriving. Jonathan and Lara, you’re absolutely amazing . . . or let me rephrase this; your effort is absolutely terrific! Along with Jonathan and Lara, I also want to thank Ben Regan, Mark McDermott, Terry Tsiao and Jonathan Kwok

  Considering that a lot of the work I do is somewhat pioneering—or at least breaks new ground now and again—sometimes I hit a wall when giving names to some of my new techniques. Of all the wordsmiths I’ve worked with, without a doubt I can state that Anthony Shore—who runs his own naming agency, Operative Words—is #1 at what he does, namely, coining new words. He has come up with several of the ones you’ve read about in this bo
ok, including Subtext Research, Subtexting and Small Mining. Anthony is an amazing guy.

  Jack Morton Worldwide has been an instrumental partner in the release of Small Data. Early on, some people found it difficult to wrap their heads around the concept, but Jack Morton understood what I was trying to do immediately, which tells you a lot about the agency. A special thank you goes to Craig Million for his dedication, and for making so much else possible, and thanks also go to Julian Pullan, Josh McCall, Bill Davis, Rob McQueen and Abigail Walker.

  Out of all the clients my company works with, I’d like to single out one: Lowes Foods. (Remember them? The guys who do the Chicken Dance?) To buy into crazy ideas in the first place tells you a lot about Lowes, and its executive team, and I have to say that hands down they are the most amazing client I’ve ever worked with, with many executives becoming as close to my heart as family members. A special thank you goes to Boyd George and Brian George, who first laid down the challenge of transforming the stores. Boyd is one of the most humble people I’ve ever met and, despite his seniority, as sharp as a Japanese blade. For his part, Brian manages to understand and appreciate creativity, while simultaneously running, guiding and motivating his team. Huge kudos to them both. Heather George, another family member, is a true talent, and I feel we’ve known and worked together forever. Unlike most people in our industry, Heather really, truly understands consumers, store managers, merchants, vendors, as well as what creativity is (and isn’t). She’s not only an outstanding individual, she’s also a dear friend.