Ethnography, digital or in-person, is integral to our work at The Mix - and it’s without a doubt my favourite part of the job. It’s a privilege to be privy to other people’s lives.

But, as researchers, we must acknowledge our role within the research itself. Every human carries their own background and experiences within them: this includes our privileges and our biases. This is important to admit. So, in the dynamic we create in our conversations with others, we need to acknowledge that our differences can alienate some and bring others closer.

Let’s say you’re a researcher from South London, tasked with speaking to a fellow South Londoner about sports culture. You will likely find similarities in the places you frequent, the expressions you use to describe things, you might even support the same sports teams. On the flip side, perhaps you were raised across the pond and tasked with speaking to Europeans about drinking culture across the continent. Your accent easily gives you away but, perhaps, you also don’t understand all their references. Which of these two scenarios do we assume is the more considered? The one more likely to get the best response?  

When I reflect on all the people I’ve spoken to in the early stages of my career, I immediately think of the range. At the same time, I also think about the times where I was told, indirectly but often directly, that perhaps “on this occasion” it would be best to send someone else. After all, I am not white. I am not originally from the UK. My accent is ambiguous, my ethnicity is in plain sight, and I am a woman. I am, by general societal perceptions, still young.

Through ingrained unspoken rules of research, we can end up making assumptions: for example, that a vast age gap between participant and researcher will result in awkward lack of common ground, that a junior strategist should let their senior take on the higher-income bracket, or that the city local will know best. Yet, when we take a step back, who decided what really makes each of these pairings strongest for the research?

This article isn’t about deciding which scenario is right or wrong. We know that each case presents its own strengths and weaknesses. There’s usually a decent enough argument behind what makes the most sense. So, what’s there to talk about?

I’ll never forget the conversations I’ve had with a young mum in the suburbs, the pool player who was redecorating his flat so he could foster two kids, the Muslim women whose weekly grocery shop I joined across East London, Arsenal mums and dads who showed me their beloved football trinkets (but kept insisting it was their kids’), the San Francisco and Hong Kong natives who hosted the most remarkable get-togethers, the list goes on. These conversations were not without hurdles - language, socio-economic differences, and cultural divides - yet we arrived at a real appreciation for what we didn’t know of each other, and from this came a willingness to open up and discover what really moves them.

It is our responsibility to think more intentionally and talk more openly about how we pair and plan our project teams, research design, and the fieldwork itself. It’s about tapping into the invaluable cultural know-how of a team member and asking how our individual biases might sway our thinking. It’s about doing our due diligence in making sure our team members - junior and more senior alike - are empowered to bring out the best possible conversations with participants.

And consider this: when your team is fundamentally diverse, it’s inevitable that your researchers do not always “match” the participants they might speak to. So, it’s a matter of training up your team to tackle any scenario they’re faced with. It’s about challenging ourselves to move beyond obvious pairings and instead towards what will make this research braver and stronger? There are always more ways to ask questions, so there are always as many, if not more ways to arrive at our responses. We’re in the business of people, local and global - nothing should feel out of bounds.

Here at The Mix, we recently undertook our Curl Communities project, exploring the diverse experiences of women with curly hair.

If you haven’t had the chance to read it (and you should), we used a photo essay as the main output of the research. A photo essay is a form of visual storytelling that develops a narrative across a series of photographs, and for certain pieces of research, it can make a story incredibly more compelling.

We didn’t create this photo essay just because it would lead to a beautiful output that makes an impact - which it did - but also because it makes for a better participant experience, and this is incredibly important when it comes to doing research.

But why?

Centring the Participants in the Research 

The people we speak to should be at the centre of the research, and that’s something researchers can often forget when doing a project. Their lived experiences are at the centre, they start and end the project, and we should never dismiss the fact that they are the experts in themselves. By doing a photo essay, it allows us to express that these are real people with real emotions, not just words or numbers on paper. To understand how curly hair plays a role in identity, we need to go beyond just what these women are saying but understand who they are and how their hair is a part of that. 

