When we propose to do an ethnography, it means that we are wanting to enter the world of the other.

This is a type of observation and practice that requires presence.

Anthropologist is not a judge, an anthropologist is not listening to the other to know if the other is right or wrong.

Dreamers and doers, welcome to Podbrand, a podcast where we explore the impact of design, strategy and innovation in business.

I'm Maurício Medeiros, an enthusiast of knowledge, an idealist of this podcast, and author of the book Árvore da Marca, Simplifying Branding.

Today we welcome Paula Pinto e Silva, one of the most respected voices in the intersection between anthropology and consumption in Brazil.

Paula is a doctor in social anthropology at the University of São Paulo.

Since the 2000s, she has dedicated herself to exploring the complex relationships between anthropology and consumption, both in theoretical dimensions and in its practical applications in the market.

She is a member of TEKÔ Antropologia, a research and education based on anthropological thought, which has a multidisciplinary network of specialists.

She is also a teacher at the ISPM in São Paulo.

Paula, welcome!

Thank you, Maurício, good morning

Paula, thank you for accepting the invitation, I'm glad to have you at Brands.

Getting to the point, for those who have never had contact with anthropological studies, I could explain in a practical way how ethnographic observation works and how companies, especially medium-sized ones, which do not have large research budgets, can incorporate basic principles of anthropology to better understand their customers and differentiate themselves from science.

Very well, ethnographic observation is a derivation, a possibility of ethnography.

And ethnography, what is it?

Ethnography is the tool of existence of anthropology, it is not a research tool, it was not made for the market, it was made for scientific thinking.

So, when we talk about ethnographic observation, it means an adaptation of a method, of a model, of a way of assessing reality, adapted to contemporary issues of the market and that has another speed.

What is the basic assumption?

The basic assumption is that the world is made of human beings, totally different from each other.

That is the starting point of anthropology.

So, when we propose ethnography, it means that we are wanting to enter the world of the other, to be able to understand what the other thinks and not look at the world of the other from my knowledge, from my perspective, and stay there thinking what the other thinks.

No, I want to feel what he feels, I want to see what he sees, I want to eat what he eats, I want to see the world he sees.

And for that, we learn, we learn technique, exercise, practice of, I say, to detach ourselves to be able to minimally observe and participate in this world that I don't know.

All of this seems very abstract, but the exercise, the proposal of ethnography is that we open ourselves to the other

It means that I enter into contexts that are different from mine, with all the senses in the field, that is, I am with my eyes open, I am with my ears open, I am feeling the smells, I am hearing jokes, I am trying to capture everything that I can.

This is a type of observation and practice that requires presence, I can't go more or less, I can't go worried that I have to leave at such a time because I have a meeting, no, so don't even go.

This availability, I say, that ethnography requires from us, be it in the scientific field, be it in its practical application, it requires from us availability to the other.

Availability, if I want to hear someone, I have to be available to hear.

And this, in practical terms, means time, I need time, I can't want to get into the life of the other with a scheduled time and still think that in that period he will give me the great insight that will change completely.

No, it won't.

As I always say, if you are waiting for this, take a stool and sit down, because you will be disappointed.

So the idea is that this time, which is a time of listening, has to have an absolutely disproportionate listening of prejudices.

So if I have certain values ​​that I can't transpose, I can't answer certain questions, or I can't interview certain people or know certain contexts.

Sometimes, for religious reasons, for ethical reasons, I can't.

Again, we should recognize our limits, instead of saying, I'm going there and I'm going to try to get to know the other, but I'm going to be judging.

We can't, we're not judges.

Anthropologist is not a judge.

Anthropologist is not listening to the other to see if the other is right or wrong.

And all of this I'm talking about anthropologist, because later we will obviously make our adaptations in this observation, in this ethnographic observation, which is participatory.

Ethnography is wedged on top of this idea of ​​a participatory observation.

Participatory observation, what does it mean?

That I participate in the action.

I don't observe neutrally, because we believe that there is no neutral observation.

