Tim Malefyt: [00:00:00] When we're driving, there's a lot of social agreement that goes on, and driving is very social. There's a lot of looking over at the other person, looking at their face. There's a lot of reaching an agreement about who's gonna pass, who's gonna move in. So, how are we gonna reprogram these rules, these this social etiquette of driving. It's much more complex than we realize.

Chris Kocek: Welcome to any Insights yet the podcast that explores the intersection of strategy, inspiration, and branding. I'm Chris Kocek. On today's episode, we talk with Tim Malefyt, a business anthropologist who teaches at Fordham University and who has helped a wide range of big name brands, including Campbell's, Gillette, FedEx, HBO, Revlon, PepsiCo., and more.

Tim specializes in ethnographic research, which means he goes deep spending time with consumers in person and uncovering those nuggets of [00:01:00] truth in the context of their everyday behaviors. During our conversation, we connect all kinds of dots from the meaning of soup to unexpected acts of creativity in the kitchen, we explore the surprisingly social nature of driving and why that's causing unexpected challenges with driverless cars, and we talk about ways to break through the gender bias that can often unintentionally impact brand research projects.

I also got Tim to talk nerdy to me about metaphors and how metaphors can be a powerful tool, not only for reframing perceptions, but also when it comes to interviewing for a job. But before we get to all that, let's begin with the secret to great research. 

Tim, what's the one thing you wish more businesses understood about great research?

Tim Malefyt: Context is really everything. We're very enamored by big data, but in context lies multiple meanings. Context is often complex. [00:02:00] So on your show earlier, I loved listening to Brent Vartan talking about consumers lie and I would repreface that people often exaggerate or underreport things, but often you have to know the context to really know how, what people mean.

Quick example here, every parent knows you have your, let's say your kid, your daughter's watching a scary movie late at night, and we know she's enraptured by the scary movie but then we put her to bed, it's time to go to bed, we take her to her room, turn off the lights, shut the door, and maybe five seconds later we hear mommy or daddy, I'm thirsty.

Now we know that because of the context, she's not lying that she's thirsty or not, she probably wants attention, she's afraid. So oftentimes it's what's going on in the context. As I say, my interviews are always best when we're doing something. Now, the worst context is to sit down, across from somebody and have your pad of paper and interview them. That's always nerve [00:03:00] wracking. Even if you're interviewing family and friends, of course they're gonna be stiff and give kind of set answers, but when you're in an activity with somebody, think about how rich that is, and those are always the best insights that come from doing something. 

Activity creates thinking.

Your philosophers famously walked and thought at the same time. It was walking that that led to a lot of their thinking. So my best insights come from watching people cook in the kitchen for Campbell’s Soup or New Balance when we're out running or we're walking to a place where people are gonna run, it's that in-between time we start talking and getting into insights. Or shaving with Gillette, I would have men with The Art of Shaving actually demonstrate shaving to convince their friends. In that context, they'll describe things that you would never get in a sit down interview. While people are doing things. So that's one, uh, way to get better information is to do activities, you're going to a business situation, walk around the [00:04:00] showroom, walk around the warehouse, have people talk, point out things, and their thinking also is elicited by what's going on in the new fresh context. So context helps stimulate their thinking as well. 

Chris Kocek: And you mentioned Campbell's a second ago. You've worked on a lot of different brands, a lot of big brands like Campbell's, FedEx, HBO, Pepsi, P&G, AT&T. What's an example from your research where that context shift, just being with somebody, watching them do what they do and then hearing them talk, what's an example from your research where that led to an “Aha!” moment for you? 

Tim Malefyt: I've done a lot of research for Campbell's, and we would start off meeting our folks, going to their home and we'd sit in the living room or family room and interview them, and I would get very set answers, but again, it was while we were cooking that we talk.

But as you're talking with somebody, this is something that we actually helped Campbell's [00:05:00] reframe what they were first starting out with. They said, Tim, go out with your team and explore the dinner dilemma. What's the dinner dilemma that mom has at 3, 4, 5 o'clock getting food ready for the table? And we said, one thing is whenever you frame something as a dilemma, you're gonna typically find issues rather than seek something more positive. But while we were cooking we were amazed with how creative these women were, how innovative, how improvisational they were. They were in a sense literally recreating the family as they're making a meal. Putting together this, adjusting this, adding a little more of this, substituting cinnamon for cumin 'cause they know they're family doesn't like that. So we said there's a lot more creativity, a lot more innovation than Campbell's gives credit to. So we went back to them and one thing that we changed was their website. They have famous chefs in the kitchen that prepare recipes and we said, wait a minute, the way women are [00:06:00] naturally sharing information about recipes and cooking and all that is through their network of friends at work, on social media and, and watching Rachel Ray on TV and so forth. So we said, let's redo the website and make this more bottom up. And we had women talk about the recipes they had and how they modified them, and it was much more successful.

