Customer Insight with Gina Fong | Unveiling the Art of Consumer Anthropology
One week left to save 30% off Brand Storytelling Fundamentals: Crafting an Authentic Customer Testimonial. Sale ends Tuesday, August 15th.
Brace yourself for a journey into the mind of the modern consumer. In this episode of Storytelligent, host Bryce McNabb joins forces with his friend and accomplished Consumer Anthropologist, Gina Fong. Get ready to shatter the illusions of traditional marketing as we embark on a quest to truly understand the beating heart of your audience.
Step into the world of customer insight like never before. Our guest, Gina Fong, brings her expertise as a Consumer Anthropologist and assistant clinical professor at The Kellogg School of Management to the forefront of this compelling episode. Gina and Bryce, friends and colleagues on a mission to reshape storytelling, peel back the layers of consumer behavior, revealing the hidden gems that drive decisions.
You’ll Learn
Gina’s Go-To Question: "So what's going on here?" digs below the surface into the realm of motivations and emotions.
Insight vs. Data: Discover why understanding the 'why' is infinitely more powerful than crunching numbers.
Empathy through Stories: Uncover the magic of storytelling as a conduit to connect and resonate with your audience.
Coaching for Clarity: Learn the art of guiding introspection to grasp the needs and desires of your target audience.
Key Terms
Consumer Anthropologist: Approaching qualitative customer research from an ethnographic perspective. An expert who deciphers consumer behavior through a holistic understanding of cultural, social, and psychological factors.
Customer Insight: Profound comprehension of customer motivations, emotions, and desires that goes beyond surface-level data.
Transcript
What's going on, Brand Storytellers? All right, so before we get into the episode, just want to let you know that the brand storytelling fundamentals course crafting an authentic customer testimonial is live. And we have one week remaining for the opening sale. So you can enjoy 30% off savings by either purchasing the testimonial toolkit, the brand storytelling fundamentals course itself, or the VIP coaching package.
Now, with the VIP coaching package, there are only five spots remaining and once they're gone, they are gone. Okay. But you cannot receive 30% off between now and August 15th. So that is next Tuesday upon the release of this podcast episode.
If you've been wanting to take the course, don't miss out on your opportunity to take advantage of those savings. All right. So in this episode, I've been talking a lot lately as we've been discussing the importance of customer testimonials about this hidden benefit from customer testimonials, being able to be a way to glean customer insight. Now, granted, it's not a a fully transparent situation and you're kind of already focused on someone who is in love with your company, but they provide you this avenue to hear your story from the customer's perspective.
Really get a very deep understanding of their motivations, their pains, their aspirations. And then you get to hear their own words, their own language, the terms that they're using. And so this valuable customer insight, that's what customer testimonials also give you an opportunity to provide. But what I kind of felt like I needed to give you guys was, well, let's get a deeper understanding of exactly what customer insight is.
So I felt like it would be a great opportunity to bring my friend Gina Fong onto the podcast. Gina Fong owns Fong Insight. She is what she terms a consumer anthropologist. And so her whole job is going out into the consumer's world, inserting herself into their world, into their life, and gleaning that customer insight. So what we're going to learn throughout this episode is what customer insight is, how she goes about her work, how she puts herself in the customer's shoes,
So that way she can gather the necessary information to then bring that back to her clients. And so she leads us through that that process of how she how she actually gathers the research, how she puts that research together, and then how she then has to kind of like change places a bit and then not just empathize with the customer, but now empathize with the client when she starts to bring them maybe news that they aren't really wanting to hear how she breaks this bad news to them.
You guys are really going to enjoy the episode. So here's Gina from Fong Insights and the Kellogg School of Management.
Gina Fong:
I'm Gina Fong and I'm a consumer anthropologist and I am a clinical assistant professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.
people don't realize how much we have to know about human beings in order to be in business, that it's not just all data and spreadsheets that you actually have to understand people at their core.
So when we talk about what I do for a living, it really is about and there's this lovely term that I love from Professor, my professor Michael Welsh, and he says Anthropology is the art of being human. And that's what I like to think about in terms of the work that I do, that we're bringing this art of being human into the business world.
Bryce McNabb:
Okay, so consumer anthropologist, you just started to dig into that, but we didn't get a chance to really, like, understand like what exactly is a consumer anthropologist?
