August 19, 2008 by Robert Kozinets.

The ink is, literally, just drying on the contract.

A little while ago, a senior editor at Sage publications, approached me about writing a Sage Research Methods book specifically devoted to netnography, the conduct of online anthropology. I thought it was a great idea, and enthusiastically began developing the outline for the book. That outline proposal went through a quick and careful review at Sage, resulting in some useful comments and suggestions. I incorporated them into a revised plan, and now we’ve got a signed deal.

I’m delighted to be working on this book for the esteemed Sage Research Methods series.

Here is a little overview of the book, and I’m sure I’ll be providing more information about it as I write it and we get closer to publication.

“Netnography: Researching Cultures and Communities Online” is going to be a methodological primer on a (relatively) new (yet established!) research technique: “netnography.” Netnography is a qualitative, interpretive, contextual research methodology that adapts the traditional, in-person ethnographic research techniques of anthropology to the study of the online cultures and communities formed through computer-mediated communications (“CMC”).

The Sage Research Methods book will thoroughly introduce, explain, and illustrate the method of netnography to interested scholars and other researchers. The book is needed because there are currently no other books that fill this void. With a history stretching back over twelve years in consumer and marketing research, netnography has been widely accepted by these constituents in this field of research. Netnography therefore differs from past qualitative Internet research techniques in that it offers, under the rubric of a single term, a rigorous set of guidelines for the conduct of online ethnographic research.

The overarching justification for the book is that netnography is an important and distinct technique and compares favorably with other research methods. The distinctive feature of netnography is that it combines the contextual strengths of ethnography with the reach and accessibility of Internet-based research techniques.

The technique has been well received within the fields of marketing and consumer research, and has begun to spread to other fields with recent publications in sociology, game studies, travel, cultural studies journals. The intention of this book is to broaden the reach of this methodology, offering and explaining it to scholars across a range of academic disciplines, as well as to continue to systematize and develop the approach.

The book will achieve its objective of introducing, explaining, and illustrating the method of netnography by offering a structure that initially overviews the history and explains the importance of online culture and community. The next parts of the book present and summarize various approaches to performing research online, and introduce and detail the method of netnography. Netnographic procedures are illustrated with a range of examples from published and ongoing research across a variety of fields, and in a variety of international contexts. The book will be written for a global audience of interested students, scholars, and researchers from any social scientific field that might include qualitative data analysis in its research.

The book concludes with a discussion of the ways netnography has already been adapted and altered, a presentation of the multifarious ways that the online space of culture and community is currently changing, and a discussion about how the method can be further adapted by individual researchers and teams to realize its full potential in this rapidly changing research environment.

In summary, this book will introduce the method of netnography, explain it and illustrate it. In so doing, it will also help to provide an organizing frame around the conduct of online research attuned to its cultural qualities. The book will provide guidelines for a rigorous application of Internet research methodology for social scientists across many disciplines, including sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, business and marketing.

The book is scheduled for release in late 2009.

Posted in Technology, Netnography, Virtual Worlds, Marketing Research, Word of Mouth Marketing, Marketing News & Insights, Communities and Tribes, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

July 30, 2008 by Robert Kozinets.

I just ran across an interesting piece of research reported in BusinessWeek. This research, conducted by researchers at Carnegie Mellon, found that people are more willing to disclose the truth about their bad behaviors when they’re asked about them casually online, rather than through a more formal survey.

Now, isn’t that interesting.

The researchers (George Loewenstein, a behavioral economist, is reported to be the co-author) found that 50% of people who were asked “Who BAD are U?” admitted to cheating on their taxes. But when sent to an official looking site with formal insignia and privacy notices, on 25% admitted to cheating.

I have to wonder if that degree of honesty tells us something about the internet and about our use of research techniques. The study was interpreted to mean that we get more honest answers “from the MySpace generation” (there’s a deliberate generational difference being investigated here) using an informal and even playful type of questioning style rather than a more formal one.

Now take this to the next level. What does this study suggest about all the naturally-occurring conversations going on out there in cyberspace? Is this just Millennials or gamer gens or MySpacers? Just the under-25 crowd, or is there a sea change adrift, matie? Might a lot of these informal consumer-to-consumer exchanges online exhibit more honesty and more validity that a lot of the more formal survey work? Consider which one–informal observation or formal surveys–would be a better way to assess consumer opinion?

I don’t know if the big online companies like Buzzmetrics and Cymfony have noticed this study (or of course the smaller-smarter-quicker upstarts likes MotiveQuest and Netbase), but I think this research definitely supports their general research approach.

Using informal, unobtrusively-obtained online conversations seems to produce more valid, more honest, more real, more multifaceted consumer opinion data than online or offline surveys. That’s the implication I draw from this. That’s a core contention behind netnography as well. If you work with better data, you’re going to get better results, it’s that simple.

I couldn’t find any publication data on the Loewenstein study. If anyone has further info on it, I’d be grateful and will publish it here. I’d also love to see estimates anyone has on the amount of money currently spend on online and offline surveys, versus more observational techniques like webtrawling/content analysis and ethnography.

