Comments on: Marketing Is Dead; Long Live Anthropology

By: Phil Dunn

Phil Dunn — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 23:27:06 +0000

Marketing is anthropology. When I first started reading Robert Cialdini, I got excited about it again. He’s got the kinds of insights/practice that CUNY prof talks about.

The reason I got into marketing? Alan Dundes (UC Berkeley anthro prof with specialty in folklore) and Joseph Campbell (mythologist – Power of Myth)….. STORYTELLING!.. and other heros snowballed later – including Bob Bly, John Forde, Jack Canfield, Steve Slaunwhite, Mike Stelzner.

By: marta-NY/NJ

marta-NY/NJ — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 02:19:58 +0000

I have been a cultural anthropologist for 40 years. In the 80’s I already knew that marketers should include us to do feasibility studies and segmented marketing studies.

By the way congrats to those who have graduated in my beloved field of study. We are always students of anthro. There is way too much information since the beginning of time for any one to ever stop researching and growing.

This wholistic discipline is specifically about people’s behavior. Everything a tribe, group or society does everyday is “culture.” Anthropology has subfields but that is not what this blog is referring to.

We Cultural Anthropologists are acutely aware of a culture’s habits and their history so of course we are the expert source on the information needed for qualitative studies. I currently designed 23 websites just because ( I have free time) I ran my own studies. I love marketing and public relations.

A stellar anthropologist gets rid of their ethnocentrism early in the field and grows to respect objectively every single solitary cultural more out there without making judgments. To become this objective takes discipline and practice. After 40 years of being a tabula rasa, I finally let me own judgments outside of the field creep in, because that is the world we live in. A judgmental existence.

Marketers used to use sociology..but anthropology is way more inclusive and non-judgmental. We report in our ethnographies what we see and not what we think we saw. We try to find the good in every culture and make no distinctions in our writings if for instance we are writing about the Etoro tribe in New Guinea and their homosexual practices any more than if we study the culture of Greenwich Village and theirs. That type of observation is clear, clean cut and unfiltered by our own prejudices, mores, attitudes and beliefs. We literally have to suspend who we are for the greater good of the study. I least I DO.

By the comments I have read, little is known about what we do.
I would love it if everyone at least took ANT-100 in their lifetime.

Former Adj. Professor
B.M.C.C. -C.U.N.Y.

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Wed, 24 Jun 2009 12:20:50 +0000

[...] is all about relationships, and becoming more so all of the time. As I mentioned in a post about how marketers are now anthropologists: “Now, relationships are a prerequisite to business, not vice [...]

By: katinkaspiritual

katinkaspiritual — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 11:58:12 +0000

Product development is certainly closer to anthropology lately. But marketing? Not sure. I would still subscribe to the ’selling things’ definition. On the other hand: when selling marries the internet, some weird stuff happens, and anthropology would be wise to take a look at it

By: jonathanmead

jonathanmead — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 20:25:40 +0000

I definitely think marketing is moving into a new direction. Especially the more everything moves online, the more social media gains popularity and the web 2.0 (interactivity) movements gains speed.

I personally think this new revolution is exactly what we need.