This bottom up kind of approach than a top down. So that's an example where context changed the meaning of what cooking was about. We wanted to give more creativity to these mothers, and then that also changed the website and greater success for Campbell's. 

Chris Kocek: And so they called it the dinner dilemma. Did you come back with a different phrase, the creative cook, the creative kitchen?

Tim Malefyt: Yes, Creativity in the Kitchen. Yes. So we were just much more impressed with that. And we looked at, of course, differences in, in generations. Campbells was interested in the way boomers cook, the way gen x cooked and, and the way millennials cook [00:07:00] and how there are different strategies for cooking.

Millennials and gen z are much more about using social media and sharing recipes rather than taking recipes like from mothers and grandmothers handed down. But there's a great deal of communication and sharing about recipes that we wanted to build into the website of Campbell's that they could then share out with their customer base and it proved their website and their cooking site as well. 

Chris Kocek: Now, that's one of the challenges. You, you mentioned earlier that at first you sat down with people and you asked them questions, and you've got the expected answers, nothing too exciting there. Do you remember any of the common tropes that people shared with you, when they were just sitting down and you were just asking them as opposed to watching them?

Tim Malefyt: It was always amazing to ask people how creative you are in your cooking, what kind of recipes, and people would say they don't do that much, so they just follow the recipes, “I like to get it done,” they're thinking of results. But in the cooking, in the process, [00:08:00] there's a, I don't wanna get too technical, but knowledge in the body, tacit knowledge is a great term. Palani talked about this, that we have knowledge, you can call it muscle memory, we have knowledge that's stored up in us. So, we would hear things while women were cooking that we didn't hear when they were just reporting things to us. And they would talk about, “Oh yeah, I remember my son likes this kind of flavor, enhancer, so I'm gonna add this in.” It was so different, the interviews of the way people talked about cooking and recipes, and it sounded more banal and rote when they were talking about it in the interviews, and you can see the difference between a survey where they, Campbells, would collect information and where you're getting information live and again in the doing and the action knowledge of the body comes through and is very informative.

Chris Kocek: That's so powerful because as you said earlier, if you're just sitting there talking to someone, it can feel like an interrogation. I ask you a question, you give me an answer. If I ask you, are you creative in the [00:09:00] kitchen? “No, not really.” And then you go watch the person, you're with them side by side, and you see they're making all of these micro adjustments which is very creative. 

Tim Malefyt: And they don't give themselves credit for, “Oh yeah, I'm just cooking.” So they often use a word like, yeah, this is, I'm just cooking to really talk about many micro activities and adjustments and fine tuning and decisions that they were making while they're cooking. So you, it's good to watch that process.

Same with, as I said, with New Balance and running or shaving, you get all these things. We got into, for instance, with The Art of Shaving, all the sensory dimensions of shaving that we didn't know. So these guys, they spend 120 bucks for Art of Shaving kit, much more expensive than your cheap Gillette razor.

And we think, why are people spending so much for this? But you know, there's a ritual involved, but when they're describing the shaving process, they're saying, “Oh yeah, you have to hold the double edged blade at just the right angle,” and you can hear the sound that [00:10:00] it makes when you're, it's gliding over the skin.

And they'd say, “Here, try the scent here.” So it was much more evocative of the experiential, the sensory dimensions of shaving than we ever heard before in just an interview. So again, that activity while they're talking with us, was very informative, very truthful in a sense. That's really where you're getting some of these insightful truths.

Chris Kocek: Yeah, that's interesting because something that's come up on the show previously is this idea of making the invisible visible, and I find it intriguing that the behaviors themselves are even invisible to the person who's performing them. They don't think they're being creative. You as a third party observer say “Actually, that's creativity happening right there.” 

Tim Malefyt: We call that, in anthropology there’s a great slogan for that, “making the familiar strange,” and that is what, you know, taking something that's so obvious that everyone seems to know it's rote, it's mundane, and looking at it in a new way. 