When you enter a context to observe something, you have already modified the context.

So we already take that into consideration.

From the moment I modify, I try to modify as little as possible, I try to be, let's say, take care of the details so that my presence doesn't make more turbulence than it should.

But we understand that yes, from the moment I enter a person's house, or in an indigenous village, or in a context, I don't know, at another party that I'm investigating and I'm going there to meet, I already know that I am the different.

So I need to take care of my difference, minimize as much as possible, Try to be really kind to this other person.

Try to understand him, and this participant observation is exactly that.

While I observe, I participate.

Or I participate while I observe.

So, I joke.

If they dance, I dance.

If they sing, I sing.

If they eat, I eat.

If they are cooking, I am cooking.

And it is precisely in this interaction that the idea is exchanged.

That what you need to know about the other person actually happens.

This does not happen when I have questions and answers on a piece of paper, or something, and I am just trying to get to know the other person.

I say, it is almost as if you are trying to steal from the other.

So, the study of ethnography, or ethnography, or ethnographic studies, participant observation, requires exchange.

And exchange means that I give a little of myself.

He may want to know who I am, that's good.

And I will have to say who I am.

Many times we are...

I have to tell something about myself.

Not because he asks me, but many times because this is a way of showing that I am also human, that I also have pains, that I also have dilemmas, and that what we are doing here is an exchange.

So, I would say, as a basic principle, it is exchange, inter-human exchange, but there are anthropologists for many years who are already studying inter-species exchange.

So, here, when we talk, we are talking about human beings, but this exchange is already...

We are already thinking about it in other places, in other ways too.

And you ask me, it's something that everyone asks me, but I don't have money, it's too expensive, ethnography...

I didn't do business administration, I'm not an economist, but when I look at a giant company where money flows through absolutely places where it shouldn't, I say, wow, but how come there's no money?

This is always a dilemma for me, right?

There are companies, for example, that do one research per week.

Fast, because they need that fast information.

Well, but this information doesn't work, it doesn't work.

So they prefer to do one per week, that is, I don't know how many per year, but it doesn't give them anything compared to doing one, one research on an anthropological basis, which will give them information for 10 years, 12 years, 15 years.

I have projects going on today that I start from research that was done by that same company 12 years ago.

And why do we start from that?

Because the research basis is a scientific basis.

I'm not based on trends, on market data, which will change next week.

It's not at that point that we're at.

So, how is science built?

I have a paradigm there, and that paradigm is tested.

So, when we start with a client based on hypotheses, I'm bringing him paradigms that are scientifically tested.

And if he agrees to do that, he has a research, a job that does have a long term.

That's a crucial difference for me.

Does long term mean it's old?

No, on the contrary, long term means it has a basis, that it has a foundation, that it has a structure, and that, from it, we can, obviously, understand.

The context has changed, and now, how do we see this?

What were the changes?

When we have very deep structures, the change is not fast, it's no use.

Oh, but the technology has changed, great.

When there is a structural change, and this change in technology arrives at this structure, obviously, we will have very radical changes.

But these very radical changes don't happen every week, guys.

So, for me, this is a dilemma, of something that is comparable.

Often, ethnographic research, anthropological research, is comparable to market research.

It can't be comparable.

They are different studies, with different techniques, even.

Exactly, and market research has a structure.

There is a room, there is a defined number of people, a research, I don't know, of a focal group.

I always ask, who said there had to be 8?

Who said there had to be 6?

My client doesn't have a budget, so I'm going to do only 4 groups.

Based on what?

Based on your client's budget, or on some methodology found?

Again, these are questions I bring from the academy to the market.

I think there are many times practices that...

You don't ask why.

Market research has a structure that serves the market.

So, when, for example, a client asks me...

Today I'm lucky to have many clients who understood, understand and allow me to throw back provocations.

But, for example, receiving a request saying I need to do a research in São Paulo, Rio Grande do Sul, Rio de Janeiro and Recife.

This was the classic division of a research.