Posted in Netnography, Marketing Research, Word of Mouth Marketing, Uncategorized | No Comments »

July 17, 2008 by Robert Kozinets.

I recently had the opportunity to teach a full-day workshop devoted to online communities and netnography for Nissan at their corporate retreat in Hakone, about two hours outside of Tokyo, nestled in the hot spring foothills of Mt. Fuji. It was a great session, and the feedback and comments were incredible. I’m very grateful to Hiroko Osaka, who planned the event, and to Nissan, which made it happen.

One component of the workshop involved getting Nissan’s best and brightest marketing managers involved hands-on in using cutting-edge netnographic techniques to understand how their customers made sense of their brand and the entire category online.

As we were going through different examples of online postings and communications about Nissan, a mystery emerged.

As I had been searching for popular online Nissan ads, that is, ads that were frequently shared and also commented upon by communities of consumers online, I had come across this ad. The ad was popular, it had been Digg’d previously and extensively, had lots of interesting comments on YouTube, and was around since 2006. Given that I was presenting to a mixed-gender group, and unsure whether showing this ad would make some people uncomfortable, I opted not to put it in my presentation. But here it was. It’s definitely jiggly. And in content, no doubt it’s all juggy. It spread around so it’s very viral. The Jiggly Juggy Viral Ad.

Here it is:

A group of managers, both males and females, were standing around watching this ad on their computer as one part of the netnographic overview of online communications and meanings they were examining for the program. I stopped them and asked “Why did you make such a risqué ad? What was the idea behind this.”

The manager from the USA looked at me and said, “As far as I know, we didn’t make this. I’ve checked into it before. No one here at Nissan knows where this ad comes from. It just appeared online. And that’s not even our font they are using. It’s totally not authorized and not created by us.”

Now, that’s an interesting little puzzle. I wonder if anyone out there had the answer.

Where did this Nissan ad come from?

As far as I can tell, there are only a few options if Nissan didn’t create this ad.

1. It is user-generated content. Usually for something like this, that would be the most likely candidate. But the jiggling is pretty precise, and the production values are quite high. To me, this doesn’t look like a homemade video, neither in conception nor in execution.
2. It is a fake ad planted by competitors. Sort of a little reverse viral undermining strategy. But it’s really not that offensive. It’s kind of cute, in an old Playboy mag, soft-core kind of way. If someone really wanted to undermine, I’d expect that they would go more for something more offensive or damaging to the brand.
3. It was a spoof created by an advertising firm to try out an idea, then leaked. My money is on this theory. The conception, the production values, they all smack of an ad agency. But why did they use a real brand, the Nissan Pathfinder brand to showcase? And why would they choose to share it online? Was it created for internal use, and then liked by someone so much that it was leaked? If so, it was a very successful leak. The ad is one of the top Nissan ad’s online.

One of the reasons I favor theory #3 is the existence of the old fake terrorist ad for VW that was rolling around the Internet some time back and had everyone fooled for a while. In terms of feeling like it was conceived by advertising people, and the production values it clearly embodies, it reminds me of this Nissan ad (actually, they use the VW font so it’s even closer).

The VW ad is still very much around, and still apparently arousing controversy. Here’s a link to that ad.

According to a story in the Guardian, and many, many blog postings on the topic, it’s a spoof ad that was created by two advertising people as a gimmick. Some stories say that the ad was pitched to Volkswagen, who rejected it as offensive. Other stories say that the team (”Lee and Dan”) leaked it on purpose to create controversy and further a political agenda. They do say that it “got out accidentally.”

Well, I’m not sure how that happens. I have lots of video, and none of it so far has escaped my hard-drive without my say-so.

Finally, there are those who say that this was all a very clever and rather devious campaign by VW to stir up all kinds of weird word of mouth, while staying officially above the fray. They covertly commission a few clever producers to make this video and then leak it. Then they go into the press, distance themselves from it, while acknowledging it over and over again, officially and express extreme disgust, even threatening to sue them for damaging the brand. But all the while its being viewed, over and over again. (Just like it is off this blog….)

For those conspiracy theorists, I’d like to recommend the book Jennifer Government by Max Barry . In that book, the Nike of the future covertly commissions killers to murder people for their new Nike shoes, secretly creating a sensation that boosts demand for them. It’s a fun ride of a science fictionalized marketing-satirizing book and I recommend it.

I keep coming back to the production values. I wonder exactly how this was done, the physics and biomechanics of the operation. Was it CG special effects on the order of WALL-E or Final Fantasy IV? A person mounted on some sort of platform? A gifted and talented “breast actress” who needs no mechanical assistance whatsoever?

Any insights, speculations, inside dope, personal demonstrations, or even sheer guesses into any of these abundant mysteries would be most welcome.

Posted in Culture + Ad Jamming, Conferences & Presentation, Netnography, Entertainment Marketing, Word of Mouth Marketing, Communities and Tribes | 1 Comment »