Gina:
A consumer anthropologist is someone who is applying the practice of anthropology in business. And to me, what that means is you're you're understanding people at their core so deeply that you can design products, brand services that will surprise and delight your audience.
So it's just the intersection of understanding people and making better products.
Bryce:
Why is that important? You said that we don't realize how much we need to know about being human beings in order to do business.
Like why is why don't we understand humans? Like, why is there that gap in the first place?
Gina:
It's something that sort of confuses me too, because I think growing up in the world that I did in this, in this sort of anthropological world, it's very natural to me. But I think for a lot of people in business, they have an idea. They have a product or they have numbers.
I think a lot of business people start with the spreadsheet, which is absolutely understandable. You know, you have financial goals, you want to reach a certain milestones from a financial perspective, but we often forget that there's a real human that ultimately that we have to please at the end of this journey. And so sometimes what happens when we're businesspeople is we get a little hung up in the numbers and the spreadsheets, and we forget to get out of the spreadsheet and remember, well, we have an actual human being that we're trying to serve here, that we're trying to deliver something worthwhile to
Bryce:
How do you go about doing the work that you do? Like? Is it obviously it's research based, Right? And but they're hiring you for the qualitative research aspect. It's kind of like the company is either doesn't they're inside their own silo, either that's self-created or often is literally physical because they're working outside of their own buildings, that they've siloed themselves off from the customer.
And I'm guessing that their own marketing team has sort of like exhausted their own resources of, well, we've tried doing Internet research and we've been talking to maybe they've got a sales team or something, we've talked to them and then we're we're at our our end. Like how do you go about actually gathering this research? How do you actually be the consumer anthropologist?
Gina:
Yeah, well, typically a client will call and they'll say, we have this problem or we want to learn this. And they say, Great. Well, what would you like to learn from this research? I always start with the question of what do you want to learn? And then we develop research objectives just to make sure that we're all on the same page.
And then after that comes the really hard part, which is who do we study? Because what traditionally happens is people will say, Well, our target is women 18 to 45. And what so what happens is people start with demographics, which are fine, but I don't think they're as useful as focusing on behaviors. So what I try to get my clients to do is to think about the person that they most want for their business in terms of behaviors.
What are the valuable behaviors that people are doing today that will make you money? And let's study those behaviors. So after we agree to the people that we want to study, I'll set up a schedule. We find these people, and then I actually go into people's homes or in stores and interview them and understand their insight. Why are they motivated to do what they do at their core?
Bryce:
data doesn't show us motivations, it doesn't show us sort of like aspirations, It doesn't show us that emotional underlay, that those thought processes like the logical framework that someone is operating off of.
people start with demographics, but what you like to focus on and tease out is that psychographic of the person. Is that is that correct? Like really by getting to know them, you get to understand those those hidden motivations, those those likes and dislikes and why they operate the way that they do. Is that correct?
Gina:
Absolutely. Absolutely. And the other thing I wanted to mention, too, as part of my process is that I encourage and actually insist that my clients go on the ethnography with me because it does us no good if I'm the consultant that goes out and does research and bring it back to you. I find much to what you were saying about stories is that when people are going, clients are in that house with me seeing the consumer with their very own eyes and hearing their stories firsthand, that's what really connects with them.
You know, it's so different when I come into a room and then say, Here are the stories of your consumers and please remember them versus they go on this journey with me. And then when I am presenting the results, you know, hands are going up and they're like, I remember that consumer. I remember when she did that funny thing with our product and she did that hack that we had no idea people were doing.
And that really brings a consumer to life. They're story and I think it last much longer than the research report that I deliver to a client. So there is this part of my process is making sure that clients come along for that journey with me.
Bryce:
How much time do you spend with this person?
Do you like like live with them or you just like meet them on one day, like hang out with them for a couple of hours? Like, what's that kind of like, scope? What is it? What is it like physically look like? And how are you actually gathering your research? Like, are you just like, have a video camera or you're just like, walk around beside them the whole time, like videoing them?
Or do you have like a notebook and you're just like awkwardly taking notes on everything that they do? Like it's like this experiential, like therapy session or something. Like what? What does it actually look like?
Gina:
Well, you and my family are still very much wondering what I do for a living, even after 20 years. It's much simpler than it sounds, but it is unlike any job that I think most normal people have.