Expressing Beyond Words

The photography element of this research plays a crucial role in allowing participants to express themselves beyond words. When we’re asking women to articulate their thoughts and emotions about their curly hair journey, it can be a difficult thing to open up and talk about, especially when you’ve never met the person that’s asking you these deep questions. Images can convey emotions and nuances that words can’t, and we gain so much just from observing participants in this phase. How they feel and interact with the camera says a lot about where they are in their curly hair journey. 

Enhancing Engagement and Tangibility

Through visual storytelling, participants are able to better engage with the research both during and after it’s completed. As established, they start and end the project, so we can’t just forget about them once we’ve got what we need. Taking professional photos meant that we were left with not just beautiful output, but with something personal and tangible we could share with the participants after the project was complete. These photos of them showcasing their natural hair is something they can keep and share, serving as a (hopefully) positive reminder of their experience and input in the research. 

At The Mix, we value curiosity.  

It makes us great researchers and better strategists. This is why we created the MixSafari programme. It’s our version of the sabbatical.

MixSafari offers employees with three or more years of experience the chance to undertake self-designed research projects wherever they want around the world. The programme is fully sponsored by The Mix, and designed not only to reward long service and bring value to the agency – by gathering new knowledge and fresh perspectives – but also to support the professional and personal development of those taking part. 

It includes fully supported to work in that location for 3 weeks and 10 additional days of annual leave.

Here Lauren Clark, Lead Strategist, and Monica Kolesnik, Lead Project Manager, who will be jointly undertaking the MixSafari this year, talk about their reasons for applying and what they plan to do for their research.

Why we applied

Lauren: Having taken up the opportunity to spend three weeks working abroad in Spain last year, I learnt that getting out of my comfort zone challenges me and, at the same time, I really love it. 

I also discovered, that despite my best efforts when chatting with the (very patient) waiters and waitresses, checkout staff, gallery hosts and local police, that speaking Spanish is not my strong suit. 

It taught me to listen harder and to learn to look for visual clues and patterns, using them to navigate situations and decisions. I was constantly reminded that the impact of what we do extends far beyond our bubble, and how important it is to pop it.

Being somewhere else helps me think bigger, re-evaluate my priorities, and to feel inspired by the small things.

So, this year, as soon as I qualified, I applied, and succeeded!

With the bonus of 10 days of complementary annual leave to extend your stay, it's five weeks away from everything you know.  I’m looking forward to immersing myself in another new place in a way I could never afford to without the scheme.

I’m also excited to write my own brief - a rare opportunity in the agency side of the industry! – and for all the other unknown unknowns I’m sure I’ll learn during my time away. 

The topic to investigate is up to you, but through the pitch we had to be specific about the angle we wanted to take, and why we believe more knowledge about that topic in that particular place brings value and is, at least somewhat, commercially relevant to the agency.

What we’ll be exploring

Monica: Our MixSafari will focus on how people throughout the United States are engaging with, and their journeys within, sustainability.  

As the awareness of the effects of climate change and interest in environmental sustainability grows, Lauren and I were both passionate to explore this topic as part of our project.   

Within this space, I was particularly interested in community gardens across New York City. These gardens offer people a safe green space in an incredibly concrete and urban environment. Here they can grow food, plants, and learn about agriculture and environmental practices. We’re particularly interested in exploring the community here, and how these gardens connect people from diverse backgrounds, particularly as they spring up in many migrant communities around the city. 

Taking this as the initial source of inspiration, we’ve created a plan to speak to various people across the United States, not just in New York, but with differing degrees of engagement in sustainable behaviours.  

These days, it seems like almost every brand and business says they are engaging with sustainability to some degree. However, these initiatives and the language used aren’t always good at encouraging peoples to truly change their purchase behaviours and go greener.  

We want to hear about how ordinary people are changing their behaviours, what’s influencing this change, but also, importantly, what are the barriers to and what is stopping change.  

Through this project we hope to dive into a rich and colourful exploration of people’s sustainability journeys, learning more about behaviours and motivations within this space.

Stay tuned for more, as we will continue to reveal what we’re getting up to, how it’s going and what we’re learning.

One night in January 1985 some of the biggest names in the music industry assembled in a Los Angeles recording studio. Stars such as Michael Jackson, Lionel Richie, Bruce Springsteen, Diana Ross, Bob Dylan, Quincy Jones and 40 others had gathered to create the charity single We are the World. 