Chris Kocek: So [00:11:00] you mentioned you've done a lot of work with Campbell's over the years, and you've gone deep on some very interesting topics. You've studied how millennials eat soup or think about soup or gen z uh, gen x, boomers, and you've gone deep on the meaning of soup. So let's start with soup for a quick second. What is the meaning of soup? Or put another way, what does soup mean to people? 

Tim Malefyt: Very good question there. A lot of my work with Campbells was trying to reframe the soup experience of people's mental thoughts about it. They wanted to get away from the, in the home, sitting around the family table, nuclear family, everyone sitting around having soup, and so when the campaign, “it's amazing what soup can do” came out, some of the insights we were looking for is how do we think of soup and how do we turn soup into a health food, a wellness food, and make it more, a food that gives you vitality, energy, it's for people on the go. 

So all of our [00:12:00] scenes that we talked to people about this, was about soup, giving you the energy, vitality, it has a lot of nutrients, a lot of ways of giving you energy, getting people out of the home, and that was a successful campaign. And also that soup for cooking can unleash this creativity as we just talked about, that it's a great way for cooks to think, repurpose food, and think of things in new ways.

I think a lot of the work with Campbell's was trying to get away from some of the old cliches of a soup family sitting around the table and give it more of a dynamic to it. 

Chris Kocek: Yeah, it always intrigues me. I haven't heard it so far this election season, but in previous elections people talk about the family budget, people sitting around the kitchen table and working on a family budget, and I think to myself, “are people really doing that?” 'cause may, maybe they are, again, I don't know every corner of the country, but the kitchen table doing the family budget seems a cliche. It seems like an almost bygone era of people sitting around with [00:13:00] pads of paper out and doing things like that. I just, I find it hard to believe that they're doing quite that way anymore.

But back to soup. How did you figure that out? Did you just ask people, “Hey, what does soup mean to you?” Did you have a different question? Did you, to your point earlier, did you eat soup every night for a year with different people to find out?

Tim Malefyt: We got people who liked soup, and then we looked at not so much what soup means, but what soup does, and it does have a gathering power. People talked about having friends over. Women, for instance, cooking the family meal versus having their friends over for lunch and cooking soup for that and they'd more often doctor it up and do different things and women with their friends over were often much more experimental, would try new things.

The family wanted more things familiar and they had their favorites and so forth. But with their friends, they also expected their friends to be more critical so they could hear feedback, they'd like to hear feedback from them. So that was [00:14:00] very insightful. And again, we are looking for new ways to think of expanding what concepts of soup is, and how you could use it and so forth. 

Chris Kocek: Now, in your book business anthropology, you talk about the importance of language and metaphors. 

Tim Malefyt: Ah, yes. 

Chris Kocek: And you reference one of my favorite books by George Lackof, Metaphors We Live By. And the basic idea is that we're constantly using metaphors to describe things. We've probably used a number of metaphors just in this short conversation already. We use them to describe our feelings, the world around us. But metaphors also have a power to hide or shape or distort reality. We can get so accustomed to using a particular metaphor in a certain situation that we never can really see the world in another way.

Do any examples come to mind regarding a project you've worked on where there is a common metaphor or a phrase, but then you were able to [00:15:00] change or reframe that metaphor, which then led to a major shift in thinking for the company? 

Tim Malefyt: Yeah, it's really good, Chris, because, metaphors, that's so critical in any kind of research with consumers to listen to the way people speak. And as you said, you really can't get away from it and one project comes up right away when one project we had to do for FedEx and speaking with small business, we heard so many references about, first of all, referring to the work of being alone and being vulnerable and needing help from others. People would talk about, “I have to wear many hats,” and “it's good to have vendors that back you up or lend a hand,” we heard phrases like that. But we also heard that sense of pride. One metaphor that came up that was really powerful is being master of your own ship, and that was very different from like how they described work in corporation as being siloed or people ready to stab you in the back, there's another figure of speech.

So that was very powerful [00:16:00] for us to try to look at ways to work with small business, help small business. And when we talk about metaphors, I'd like to bring up two ways to really work with metaphors. We listen for them from consumers. We use them to talk about small business and also businesses use metaphors to state who they are.

Southwest Airlines is great to talk about the heart, and they use that heart metaphor for everything. But also use metaphors when you're interviewing. Here's a great example. So when I'm opening up an interview with somebody and you wanna find background information, think about the difference between these two metaphors you say to somebody, “tell me about your journey.”