So there is a spectrum. I mean, I've heard of companies that will live with people. To me, that's a little bit extreme. I mean, I think that would be very fun. But now we're getting into like reality TV show stuff. And so for for my purposes and the work that I'm doing with my clients, I typically spend anywhere from a couple hours to four or 5 hours with them, which is a really long time.
Now, you have to remember, too, I'm professionally trained so I can go out and get to know someone pretty quickly. And what typically will happen is if it's a B to C projects that we're working with customer product, I will meet someone in their home. Let's say it is for a cleaning company and there's a particular brand or cleaning product that we have to understand.
I will go into this person's home and I will sit with them, chat with them for a little bit and actually watch them clean. So my job entails getting on the floor and watching someone clean. I might actually clean with them to really understand what's going on. Or I've done a lot of work in hair care and I've actually gone in and watched people dye their hair to help improve that really messy experience.
And of course, the question I get is, well, what what do you do when they get into the shower and they have to rinse the hair off? Well, they wear a bathing suit so that we can really understand in the shower what happens, because that's just as important to understand if we're going to make this product better. But as much as I'm in people's homes, I'm in the mall with them, I'm in stores wherever someone is in their natural habitat experiencing the product or the brand, I have to be there now.
Most of the time I don't actually use a video camera because that is essentially a third person or element in the mix. And sometimes that could be a little daunting to the consumer. I always order your record. I don't take any notes just because I know my audio record or audio recording, and I feel like when I take notes, then it elevates it to this very formal research position.
And what I really want to do is just spend a day in the life of a consumer. So I listen to my audio later. I'll pull a transcript and I have a pretty good memory. So what I do is I will take photos during the interview, things that they're doing. Maybe if I am studying someone who's making dinner, I'll go into their pantry looking, look in their fridge, take a lot of photos, and that will help me reconstruct the experience from my memory.
But ultimately what I'm doing is just being in someone else's environment and I'm observing, I'm listening, I'm asking questions, I'm being super curious, and I'm really putting myself in their shoes.
Bryce:
So it sounds like that you're trying to maintain a like a level of transparency as much as you can, given the inherent awkwardness of the situation itself. Would would that be fair?
Like you're not going to do you're trying to like, limit the additional any additional tools that might be pulled in that will then even further color that silly situation because it's already colored from the fact that you're there observing that. So you can't completely trust everything they're doing because you're present, right? So you kind of have to know that they're acting from this situation of they know that you're watching everything that they're doing and that it is a little awkward that you're now opening their fridge and taking photos of the things in their fridge.
But whatever they signed up for this. But then it but then you're kind of being mindful of trying to create that transparent environment. So that way to them, they stop forgetting. They almost forget that you're there observing and they just feel like they're hanging out with you. Is that like, would that be accurate?
Gina:
Yeah, that is accurate. I do want it back up because you said something about trust trusting them, and I do trust them.
And I think when you trust someone else, they trust you in return. So one of the things I like to set up is that, you know, I'm not here to be a voyeur. You know, I'm not here just to watch. To watch what I'm really here to do is to improve this product for you. So please be as honest as you can, because what you share with me here will eventually help your experience later on when I go back and represent your point of view to an organization.
So when before I come into someone's home, I say, I want your home to be exactly the way it is. Because if it is clean when you normally wouldn't have it this kind of clean, it gives us a false impression of what's going on. And that could impact or falsely inform the way we might change a product or service.
And so if I'm able to really impressed upon someone, then I think we have a more authentic interview. And usually we do, because I think they also realize I don't work directly for any of the companies that are at the end state of this research. So there's no skin lost in the game for anybody who's in this room.
We're just there talking as two people trying to figure out what's wrong with this, what's right with it, so that things that are good stay the way they are and things that need to be fixed get fixed. And I think when we set up research that way, people are incredibly helpful and they're more open to this idea of let me share because it almost becomes this public service.
If I can help this company fix this, then it's actually going to fix the lives of other people to.
Bryce:
I like that too, because they're more calm and more willing to trust because they know that you're not going to get defensive about anything they say because you didn't make the thing. And it's almost like that. So that that kind of like streamlines your ability to, like, interact with them and observe.
And then you have to deal with the defensive stuff later when you pull your research together.