Then I thought, wait a minute, why?

Because these are the markets.

But are we talking about people or the market?

Are we talking about an exploration of an idea that should be thought from the idea and how we could look at people from the idea, or are we talking about the market?

Because if not, they are different things.

This foundation of market research is not in the anthropological research.

I often feel that a client is in a hurry or is stuck in these paradigms, and then it remains to be seen if the company has the flexibility and the desire to go down a different path, which doesn't mean it's better.

It means it's different, so it addresses different issues.

Anthropological research can be used for a number of things, but it is very bad for others.

Do you want to test your brand?

It's not cool.

Do you want to know if this packaging is good?

No, I would tell you not to do ethnographic research.

Do you want to explore an idea?

That's good.

Do you want to test a hypothesis?

Do you want to create something you don't even know what it is?

We are on the way.

So, again, what do I feel?

And this applies to big and small companies.

What is the question we are going to answer?

If we have the question and if the question is good, it should come out almost naturally in the type of research you are going to do, and not the opposite.

So, part of the question.

What do I need to answer?

When I have this good question, and then what I need to answer, I joke that, in general, the question is always the same.

How to sell more?

But this is not the question.

This is a problem that is yours, yours, from your company.

The question should be a question that, obviously, helps you solve the problem.

There is a fake, again, I think there is a joke, how can I say this?

Almost a joke of the market.

No, but I want, I need to increase sales.

Because I need to make this a success.

I look at my client and say, okay, this is a problem of yours.

Of human beings, what do we expect?

We would like them to help us think about their problem.

Not about their product.

In general, human beings are not concerned with their product.

Not even with their brand.

I'm sorry to inform you.

We spend very little time thinking about our brand.

Even if I buy, even if I use it, it is not my concern.

It is your concern.

In fact, you are paid for it.

So, what can we want from human beings?

The research question is one of the most important things in a strategy.

People seek meaning.

In my business experience, as a client, I ended up experiencing both forms of research.

And what I observed is that both are valid, the market research and the anthropological research, but they bring different answers, even for different inquiries.

So, I make an analogy here.

A market research is a zoom that we do, as if it were a computer screen, to observe a certain field of view in a slightly more detailed way.

Anthropology is behavioral anamnesis with a microscope.

We go so deeply into that reality.

That's why the universe of an anthropological research is not as extensive as a market research.

I totally agree.

But, again, I think it's not so clear.

I still feel the companies are reluctant or even sometimes with little knowledge about the distinction of methods.

What is the method for?

What is the research for?

And, again, I think, as you said, there are different ways to solve different problems.

Many times they are complementary and need each other.

So there are projects I do and then they are tested quantitatively.

I see that this episode will help entrepreneurs to realize the result of an anthropological research and how much this can impact business.

For example, when we observe consumers reinterpreting products in a way not foreseen by the brand, as in the case of a sports shoe, for example, used as an urban fashion, the Havaianas in the past, which was a product that originated from a rural construction worker and that became a fashion object, even in some selected environments, it even appeared on Oscar's runway several years ago.

So, we are seeing that one of the anthropological scholars focused on consumption, Daniel Miller, called consumers as agents.

So, how can companies take advantage of consumers' creativity instead of trying to control it?

And I think anthropological research can provide this answer.

Maurício, you said a fundamental word.

Anthropology, I could joke here, is the science of out of control.

It teaches us that we have no control over anything.

We have no control over information, we have no control over the informant, we have no control over what happens in an interview, and that's good, because that's life.

So, when I do a good interview, it means that we leave the script, that we break barriers, I cry, the person cries, or we laugh together.

This is a good interview.

I got to a real place of that person.

When we follow the protocol, and the interview, or the experience was protocol, I joke, I can throw it away.

Maybe I don't even need it.

Or, as the meme says, it could have been an email.

And that's not the function of the research.

So, you said the right word, which I think is really cool, I've never used it, but I'll use it from now on, which is the lack of control.

Having confidence in the lack of control.

Or, at least, understanding that you don't have control.