The evening is detailed in Netflix’s engaging documentary The Greatest Night in Pop, which shows how 46 music stars had one night to record a major hit to raise money for famine relief in Africa. The song went on to sell more than 20 million copies and is one of the world’s highest selling singles, and, to me, serves as a brilliant lesson in how to build strong team dynamics in the face of creative and logistical challenges. 

How they pulled it off - in part by taking advantage of the fact that stars would be in LA that night for the American Music Awards - is a true project-management masterpiece. They only had four weeks to convince the biggest names in music to take part in this recording session without even having a song to show them (Jackson and Richie completed the writing the night before the first recording session) or money to pay them.

However, the most important takeaway from the documentary is how the night serves as a great example of how a safe and collaborative space can enable a team to deliver even the most complex of projects - and enjoy it. These are the seven lessons I believe The Greatest Night in Pop can teach us. 

1. The power of strong leadership: Good leadership is essential, and it boils down to vision and people skills. Lionel Richie was an amazing leader throughout, respecting all the different opinions and styles, while also understanding which ideas would elevate the project and which were just distractions. Keeping the team focused on the plan, while also staying open to other people’s input is a skill any good leader must have. 

2. “Leave your ego at the door”: This was a sign on the door, the first thing people saw when they entered the studio, and it set the tone for the whole session. It showed the project was about the work, not about any individual. It sets a common objective and a real purpose for everyone. These were the biggest stars of the day, but everyone had to act for the greater good, rather than their individual gain, to make the song a success. 

3. People need to play to their strengths: There were some whose voices just could not hit the high notes, so they were told to leave that part to those who could - and this was okay. Each artist’s style and personality were to be heard in the final recording, capitalising on their strengths, rather than forcing people into uncomfortable parts. Cindy Lauper and Bob Dylan didn’t deliver their parts in the same style, and they weren’t expected to, because what they offered the song was different. While everyone in a team is responsible for the end result, it’s important that each person brings a different part to it. 

5. No struggle should go unsupported: In a team, no one should ever feel they’ve been left on their own, and everyone should feel that they have the space to be vulnerable. In the documentary this is shown when it came to Bob Dylan’s turn: after having watched everyone else sing their lines, he couldn’t find the right way to do his part because the song’s style was out of his comfort zone. So, Stevie Wonder took him by the hand and showed him how doing it in his own “Bob Dylan way” was exactly the right thing to do. And it worked. 

6. The value of truly appreciating one another. During the night, the stars started getting each other’s autographs. If people feel seen and valued it fuels collaboration and creates a great team spirit. This small gesture showed that no-one was above or below anyone in this project; these were all amazing musicians and some of them might be in competition outside that studio, but not that night. 

7. The process can be fun. While work is not all joy, it can certainly have joyful moments, so set out to work with that intention. These folks were coming from intense tours, from an awards ceremony where some presented, some performed, and then had to create a single, for free, from 10 pm until 8 am. Everyone was knackered, so the sense of fun lifted the energy in the room, it meant they could keep going to create something important.

So, if you haven't watched it yet, I seriously recommend you do. Apart from being really entertaining, there's a lot to gain from that 1h 36min - but it will all depend on the lens you choose to view it with.

Maria Ferrés is partner and global head of operations at The Mix Global

We run a training programme at The Mix for our whole team.

In the programme we cover basic competency skills such as writing an insight, presentation skills, and client handling skills and then also sessions designed to support strategists to think.

This week we ran a session called ‘strategy is bullshit’. 

The purpose of this, is that as we help our strategists develop that they avoid the worst traps that you can fall into.

We wrote up the good and bad things about being a strategist.

Good things:
Being inquisitive
Being creative
Being empathetic
Getting to work on brands
Listening
Getting to work on different things
Making things happen

Bad things:
Using it to justify your own smarts
Ego
Not listening
People not knowing what you do
Not putting in the hard work
It just being an opinion on paper
Too much theory not enough practice

The bad things all seemed to talk to strategy as being an isolated act done by one person who comes across as a bit of a dick. The good things were much more to do with the social aspect of strategy, working together, listening to people, making things happen.