Gina:
Exactly. Exactly. And what that does is it really empowers the consumer that I'm working with to be more open, to be incredibly what's the word I'm looking for, to be incredibly discerning where they can say, Let me tell you really what's bothering me today about this brand or this experience.
They don't have to be nice. And sometimes that happens is people, they don't want to hurt someone else's feelings. They do realize that an engineer may have worked on this product for years and then to tell them that their baby is ugly is a really difficult thing to do. But if I'm there, I can act as that intermediary and smooth over like you say later on how I say something to a client.
Because that other part is not only just knowing how to get to the inside of a consumer. A lot of times my work is how do I how do I share what could be very difficult information with the client, but share it with it, share it in a way that they can hear it and be inspired to do something about it.
And this gets back to the core of what we're talking about. Price, which is stories,
Bryce:
Because I'm guessing, like, it's not it can't just be complete observational because again, you have to glean that insight.
You have to get into like, why are they doing the things that they're doing and what are they focused on? What is their attention like? What's their goal? So have learned that there's like almost like your go to questions as you start to draw out this information from customers. Like what are some of your favorite questions that you use to really get an understanding of their world of what they're doing?
Gina:
So there is one question, and I have many, but there's one question that I use that just works every time. And when I share it with my students, they're pretty incredulous because there is nothing fancy about this question. So it doesn't matter if I am watching someone clean their floor and maybe I'm like, Wow, why are they using this tool?
Or why are they on their hands and knees when they can use a mop instead? It doesn't matter if I'm watching someone dye their hair and I'm not sure why they're doing it the way they do, because they've decided not to follow the directions. Or perhaps I'm in someone's garage and we're talking about how they're organizing it. Yet to my I wouldn't call it organized.
One question I use every time and that's so what's going on here? And that's it. And I know it's such a simple question, but what I really appreciate about this question is it's so open ended that the person I'm asking this question of can really choose where they want to go. And that immediately tells me where their energy and their focus and where their excitement is.
I'm not pre determining where they should go, what's going on here. And they get to lead that conversation.
Bryce:
I love this question because it's so it sounds so trite and so simple, but it already opens them up to start like narrating their their activity and, and, and that narration because now they already know that you're watching what they're actually doing.
That narration is going to inevitably get into like their thought process and like, how they're approaching this. Like, is that what you, what you see very often is that they kind of just like, all right, they kind of just give you almost like a bullet point, Well, I'm doing this, this, this, but because and then it's a really good jump off point for you to ask follow up questions.
Gina:
Yeah. Ultimately, what I want them to do is to introspect. And when I talk about ethnographic research and doing these in-depth interviews, people and being in their home, ultimately what my role is, is to coach someone to introspection. And to do that, I have to be really curious about them. I have to give them permission to talk out loud and just work things out, out loud.
And so by saying, So what's going on here? It's just an invitation to say, go ahead and work that out with me and introspect. And I can tell when we've really come to a deeper understanding after an interview is because someone will say to me, Well, I've never actually thought about it that deeply before, or you learn something about myself, because ultimately it isn't about what you what you were saying.
It's not about like, well, and then I do step one and then step two and then step three. You know, that's now we're getting into data, which again, is important. But I want to get to that next layer, which is why are you doing each step? Why are the steps in this order? Why have you maybe not done this step or why have you included these extra steps?
And that requires introspection. And introspection is not something that most of us are very practiced at, and it takes someone else to coach you through that and ask the right questions. It is a little bit like therapy where you are teeing up certain questions to get people to dive a little deeper into themselves. You want to be present enough so that you are guiding them but not stepping into the process where you are leading them or controlling the interview.
Bryce:
Why do you want to avoid leading or controlling the interview?
Gina:
Because to me, ethnographic research is all about discovery. There is this idea that when you do customer research, especially ethnographic research, that you should have a hypothesis and go and prove or disprove it.
And to me, really what we should be doing in ethnographic research is having coming in with a blank slate and then into discovery. What happens if you come in with a hypothesis and I know that there is some research for that where you have to do that, but if you're truly trying to understand someone at their core, what you need to do is let them present themselves to you.
So if you have a hypothesis, you will start to look for things that will either prove your hypothesis right or wrong, and you might miss all of the wonderful nuggets that are there along the way. So what I try to do with my clients to say, okay, I understand that you might want to know if this particular hypothesis is right or wrong, but if we come at it by saying we're really going to understand the core of this customer, we're really going to distill their insight, you will have that answer for yourself at the end.