Daniel Miller, this anthropologist I love, he's not an anthropologist who works for the market, Daniel Miller is an academic.

But the studies he does are absolutely appreciated, because Daniel also understood a way of writing in a very good, very pleasant way, that you want to read, that anyone can read, which I think is great.

A way of reading theory as if you were reading any article, any novel, even.

And the idea he brings, which is an idea of anthropology, when I look at consumption, is that consumers are human beings.

Human beings are agents in their society, in their life, in their culture.

They are not passive, and this is a break.

The idea that you act on the product, or the brand, or the will, is an idea that the market gets nervous about, because the guy stays there for years and years imagining a product and how it will be, and the attributes, the practical, pragmatic attributes, then there are the attributes that are the symbolic attributes.

It's hard to separate, I would say.

But there are people who like to be there making columns.

But when human beings think, they don't think in columns, they mix the attributes.

I can describe a product from my affective relationship with it without realizing it.

And what does it matter?

If I were a brand manager, I would really want to know how people interact with my brand and my product.

What Daniel Miller says, as a consumer, as an agent, is precisely that consumers are human beings who have the ability to act on it.

Act on the brand, act on the product, act on your desire.

If I don't want this product, I don't want this product.

And the brand says, but it's great, it will do a lot for your life, it will change your life.

I don't care.

And this, again, for the brand, is always a problem.

Because, I'm kidding, when you create a product, an idea, develop a service, etc., the expectation is that, as you spent a lot of time doing it, thinking, using all your resources, you want people to want it.

And many times people don't want it.

Many times, of course, they don't know yet, they don't know, it may be that one day they want it, depending on what you say.

And it may be that, in fact, that has no value for them.

And that doesn't mean that your product has no value.

It means that, for them, it has no value.

Again, there are a lot of things that need to be cleaned along this path.

I love it, I like it when we do an investigation, and, again, we put marks in their proper place, that they are too small in someone's life.

Or they should be small, guys.

What would it be like in a world full of possibilities, etc.?

It would be very sad if humans were only concerned with the marks.

We failed as a society.

So, the best thing is that people could use, reuse.

And reuse doesn't mean just thinking about sustainability.

Oh, so she's thinking about sustainability.

No!

She's interpreting what you did.

The customization, the re-signification of a certain product.

That's it.

She looks at a tennis, and she thinks that it can serve something.

Lévi-Strauss, who is a Belgian anthropologist, not French, of Belgian origin, but we know him as a French anthropologist, he shows that there are different ways of thinking about the world.

There are several.

But he brings a paradigm that compares the handyman with the engineer.

The engineer is the one who organizes information in a more methodical way, who has a project, a step-by-step, etc., to get somewhere.

But there is another way of thinking, of organizing ideas, which is that of the handyman, which is a bit random.

I collect things, I take things that apparently don't make sense to each other, and when I put them together, I give a new meaning.

And I really like this difference, again, neither is better than the other, they serve for different things, but I really like this difference for us to think about the things, as Daniel Miller says, the goods, the things, the stuffs, that we can, that we look at something and apparently, I don't really understand its meaning, but when I put it together with something else, it gains a new meaning.

While I'm talking to you here, I'm looking at a bottle that I have by my side.

I'll show you.

It's a bottle, originally, of mezcal, a drink, one of my favorite drinks, a Mexican drink.

This is homemade mezcal, which I carry in my suitcase.

I took off the label when the mezcal ran out, and this is my favorite water bottle.

It has the perfect size, it has the perfect shape, it has the perfect lid, and it stays here on my table.

Every day, when I bring it to my table, first of all, I look at the beauty.

Second of all, I know it's a mezcal bottle.

No one knows.

I know it's a mezcal bottle.

I'm attributing meanings to it.

I look at it, I remember where I bought it, I remember the drink I drank, and, besides that, I understand it's the perfect water bottle.

This is agency.

This is the agency Daniel Miller talks about.

And it's not just me who does this.