Here are the key takeouts from the presentation if they are helpful for your teams:

1 Strategists tend to think that strategy is very clever and important.

The reality outside of agency and marketing land, is that most people don’t.

The evidence for this is all around.

My mum for example thinks I make ads for a living. I do not.

When my title was planner, my brother in law and I chatted and we realised we had the same job titles but very different applications.

He planned lorries in and out of a huge manufacturing warehouse.

I planned for brands on who to target.

This is a good reminder that there are very many professions in the world that do good and important things in society, nurses, doctors, teachers, lorry drivers, checkout operators for example.

These people are all much more important than strategists.

However, whilst we save no lives it is possible for us to do things that help companies make fewer bad decisions, and sometimes make some really good ones.

I like to think for example that lady pens from Bic wouldn’t have happened on my watch for example.

2. Strategy needs to stop being a black box exercise

We see some real commercial challenges with the application of strategy in business. Mostly because strategy is overly reliant on some clever dick, using secondary source material at best as evidence of their recommendation.

The consequence is that often the evidence is thin and sometimes lacking altogether, meaning that businesses are being asked to make decisions on the basis of opinion.

This is not very compelling and also commercially risky.

It’s also harder to then convince broader communities to work with your strategy.

It’s harder still to convince a board. This reinforces the idea that marketing is fluffy and not especially commercially savvy.

3. Clients spend too long observing, strategists spend too long deciding

Fun fact, the military do lots of business consulting. One of the findings they made is that businesses spend a disproportionate amount of time in observation mode, and not enough time implementing and putting their observations into action.

On the field of battle there is a military principle called the OODA cycle.

Observation, Orientation, Decision making, Action.

You should spend an equal amount of time in the decision making and action portion as you do in observation.  Afterall if you are just observing in battle you are liable to get shot.

Companies generally navel gaze more than they should and don’t take decisions quickly enough.

By contrast what we observe is that strategists skip the observation part.

They spend too long thinking up solutions and not enough time grappling with primary evidence – to find the intimate tiny details that make the difference between generic strategy and strategy that challenges stereotypes and platitudes.

4. Our job is to help people see clearly

To help people see clearly, you need to be incredibly close to the evidence and then make choices about how you share that.

As Martin Weigel puts it:

“Situational awareness, knowledge of the knowable, starting where you are - they all point to the need to pay attention, and to see clearly.  But the simplicity of this advice belies the discipline, rigour, and silencing of ego required to exercise this.”

There are four key skills we talk about to get to being a great strategic partner:

Rigour

Decisiveness

Clarity

Collaboration

Rigour is all about knowing the work deeply. Knowing your evidence and being able to use it well. You can’t speak with authority if you don’t get your hands dirty in primary evidence. 

Moderating gives you skin in the game, confidence to present well and a chance to be really useful for clients - you know something they don’t. 

Decisiveness means making choices about what you share. Every project is different but a logical place to start is always the people part.

/It’s the part clients will know the least

/It’s your chance to build empathy

/It sets up the insight for the resolution later on

After that it makes sense to go from category into their brand and the way to overcome the challenges.

With this simple framework in place, you can then make choices about what you choose to share and what you don’t.

Strategy is about sacrifice.

You should not show everything.

You should also ask yourself, have you answered the brief?

Not just the written brief, but the brief based on listening to your client so you know what they need to deliver the work really well. The unacknowledged aspects which come from really listening.

Clarity is about being inclusive.  Words and jargon that are confusing exclude people from conversations and reduce the chance of your work having impact.

Make a list of jargon you don’t understand or words that are complex and don’t use them. Even if others are, you should always aim for maximum ease of understanding.

If a short word explains just as well as a long word use the short word.

Don’t use acronyms, don’t use abstract jargon.

Ask yourself – could you explain this to a friend who doesn’t work in the same field? Would they get it?

Short and simple.

Clear not clever.

Collaboration

•      Don’t sit in a room thinking up strategy

•      Talk a lot to your team

•      Mull ideas, talk about people not consumers

•      Talk to people outside the project to sense check whether it is clear

Strategy is only good if it gets used. Do you know what happened to your last project?