So what's typical, what people will say about in their lives, their journey, they've done certain things and the way they're walking along a path. Tell me about your journey. But then phrase that differently with, “tell me about key turning points in your life,” “What were the key turning points in your life?”

And you're going to [00:17:00] get much more of a sense of the issues, the conflicts, “I left college at a certain age,” “I got married at a certain age,” “I got divorced at a certain age.” So if you're a brand, think about what your offering is. So I give this to my class. If you're Ikea, for instance, Ikea's famous for people starting over, for college kids, for people starting a new career, starting a new life after being divorced. That kind of interviewing would be much more relevant for somebody if you're doing interviews, you're working for Ikea, using metaphors to help people construct that. 

Metaphors are also useful to play back into consumer research. Here's something else I'd like to say for us and your book is fabulous, by the way. I think that is just so valuable for marketers and researchers to know. It's easy for us to think of the title of your book, think of an insight as a thing, right? It becomes objectified, it’s substance, it's solid. I want that insight, right?

The trouble is we think of an insight is that the [00:18:00] problem or issue seems fixed. It's like plugging a hole or solving a puzzle, then it's done, right. But I think you've also mentioned this, insights in business maybe are better thought of as like an assemblage. It's a coming together of commingling, of ideas, data, perspectives that are appropriate for a situation.

So it's not something fixed. It's something that is temporal and that eventually we'll have to, hopefully not too soon, but have to change and come up with something else. So just the concept, the word insight can be thought of as a metaphor of something solid or something as an assemblage and it's better to think of it in different ways.

Chris Kocek: It's a noun, right? So people say an insight, they think of it as one thing. And then, of course, there's been the proliferation of insights where people say, “Oh, I've got 10 insights in this presentation.” No, probably not, you've got several interesting data points. You've got some interesting observations, but they don't necessarily coalesce to become something bigger, that's the [00:19:00] trick with insights. Any other examples of metaphors on your work with Gillette or any other brands that come up for you? 

Tim Malefyt: Yeah, it was very interesting that we had, when we did research with Gillette. Two products, Gillette for women, Venus, and Gillette for men, that we often heard in research, I'd send teams of women out to talk with other women about shaving. We heard Gillette shaving was always in the context of the whole getting ready in the morning, for instance, so showering, shaving right after that, putting lotion on, maybe fragrance and so forth. There was a whole ritual involved with that, getting ready. So it's very hard to pull out shaving as part of that. Women talked about how shaving was incomplete without lotioning afterwards. Especially critical, if you're gonna shave, remove hair so forth, you need a lotion after that. If you're gonna skip shaving, you have to skip lotioning.

That was appropriate for Gillette. You'll notice a lot of their ads show moisture or water in the background. Women [00:20:00] are sitting on a beach or at a pool or so forth. That idea of moisture built into that. That was a, a concept they partnered with Ole to have a moisture come together. That was in a way to see the whole context of where the cluster of meaning you can't separate shaving from the rest of the getting ready ritual in the morning.

And for men it was different. Men, shaving was much more formative, much more in the sense of, we'd hear that from men, “It makes me feel ready for the day,” “I'm ready to take on the day, to take on the challenges” that, yeah, you wanna look your best dress, your best shaving goes along with wearing the appropriate clothes. For men, you even see that in Khiel’s there was a lotion that Facial Fuel. It's getting the idea of performance and getting ready, metaphors about a performative nature of men. So here's the same activity, shaving, but very different. Moisture and nurturing for women and performative and competition for men. 

One more I'll throw out is it was very helpful also to use metaphors, we do this [00:21:00] sometimes, associations with when we were working with Visa and we talked about the credit card versus the debit card, and people talked about the debit card as being more of a friend, where the credit card was more, I love the analogy, it was more like a Ferrari. It goes fast, you can do bigger things, but it can also get you into trouble. You can, you know, crash the Ferrari or another metaphor, analogy, people talked about it as being a chameleon because it could change on you and turn on you. Yes, very useful in consumer research and in identifying what brands and products mean to people.

Chris Kocek: Have you come across some really interesting metaphors or rituals in the health and wellness space? Have you ever gone deep with consumers on what does wellness mean to them? What does health mean to people these days? 'cause that seems to be changing all the time. 

Tim Malefyt: Yeah. And people often take it as, just as you're saying, very holistically, mind, body, feeling good about yourself.