I guarantee that all human beings will do this on purpose.

If I had a brand, I would really want to know what people do with the things I imagine, what people do with the things I invent.

Because if people follow the protocol that I put there, the way to use it, they did the basics.

But, in general, people take the way to use it and throw it away.

You throw it away.

If you take the can, there are people who read it.

There are people who throw it away.

Instructions for the use of shampoo are written in lowercase letters for a lot of people who are illiterate.

And what do they do with that shampoo?

They use it as a remedy.

Exactly.

I like to think about this.

Of course we have to have guidance, we have to have a way.

And it's important.

But for example, when I work with designers, I love that we think about this.

How do we explain what that is for?

But how do we incorporate what people think?

What do people think it's for?

It's bringing this, again, we started talking about this, exchange, dialogue.

This is agency.

It's not the opposite, understand that consumers obey.

Consumers do what I think.

Consumers use in the way I thought.

I always, when I see something like this again, I say, let me get my little bench and I'll sit down.

One day he will find out that this is not going to work.

Today, we see companies investing millions in big data research.

And quantitative analysis.

What we effectively lose, leaving aside the ethnographic and interpretative methodology of anthropology.

And if you think there is a viable medium for the company that needs faster results from the result of observation of consumer behavior.

Yes, again, the first question is always why the fast result?

When they tell me that I need this fast, I think, failed in the strategy.

The strategy was wrong.

Because when you have a good strategy, you have a time of action.

You know how much time you need to have a certain research, etc.

So I'm always very critical of the idea of ​​speed, not because it has to be slow.

We can do a faster study, but if this study makes sense, if the speed makes sense within a perspective.

In general, what happens when they ask me, or when they are complaining about the need for speed, it's because it was badly planned.

And then, for me, it was badly planned, so we're going to do a bad study.

I'm already part of this problem.

So, again, let's review the process?

Not for this case, because then there will be no time, but in the next one, let's review the process?

Where did we fail as a process?

I have a year to think about this idea, I have a month of research.

Wow, what do you mean?

We failed in the process.

I think we have a rethinking there.

What often leads us to mistakes, that a quick research brings me a quick answer.

It doesn't mean it's a good answer, and it doesn't mean it's the opposite of a deep answer.

Deep.

Is that what I need at that moment?

I just wanted to cover a hole, I needed a certain number, I needed a yes or no.

Okay, again, if your question is answered, go ahead.

You'll probably have to do another one.

So, again, the speed in the research process, for me, it has to do with the question that was asked, with this thought about what this research is for.

When we talk about quantitative and big data, for me, it's the same thing.

A quantitative research can be very poorly done if it doesn't have a good question, if it doesn't have a very clear, very well-designed goal.

Is it necessary?

It depends.

There are subjects that I need to be quantified.

I have a hypothesis, this hypothesis started from qualitative research, and I need to know how many percent of women agree with this hypothesis, think it's correct, think it's great, let's quantify it.

But if I'm not sure why I'm doing quantitative research, I would say that this is another mistake that the market often makes.

So, I bring an anthropological research result that interviewed 24 people and came up with certain hypotheses, and I bring a quantitative research result that didn't interview, schematized 3,000 people as a base.

In general, the market says, this one has value, the 3,000 people.

It depends.

What does it have value for?

Again, the question, what does it have value for?

It depends on the information you're looking for.

It's obvious.

But I want to do an innovation project.

Quantitative research doesn't answer anything, it doesn't help in the innovation process.

On the contrary.

I can't have 3,000 people who will receive, who will answer me online, questions that are already closed, a questionnaire previously...

This is not innovation, people.

I have a questionnaire previously done with all the answers, ABCD.

How am I going to innovate here?

For God's sake.

Am I saying it's better than the other?

No, I'm saying it responds to other goals.

And the same thing with Big Data.

There's a really cool article from Harvard Business Review that says that it's not possible...

I forgot the author's name.

It's not possible to look at Big Data without having a good human question.

Then I ask Big Data, who's doing this?