But if we can focus on someone's motivation, their insight, what happens is once we have that, we can predict almost everything about them. And that's way more powerful than saying, well, is this hypothesis right or wrong? Because as soon as you have another question that you have to answer, you have to go back out and do research again, to answer that specific question, you're almost like looking for like their framework from which they're making decisions.
If you can identify that framework, then you know which direction they're going to go in. Most given situations that they're going to find themselves with it.
Bryce:
Absolutely. That's awesome. Okay. So that's like the whole that like directly were tied directly ties to why I love brand storytelling is because I am I really advocate for getting to understand your customers story is for that sole It's like once you understand your story, it's like that becomes your strategic framework.
And then every message that you you communicate from your brand is essentially it's like communicated out of that framework. And, and now you you have like it streamlines everything, right? Because the same way you've understood how the how the consumer makes decisions, it's like, okay, we understand how we should be saying this. How so? Now we know like what our website needs to say, what a one shooter needs to say, what the video needs to say, because we know the story.
How many consumers are you usually following it? I'm guessing it's not limited to one, but I'm guessing it's it's not like you don't go out and observe like 100. Right. So do you have like a set number that you recommend that you go and you observe?
Gina:
Oh, Bryce this is the rub of qualitative research. So one of the most popular questions I get asked when I present research is how big was your sample size, which is the bane of every qualitative researcher existence?
Because usually it means, sure, if I'm going to trust you, if your number is not big enough and qualitative research isn't like, you said to study 100 people. You know it's not feasible. It's difficult to do. And really, when you're getting into the work that I do at INSIGHT, you are not trying to say here is what a thousand people are doing or how they're motivated.
What you're really trying to say is people who behave like this, this is what their insights and what that means is you don't have to study a thousand people to get to that insight. You have to study just enough people to get to a pattern of behavior that reveals the insight. And so sometimes it could be as few as five, which I know makes people very nervous sometimes.
I've done research with as many as 15 or 20 people in the sample, but ultimately that number, it's not a magical number because that number, your sample size depends on a few things. It depends on how experienced the ethnographer is. You know, there's a big difference between someone like me who's been doing this 20 years and someone that's just starting out maybe in their first or second year.
There's also, though, a difference in terms of the knowledge you have in a category. For example, I've done a lot of work in food, so I don't need that many interviews because I have a lot of internal history for doing that work over the years. But if someone asked me to do work in a category I've never done before, I would probably have to increase my sample size because I'm a bit less familiar with the category.
The consumers, the product. So it is this number that moves around depending on who's conducting the research and how versed or knowledgeable they are in that category or industry. So there's no magic number really. But I would say you're not doing two interviews and you're probably not doing 50 interviews. And I know that's really, really still a big range to give.
Bryce:
You See, I almost feel like you would tack on going up to 20 and 15 just to pacify client concerns. But I feel like almost like you've established your pattern after five
Gina:
Sometimes. Yeah, a lot of it too. Depends on how good the recruiting is True. Sometimes if you just say we're going to study women 18 or 45, I mean, you've got to study a lot of women to get to a pattern that actually makes sense because they could just be very different from each other.
So really making sure who is this person we're interviewing also helps the sample size come down. But to your point, Bryce, there have been times that I've added some sample size because of my internal practice, which is I want clients to be in the room with me. So sometimes that means if we have a big client team, we have to add some interviews to make sure everyone gets term.
And I'm okay with that because what that means later is every person on the team has touched a client or touched a customer, and that's so valuable to be able to walk out of research and say, I saw this person, I saw them using our product, I saw the joy on their face. I saw the pain when they experienced some friction with our product.
And I will never forget those moments. And that's what's inspiring me now to do work a little differently back at the office.
Bryce:
the work I do is so similar to the work that you do is just put in to a different medium because I when I'm telling this type of a story, it's a customer testimonial or like a case study and I'm coming at it from this has worked.
And, and the hypothesis that I'm usually approaching this as is like the value proposition of the company. And so like that's sort of the okay, this has worked, this is our hypothesis. And now tell me your story so I can use elements of your story to prove the hypothesis because it's ultimately a marketing piece. You want that main takeaway to be, Oh, their value proposition does work.