It's things that you eat, it's things that you do. This [00:22:00] metaphor, the holistic kind of approach and metaphoric approach of taking care of the whole body, the mind, the spirit, the self  is very critical and being social as well. That really ties in with the idea of health and wellness. And that's also, I'm thinking back to a Campbell's project that we did on health and wellness.

People tie soup in with a, you know, variety of other foods, moderation, how you have a healthy life. It's not about being extreme, but seeking a sense of balance through everything. Metaphors, again, are very helpful and useful in this kind of research. 

Chris Kocek: One of my favorite quotes is by Joseph Campbell. Go figure. Campbell's is everywhere in our conversation today, but he said, if you want to change the world, you have to change the metaphor. I love that example. So speaking of health and wellness, there was something else that you referenced in your book, you talk about Adidas and yoga and this fascinating question that came up in that research, which is [00:23:00] yoga a sport?

It's a great question. I've actually wondered the same thing myself, and that led me to a bigger question, which is what makes a sport a sport, right? Does there need to be a competitive element? Other nerdy questions that I've thought about in my spare time, what makes a bird a bird? Is it the ability to fly?

Because if it's the ability to fly, what do we do with penguins and ostriches and birds that are not really usually flying? It makes me think of those deeper unifying characteristics that we often take for granted behind just a single word. You did a lot of work with Facebook around communities and understanding what the word “community” means. What did you find out? What does the word community mean? What is the essence of a community? 

Tim Malefyt: First of all, in Facebook too, part of the research that we did is how, you know, online, offline communities in a sense blend and work together. It's not either one or the [00:24:00] other. They kind of merge and blend and flow.

You belong to a club, physically, you're working out, but they also can see the people and checkup with them online as well. So there's kind of this blurring back and forth. But something really interesting came up. I didn't come up with this idea, but I think it's really great. When we were in 2020, we all remember being in lockdown mode when we couldn't see people and when we were socially isolated, how did people express that? As you're referring to this idea of community is socializing with others, how can people express that in this kind of awful space when we're separated from everyone? This whole eye, heart and the hugging emoji came up and was really powerful. So a new way to express that I care, it was the emoji. How can you show care for others? And we felt it was a need to come up with a new emoji because people were stuck in a quandary. They wanted to express care for all the suffering and [00:25:00] all the awful things going on, but they couldn't be there in person. 

Chris Kocek: You mentioned emojis also with texting and, and Facebook and everything. I wanna know what you make of this little psychological analysis. My daughter was telling me the other day because she was watching me text something to my wife. She said “You use all these punctuation marks, it makes it seem very threatening and ominous.” And her generation, they don't really ever use punctuation in texting. What do you make of that? 

Tim Malefyt: Oh boy, I haven't a clue. I have three gen z’s and I'm always trying to, so they're still mad that I'm on TikTok. They said, “you don't belong on that, it's not for you.”

Chris Kocek: This is a no fly zone, the TikTok zone, something to noodle on and come back to another day. But apparently punctuation puts some people on edge in text messages.

So back to this idea of organizational structure, you have with your [00:26:00] research, been able to shift company's thinking, like you said, with Campbell's, with Gillette. And so many of these companies are owned and led by men who have, in many cases, either been taught or have just developed an authoritative, let's say, top down Sun Tzu art of war, way of thinking.

It's very common in business schools, right? Read Art of War. That's a big metaphor for business. Right? And you've done a lot of work. Again, studying consumer behavior around rituals. Is there another ritual where you were studying it or your team was studying it and you realized the company may have a gender bias at play and then you found something and you used your research to break through that barrier to help the company see things in a different way?

Tim Malefyt: Sure. We did a project not too long ago that I was out of BBDO. This is something I did as a consultant [00:27:00] with Revlon and they were convinced that women wearing makeup could attract a man, it would make a difference in their lives that they feel more comfortable about themselves and more secure wearing makeup.

We went out, I worked actually with Archana Kumar on this, and we had, women anthropologists go talk to small groups of women in Rochester and Chicago, and we gave them a ritual. We said, we're gonna give you some more makeup kits and we're gonna have you go through this makeup ritual and it's multisensorial.

Revlon wanted the study to be convinced that it was a way for women to feel better about themselves and attract a man. But what we showed, and actually we published an article out of this, was that what was so interesting that women experience makeup, it's their becoming aware of their internal self and their external self.