Can we skip to the next chapter?

Again?

You want to be fooled?

OK. I have great technological tools.

Very well.

Who thinks about tools?

How is this tool fed?

What are you...

Because the tool should respond, help think about the world, the future.

This world...

But this world is fed today.

The future doesn't exist.

The future is what we do.

It's what we create.

It's what we put into practice.

This future.

The future is not something far away, that I'll keep talking about the technological car.

In the meantime, I'm stuck in traffic.

And I'm thinking that the world I live in and want to live in is not this one.

So this has to be put into practice.

For this, I look and say, how are we treating all this intelligence, called artificial intelligence?

Can this replace humans?

Certainly not.

It doesn't mean we can't use it.

We must use it.

But we must know how to use it.

The first thing is that we must know what to ask.

I was once asked, have you ever experienced artificial intelligence?

Yes.

I'm going to ask a good question.

I love doing this.

Then you ask a random question.

Tell me about the history of the Coca-Cola brand.

Very well.

Then I ask, tell me about the indigenous people of Caingang, who live I don't know where.

I don't know if you've ever experienced something like this, an experience.

It's all absolutely wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

There's not even an answer, many times.

You say, but what does it matter?

Well, it matters because I want to show that we are conditioning.

If you want answers that are super conditioned, it will help you.

If you ask a question a little bit out of the script, you won't be able to answer just that.

So you'll have to use other technologies, including human intelligence.

So, can you do an ethnographic study faster?

Yes.

If it's well briefed, if it's very well defined in its objective, yes.

And I have wonderful clients.

The other day I received a briefing that was so good that I thanked the briefing.

I thanked the quality of the briefing.

Because artificial intelligence won't do a good briefing, I believe, it won't.

The person gave me the briefing, it was so good that the proposal came out round.

We closed it in a week.

The project will start, and it has two months to finish.

But that's it.

It started from this place, which is, I know what I need from your work.

So, with that, we get more speed.

You see, when I talk about strategy, I'm not the only one who has to be faster.

Maybe you, when you think about the process, understand if it fits or not.

For example, something I never did.

Can you do this research in a week?

No, I can't.

In a week, I won't even be able to think about your subject.

There's no way to do it.

But if you're going to refuse, let's do it.

It requires a lot of preparation and time to execute.

It's very different from a focus group research, for example.

They're completely different techniques and approaches.

There's something in the more market research, and in the quantitative research as well, which is not anthropological, which is the quality of information.

Anthropological research, par excellence, is qualitative research.

Qualitative means quality of information.

I can have five people, but these people are my ideal privileged informants.

What does that mean?

It means that if I'm thinking about food, I have people who talk to me who think about food.

Who have the pleasure or the will to talk about it.

It can be anyone from 18 to 25.

No, it can't be anyone.

This is a preview.

When we go to an indigenous village, I can't go there and say, please send me men from 25 to 35 with black hair.

It doesn't exist.

I'll have to find out who the privileged informant is to talk about the subject I want.

It's the same thing when we apply it to the market.

If I have a research with a small sample, it means that this sample has to be very well chosen.

I'm not going to talk to experts.

I'm going to talk to experts on the subject I need.

Human experts, ordinary people, who will help me think about the subject.

Can I talk about cars with someone who hates this subject?

I can't.

But can he be in a market research?

In general, he can.

And this, for me, again, we're not talking about that.

We're accepting that the information...

Do you like it?

I like it.

Would you have?

I don't know.

Do you like blue, red?

Red.

Why do I have this opinion?

Why do I want this?

What do I do with this?

So, again, this doesn't work.

Are we thinking about the quality of the information?

Sometimes not.

Quantitative research, in general, will do...

And that's not its function.

It's not thinking about quality, it's thinking about quantity.

So I don't want to know who are the people who are answering.

They are within a certain interval that I need, that I'm going to make this average, and so on.

It works for some things, but it doesn't work for others.

It can be faster for some things, but it doesn't necessarily answer what I need.