This whole journey has validated this organization's value proposition, but I put my stuff in the form of like a brand story or a video or like a written testimonial. After you've gotten your research, you said that you've put it together in a research report. Like like what is this report? How are you putting your research together? Do you do you build customer profiles for these companies?
Like how do you organize all of this stuff now that you've done the divergent thinking, How does this stuff converge?
Gina:
Yeah, So typically what I do is I put things together in a deck and I tell a story within that deck. I tell a story about the consumer and how they their origin story, how they started in the category, how they've gotten to the brand or the product, and then ultimately what their experience is like with it.
And how I wrap up is, okay, here are the things that you need to be thinking about in order to move forward. Now I have an idea of why they've hired me for the research and what they want to do with it afterwards, so I know exactly how to start shaping that last part of my jack in order to give them the inspiration to that, to help them see that there's a little bit more to think about than just maybe what they initially went into the research for.
But it is a deck. And, you know, you brought up some tricky words here, personas and profiles and things like that. Those those are terms are being widely used in the industry today. And it's not that I don't use them, but really what I focus on is insight. So if you know the insight into someone you can predict almost everything about them.
So whether it's a persona, whether it's a profile, you know, we can get into the different definitions of those and what people think they really are. But for me, what I do is I try to represent the consumer's truth as candidly as I can in a way that inspires the client team the best thing for me in a meeting is when a client team can't be quiet because if I'm presenting the research and all of a sudden they're like, Oh my gosh, this is why we struggled with this.
Or Oh my goodness, this is what we should be doing. Or, you know, a CEO looks around the room and he's like, okay, we've got to get so-and-so on this right now. You know, it's starting to spur a real conversation and ideas are actually coming out of the research in real time. To me, that's really delightful. And ultimately where I want the client team to land if they hire me for this kind of research.
Bryce:
So how how do you share very difficult information to your clients to to be able to get them to, you know, Oh, man, I might get pushback from this. They are probably going to get defensive, but you need to show up and be the customer advocate here because that's what they paid you to do. And you need to make sure that the information you're giving is going to benefit them by causing the specific changes that it needs to do so.
So then how do you share that information?
Gina:
So there are a couple of things. One, now I have to switch gears and get in to the world of the client and empathize with them and understand, you know, they've been working on these things for a long time. There's a product that they're trying to launch and it's going to make or break the company, you know, whatever that is.
I now have to switch gears from being in the world of the consumer or into the world of the client and really understanding what their pain points, their friction, what their expectations are, what really keeps them up at night, and making sure that that informs the way I share that news with them. Because if I just said, Wow, this product is broken and this is what you have to fix, you know, that can be really tough to to receive even on the other end.
But if I understand really the story behind that, I could probably say it in a much kinder way. I could say it in a way that is going to inspire them more than deflate them. But the other tool that I like to use and if anyone knows email, they know I love a good metaphor and I find that when you use metaphors, it can the heat off of that pressure situation because the metaphor isn't really directly focused on you, but it can get the point across.
Now you have to use a metaphor that's relevant to the audience. But what I find is it can even inject a little humor so that it doesn't come across as so serious that all is doom and gloom. And I remember years ago I was working with a client team and they had some concepts they wanted to present and weren't very good.
And I didn't know how to tell them this because they were thought it was. They were ready to be tested. And I felt like they still had a little bit of work to do. And so I said, Oh, Suzanne, we're about to have that uncomfortable conversation. And she said, What do you mean? And I said, Well, this is where I have to tell you that your baby is ugly.
And she started laughing and she knew exactly what I meant. And she said, okay, let's sit down and talk about what we need to do to get these ready for testing. And it just helps the conversation tremendously because I didn't actually have to say it, but she knew exactly what I was saying and we could have a laugh over it.
Bryce:
Oh my God, I'm using that. But it's amazing to just see that. Okay, so I'm sorry. Now I have to tell you that your baby is ugly.
Gina:
But I didn't say your baby is ugly. I said, Oh, we're going to have to have that uncomfortable conversation. So she knew something was coming. And I said, Oh, we're going to have that comfortable conversation.
Your baby is ugly. She knew, and it's, I think, a much easier thing to hear then. Boy, your concepts are coming out.
Bryce:
Yeah. They're just not ready.
you teach this stuff and obviously you're you're pretty good at it.