How do they feel at the moment? How, what are they anticipating to go on during the day? And makeup is like this reflexive agent in the middle that can, [00:28:00] in a way bring out the real or the authentic self. So women adjust makeup for their anticipated social encounters, whether they're meeting friends or for work or going out.

And this was different from Revlon and appealing to like the male gaze. So this is where we saw makeup as something that was, could be very empowering. It was also paradoxical because women often contested and resisted against the beauty industry and you know, having to look good and all that. But yet a lot of women were paradoxically uncomfortable going out without makeup. So they both resisted it and also adhered to it. We thought that was interesting, this paradoxical, we have a book on that consumption paradox and women about how women are sometimes have to deal with these paradoxes. How do they deal with these discourses of beauty and yet they wanna be their authentic selves.

But that was an interesting time where we had a ritual that kind of brought out some of these thoughts and feelings and we got them [00:29:00] to talk about this, and that was part of our research. 

Chris Kocek: That's interesting 'cause I tend to think of makeup or I've heard people talk about makeup as covering up, right? You use concealer, you use blush, you use these different things.

But you're saying that one of the things that it's letting out, it's bringing out their authentic self. So interesting. You also mentioned, not only with this case with Revlon, but with Venus, you mentioned going out with Archana. Interviewing people, women interviewing women for makeup, women interviewing women for shaving.

So it's not just the questions or the activities that are important, but who is asking the questions because of that ability to open up and say, “Hey, you know what I'm going through, you know what I'm talking about.” Is that particularly important? 

Tim Malefyt: That is important. If you wanna get into the male gaze and gender roles, it's hard for a man sitting across talking with a woman that it could work.

I think it's better for women to talk about that. What goes on, and again, [00:30:00] the women anthropologists are following the discussion guide, but there were a lot of conversations about insecurities that women felt that I think were more authentic and came out with other women talking to women and this format of, invite a key woman and ask her to invite two or three of her friends, very small groups, but it was nice to have that kind of informal discussion that worked out really well for Revlon and we did the same with Gillette and men and male shaving. 

Chris Kocek: That was something I learned in a big way working at BBDO when you were there and when we were both there, the friends and family groups, I like so many people up until that point had always thought of focus groups as go into this sterile environment and sit around a table and you've got the two-way glass and you're just gonna talk about these things out of context.

And I noticed that when I started doing more friends and family groups in people's homes, it just completely changed the dynamic. Everybody felt looser, more relaxed, [00:31:00] more open to telling stories and talk about things. And I remember you gave me some advice when I was at BBDO and it was something about getting people to tell stories. It was so important to get people into storytelling mode. And I still think about that when I do research. I'm always asking myself, how do I get this person to tell me a story of something they actually did instead of a hypothetical or a generalized summary of what they usually do.

So, in your experience, why are stories so important for getting to the heart of a situation? 

Tim Malefyt: Oh, that's so great. We learned insights about the brands from this idea of storytelling for so many brands, HBO, eBay, it was really interesting, like with eBay, the research was meant to go out and study how eBay gives you tremendous selection.

There's unlimited selection of things to buy and all that. But when we heard people talk about things that they [00:32:00] bought on eBay, they were proud about what they bought. One guy I remember bought a Pac-Man machine. He, he said, my wife and I like to play Pac-Man, and these things go for three, $4,000. And I bought this for $300 on eBay.

The guy didn't know what to do with it, fix it. And here he's getting social currency by bragging about the story that he had about what he bought on eBay. And so he's reliving that experience of buying on eBay. And every time he tells that story to somebody else, he relives that social currency of how smart he was and how great a great of a deal that was.

And we also found that with HBO, what made people so attracted to the brand was not watching HBO, but then the next day in the office talking about it, they became experts in, we called them “socialantes.” They could talk about and compare what they saw on TV with maybe what they're doing in their live or something else, but they became storytellers and actually Lubars took up that idea that HBO makes [00:33:00] you a better storyteller. And we had a whole campaign on that. So the power of stories, listening to stories, people who talk about them can be, really, a powerful brand asset. 

Chris Kocek: You just mentioned a couple times there, social currency. Can you elaborate on what that is?

Tim Malefyt: Yeah, people get a sense of constructing who they are through how they talk about themselves. It, it's a presentation of self. Irving Goffman talked about this, what did he call it? Impression management, show other people how smart you are, how successful you are, your abilities. Part of that is telling stories about things that you've bought or things that you know, or things that you watched, so that for both HBO and eBay, that worked out really well. Always academic references here. 