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“The capacity to gain an accurate and deep understanding of someone or something.”

- Dictionary definition

In reality insight now often doesn’t really give you an accurate or deep understanding of anything at all. A lot of the time, insight suffers from what I call ‘busy mum’s syndrome’.

What is described as an insight is really just a platitude, a stereotype or an observation.

They often feel lazy and unsurprisingly don’t result in much exciting work. I think this is because no-one gets trained to write them.

People assume that you can just work out how to write a good insight or that they just appear in the world and all you have to do is catch them like a Pokemon.

But this isn’t true. Writing an insight is a craft that requires a process.

How do we fix that?

We can learn to write great insights.

Learning a process can help save us from poor insights and perhaps help to make creative work, innovation and marketing communications in general much better.

Just to be clear, insights are not:

• A piece of data

• An observation

• A quote

• A statement about the world

Insights must contain three things:

A desire, a rationale and a tension

Tension is especially important. It is why a piece of data for example isn’t an insight. A piece of data alone doesn’t position you to do anything – it is merely a statement of fact.

Most insights go wrong because they don’t hold any tension.

How do you write a great insight in three easy steps.

Step 1: The format.

The format we train our strategists to begin writing insights is this.

I want…what do you desire, what’s your goal or ambition?

Because…why do you want this?

But…what’s the tension or the one thing that’s holding you back?

For example here’s one relevant to me:

I want to lose weight, because I had a baby and I am now lacking confidence in my appearance, but I often feel too tired to go for a run.

This is a good basic insight structure. It gives you the desire and the rationale, and importantly it indicates what tension is holding me back.

Step 2: Go deeper on the rationale

To make sure the insight feels rich, you need to work at the rationale. The reason why is very important, because the harder you work at this, the more likely you will be to find an emotional space which feels interesting for a brand to resolve.

The 5 why’s is a good exercise for this.

Start by asking why and then ask again, and do this 5 times over to see how deep you can go.

Don’t be afraid of the dark.

This often ends up in births, deaths or divorce, it’s how you know you are getting somewhere good.

Here’s mine again:

I want to lose weight…

Why 1: Because I want to look good in my clothes

Why 2: Because I want to feel more confident

Why 3: Because I’m afraid of what others think of me

Why 4: Because I want to be accepted

Why 5: Because I don’t feel good enough

I told you it can get pretty dark. You don’t have to use the fifth one, just work out an appropriate and rich space for your brand.

Step 3: Address the tension

This is the critical part for a brand. What can you help someone overcome?

You can see how identifying the right tension has allowed certain brands to really cut through with consumers.

For example: I want to workout because performance is everything to me and I’m cash rich but time poor so I don’t have time to go to a gym class.

Solution: Peleton – don’t worry you can do it at home

For example: I want to be more sustainable because I want people to think I’m a good person but it’s easy to ignore because sustainability is just an invisible activity with no social status rewards.

Solution: Who Gives a Crap – toilet paper so good looking it is on display in your home

For example: I want to eat more healthily because I want to feel better in myself but I am time poor and often don’t know what to do.

Solution: Mindful Chef – home delivered balanced healthy meals

Tensions need to be addressable by your brand.

One easy way of thinking about this is to write out a whole host of different reasons that might be holding someone back, or providing a tension that prevents them from achieving their goal.

So for mine this might be:

• I don’t have time because I’m too tired

• I am worried about what I look like when I’m wearing my gym gear

• The gym isn’t convenient to get to from my house

• I don’t feel safe running at night

• I don’t feel confident that I know what to do at the gym

• I don’t feel motivated because I find it hard to measure my progress

You then need to review your insight to make sure the tension is something that is both real, and also a tension the brand can logically do something about.

There is no point having an insight that has got zero chance of your brand being able to do anything about.  It doesn’t mean the insight can’t be big and emotional but also be reasonable.

So there you go.

A quick guide to writing an insight.

Once you have mastered this simple structure, you can then think about crafting and copywriting the insight to be more distinctive. But get the basics right first, go deep on the rationale and don’t forget an addressable tension.

I want, because, but.

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