Otherwise you wouldn't have received this recognition that you just received. So why first off, tell us about the recognition that you just got voted for at Kellogg and then why is it so important for you to teach what you do and continue to pass on what you do?
Gina:
Yeah. So every year the graduating class of Kellogg votes for Professor of the Year, and this year they voted for me, which was such a surprise and a delight.
And it's meaningful for me because I teach an elective at the business school and I'm known for teaching soft skills, which of course is not necessarily the first thing you think of when it comes to business school. Because I'm teaching curiosity, I'm teaching empathy, teaching how to ask artful questions. And so this award is really meaningful because what it says to me is that the next generation of business people is really embracing this field of ethnographic research.
And it's exactly why I decided to teach at a business school. And I started teaching about five years ago in an era where big data was king. And I thought, Oh my goodness, what's going to happen if big data takes over again? There's nothing wrong with big data, but we can't forget about the qualitative side of things as well.
And so really my mission at teaching at a business school was to make sure that the next generation of business students knows about qualitative research. They know what ethnographic research is, they know what good ethnographic research looks like, and that they're excited to do it with their own companies once they leave business school. So there's a word to me says, While we really understand what ethnographic research is, we get it and we can't wait to use it in the business world.
Bryce:
Awesome. So I guess to sum up, why is it so important to focus and know the customer's perspective?
Gina:
Oh my goodness, I could go on for days with that question raised. But I think ultimately if have an audience that you want to serve, you have to understand them. But more importantly, I think this is a skill that can be applied anywhere.
We always have another human being. We're in front of that. We have to understand whether it's our partner at the end of the day, whether it's our child, whether it's a family member, a friend. I mean, ultimately we're human beings connected to other human beings. And if we can understand them, if we could give someone else the gift of understanding, why would we want to do that?
All right, guys, I hope you enjoyed that episode. I hope you got as much out of that as I did. It was awesome to have Gina set aside time to come be on the podcast.
I really appreciate the fact that she did that for us. If you want to learn more about Gina and her work, you can find her on Linked In. It's Gina Fong Guy and af0 and G. Now she's got a book that's going to be coming out soon, probably over the next couple of months or so. It currently is untitled, but I will keep you guys updated as to the title of the book because I think it's going to be very valuable, especially for our work.
I love to see the parallels between how I approach my work from the documentary perspective, from the brand storytelling perspective, really helping my clients get this understanding of their customer and be able to see their organization from the outside in so they can really connect with their audience and how that directly translates to the work that Gina is doing.
The biggest divergence was the fact that she doesn't use a hypothesis because that's going to color how she goes about gleaning true insight. Whereas from my perspective and from the brand storyteller approach, we do need to be guided by a hypothesis because from the point of trying to communicate our message, we need there to be a core takeaway.
And so as we construct our story, we construct our story around the value proposition, which in essence is the hypothesis. So some things that really stood out to me throughout our conversation was I loved her favorite question. So what's going on here is just so perfect in its simplicity. We talked about the importance of insight over data. So while data can really be informative, what's going to give us that deep empathetic understanding is knowing the why behind the behaviors, knowing the reasons, the motivation of the customer, and ultimately understanding that the whole point is to truly empathize with somebody, understand somebody.
So whether you're whether you're a business creating a product or whether you're a brand storyteller serving an audience and trying to communicate the value of that offer to that audience, if you're serving somebody, you're going to best serve them when you best understand them. So your ability to serve is going to be directly correlate to how well you understand.
So it's super important for us to just kind of reflect on what we learned today and try to try to go about better understanding and better empathizing with our customer, with our end audience. And so if you want some guided instruction on how to begin to understand how to do that again, definitely check out the brand storytelling fundamentals, Crafting an Authentic Customer Testimonial course.
30% off between now and next Tuesday. After next Tuesday, the prices are going to go up and if you want to get in on the VIP where it's it's for one on one coaching sessions with me as well as the entire course. There are five spots remaining. And once those spots are gone, they're gone.
All right. As always, if you have any questions about the content and the material or any suggestions for future podcast episodes, you can find me at Bryce McNabb dot com and send me a message there.
If you're an organization wanting to take your story to the next level, then reach out to me at McNabb Storytelling dot com and I'll see you guys in the next one. Take care.