Chris Kocek: No, it's great. You've also been doing some really interesting work around AI and self-driving cars. What's the big question that's at the center of the work you're doing right now? 

Tim Malefyt: We've heard that self-driving cars are gonna be in production [00:34:00] in 2014, 20 15.

They were saying it's gonna be right around the corner and it's never been quite so easy. You know when, when we're driving there's a lot of social agreement that goes on and driving is very social. Not so much on the highway, but. Anytime you're in a intersection, you're in a city driving, there's a lot of looking over at the other person, looking at their face.

There's a lot of reaching in agreement about who's gonna pass, who's gonna move in. So self-driving cars for one thing, other drivers can't see what the reaction is of, of the car if there's no driver. So they're confused and it throws them off. And then the self-driving car doesn't really acknowledge that this is a social conversation, a social game going on about who's gonna pull in, who's gonna let them in or not let them in, whose turn it is. So there are a lot of issues around that that make it more complex than what they first realized. So we're still a little ways off until AI can figure out how to be more human and work like a human.

Chris Kocek: That's a [00:35:00] paradox. How do we make the robot or the AI more human? I'm just thinking about this idea of the social nature of driving. I never thought about it before, but there are all kinds of gestures that we make. I don't just mean rude gestures on the road, but the little quick wave that people will give, right? “You can enter into the lane.”

Tim Malefyt: Just the nod of the head, how people look, the eye contact. There's a lot of non-verbal stuff that goes on in our communication with one another and, and we're realizing much more that driving is extremely social, and that's gonna vary by culture, by even by city, New York compared to driving in the Midwest.

So how are we gonna reprogram these rules, these this social etiquette of driving, turn taking and so forth for each of these locations? It's much more complex than we realize. 

Chris Kocek: Yeah, I think the engineers probably think it'll be like an Amazon warehouse where all of the forklifts are just [00:36:00] moving seamlessly between each other, and that can work if everybody is doing that at the same time. But in regular driving, there's gonna be some cars that are self-driving and there's gonna be a whole lot more that aren't. So that makes for some interesting challenges. One more question before we get to our speed round. People have a tendency to put their best foot forward during research. We've alluded to that a little bit.

How do you get people past those little white lies with best intentions or those aspirational answers that aren't quite true? What are some things that you do to put them at ease or questions that you like to ask to help them let their guard down? 

Tim Malefyt: First, you need good interviewing skills. When we're interviewing, we realize we're not about excavating facts, it's about creating dialogue, right? So it's not about pulling facts out 'cause we're part of the creation of what's going on. We create that ambiance, that seeing what's going on. So to build rapport, as [00:37:00] they say, you wanna share background knowledge, you wanna maybe reveal something of yourself, you can discuss objects in the room.

There are other rules like you avoid yes, no answers. You try to get people to talk about things, you probe, don't finish questions. But as I said before, really it's about, I always do the formal part of the interview and then it's like getting into some activity and it's really body movement. There's something revealed in the body of cooking or running or shaving with friends that the body expresses knowledge and I think people are more free to talk and the more honest to talk when they're doing something and when you're with that. When you think about that, when you're with your own friends and family, you don't sit there face to face talking, you're usually walking, doing some activity, and that really makes a difference, I think, it's getting people at ease and getting to the truth is when people start doing things and you can even question them like cooking. “Oh wow. I see that you're adding more ingredients than what's called for in the recipe.” “Oh yeah, because I like [00:38:00] that.” 

So people will then react to what their actions are doing. Locate, construct, some kind of activity that you can do that's part of the interview, that's a natural part of it and more information flows and a different kind of information flows as people relax and ease into your rhythm with them. There's this kind of a synchronicity that you get. 

Chris Kocek: I love that in the process of explaining that you used a metaphor, which is we're not excavating facts but we're building a dialogue. I actually think a great assignment for anybody who ends up listening to this, students, professors, I'm just gonna put it out there, listen to this interview, get the transcript, then go in and highlight all of the metaphors that we use during the course of this conversation and add 'em up. We're probably over a hundred at this point, we just don't realize it. 

Alright, time for the speed round. Okay Tim? What was your favorite subject in school?

Tim Malefyt: I always liked either psychology, philosophy and [00:39:00] anthropology because people are complex, let's face it. 

Chris Kocek: And what was one of the most interesting jobs you had before you got into anthropology, before you started working with brands and advertising that has helped you do this job that you do so much better?

Tim Malefyt: People probably don't know this, but I was a professional ballet dancer, danced with the Geoffrey. That sense of embodiment rhythm is still with me. And that perspective of the audience, how you play to the audience, how every performance is different even though you're doing the same thing, it's different every time.

And that has helped me with research and looking at new, every new situation in the new light, opening up for newness and what will be, do you still do ballet? I run, I'm too old to do ballet, don't have the flexibility. 

Chris Kocek: But how about the stretching, all the stretching that you must have done for ballet, does that still stay with you to this day? Do you do a lot of stretching? 

Tim Malefyt: I try. I leave it for my kids to stretch.

Chris Kocek: Works just as well, I'm sure. [00:40:00] Is there a brand whose work you really admire or that you think to yourself, I wish I'd come up with that?

Tim Malefyt: I love it’s just in my neighborhood, in Brooklyn Heights, I love, I have to say Trader Joe's is amazing, not just because they're a cheaper version of Whole Foods, but I think what they embody, which, which is so neat, are the people they hire.

They, they really embody this customer service. The people that they hire are really interesting. So here you have a brand that's not only outward facing with good products and good marketing, but inwardly they're people are happy there. You, you get a sense there. So it, it's great to do business there. I think that's just a great business model.

Chris Kocek: It would be fascinating to know what kinds of questions they ask during the interview process to try to find those kinds of people, the characteristics of the kinds of people they're looking for. What's the most recent good book you've read or it could be a movie or a TV show? 

Tim Malefyt: Books. Oh, yes. You and I are together with this Metaphors We Live By, [00:41:00] recommend that to everyone.

But also I recommend a very powerful book. I recommended this to one of my sons, is if you haven't read this, the Overstory by Richard Powers. It's really powerful because you get a history of people in life, through a time, but it's from the perspective of trees. Trees are the protagonist, not humans, they're actually less important. But you really get the sense of trees. It won the Pulitzer Prize and everything, the Overstory. Very wonderful story. And for us as consumer researchers, how do we gain another perspective? How do we look at something and wow, look at life through the perspective of trees rather than humans. Very powerful. 

Chris Kocek: I just felt a tingle, a nerdy tingle go up the back of my spine. When you said it's from the perspective of trees and the trees are the protagonists. This book is going on my list immediately. You'll thank me for it. It's just amazing. Fantastic. And finally, [00:42:00] perhaps the toughest question of all, save the best for last.

What's your favorite soup? 

Tim Malefyt: I hate to say this, sorry Campbell's, I like to make my own soup. Homemade soup. 

Chris Kocek: Alright, very good. And when you make your own homemade soup, is there a particular soup you like to make? Is it minestrone? Is it chicken noodle? What do you like to make?

Tim Malefyt: I'm like 85% vegetarian. There's such a wealth of really good foods that are vegetarian.

So yes, minestrone, you can make that vegetable soup, pea soup, lentil soup, really hearty. I'll tell everyone in the audience, eat more soup, eat more beans, it's very good for you, less meat.

Chris Kocek: Excellent Tim. Maybe there's a cookbook in your future, I don't know, but whatever you write next, I'll be looking for it.

Thank you so much for taking the time to share your thoughts, your processes, and in fact your insights. 

Tim Malefyt: Chris, thank you so much. Really good to be with you.

Chris Kocek: Thanks again to our guest, Tim Malefyt, [00:43:00] business anthropologist and clinical professor of marketing at Fordham Gabelli School of Business. If you want to connect with Tim, you can find him on LinkedIn and make sure you check out his latest book, Business Anthropology: The Basics. It's got great examples of business innovation, behavior based, contextual clues, and the power of language.

If you're looking for even more insights and inspiration, be sure to check out my newsletter, Light Bulb at chriskocek.com/newsletter. Every Thursday, I share three “Aha!” moments that are guaranteed to inspire your next project, creative briefing or campaign.

Or check out my latest book, Any Insights Yet. Connect the dots, create new categories, transform your business. If you enjoyed today's episode, please give us five stars on your favorite podcast platform, and share it with friends, family, clients, colleagues, even your enemies. Special thanks to Michael Osborne at 14th Street Studios for producing this episode.

And thank you to Megan [00:44:00] Palmer for additional editing and production support. Until next time, keep looking for patterns, finding contradictions, and asking what if more often.