Again, we return to the question.

Entering more in the aspect of technology, you mentioned artificial intelligence.

With the advance of neuroscience and digital technologies, all this brought a very broad and new approach to be able to understand consumer behavior.

Methods such as eye tracking in store windows or even in supermarket corridors, more in-depth studies with functional magnetic resonance, electroencephalography, allow us to capture physiological and even cognitive reactions in the face of a certain product, service, or commercial experience.

In parallel, digital consumption also transformed people's journey, making them more traceable, based on data.

How did these innovations impact the study of consumption?

And what are the challenges in integrating these technological approaches with traditional qualitative methods of anthropology and social science?

I like to think, again, what are these things for?

What are these methodological innovations for?

And I'm in favor of them, I think they have to exist.

When we say, but this allows us to capture the consumer's sensation, very well, but what are you going to do with it?

You mark it, what are you going to do with it?

That's where the biggest problem lies for me.

Because if you are an ethical brand, if you have concerns about your product in the world, what is going to happen to it when it is put in the world?

All these technologies should help you think about that.

And not just help you think about how you are going to sell more products.

Because in general they are being used for that and it bothers me a lot.

Not because I don't want people to sell, I want my customers to sell a lot.

But I want them to sell knowing what they are doing.

It is not possible for us to sell 500 million cell phones and then build a building that is absolutely, in many words, sustainable to pay a guilt that I cannot assume.

It is not possible for us to sell industrialized food that has harmful substances inside and say that it has nothing to do with the obesity epidemic.

It is not possible to do that.

Ethically, it is not possible to do that.

But companies need to sell.

I also agree.

People need to eat.

I also agree.

But what are we doing with this technology that allows us to make people eat better?

What does this technology help us to say?

When the consumer blinks three times, when he sees this product, great.

And what does your product deliver to him that is so good?

Because, Maurício, if we don't do this, if we don't solve this, sorry, we are creating a world that we don't want to live in.

We will want to run away from the world.

Once, a client made me such an indecent proposal that I went home and, talking to my husband and my daughters, I said, how much do we need to charge to disappear from the world?

And the answer I got from my youngest daughter was, Mom, it's better not to do it.

I'm sure it's better not to do it.

And again, I don't think it's the technology that does it.

I don't think so.

I think technology is invented, thankfully, to improve our lives, to solve problems, to help us get further.

As a society, as a group that we are, humans, we need to live in a group.

So, if a company has enough money to hire, to buy, to develop a certain technology that reads people better, my big question is, what will it do with it?

It's great that it can track your thoughts, your neurons, it's great.

But to sell more sugar, I don't know.

I really don't know.

If it's for that, again, we failed.

Who did a study, I think a precursor in this area, more in depth, using even consonance, was Martin Lindstrom, I think still in the 2000s, so it's been a long time.

And there's a book by him that deals with this topic.

And I'm going to bring a practical example that I put into action in one of the brands that I was creative director.

As we had many stores, and throughout the year there are many campaigns when it comes to retail, and these campaigns are related to special events, commemorative dates, Mother's Day, Valentine's Day, and so on.

And one of the most expensive retail assets is the square meter in a mall.

It's very expensive to have a store in a mall.

And then we have a space that is the store's showcase.

And this showcase has width and depth, but the most decisive thing for a showcase is how much it can attract the attention of a person who is passing by in the corridor and provoke, create a stimulus for this person to enter the store.

Taking into account that before our store there were others and then several others.

So the competition for attention, for this attention, is very big.

So we did an eye-tracking research, and observation of people's gaze, where they channeled the gaze, to identify, from the total of people who pass in the corridor during a certain period, during a certain day, how many looked at the showcase.

And from those who looked at the showcase, how many entered the store.

And from those who entered the store, to which side of the store did they go?

I say to the left, and then I say why.

And from those who entered the store, how many actually bought.

Well, to summarize, of all those who passed, four hundred and a few, in a period of one hour, twelve entered the store and two bought.

Of a universe of four hundred and a few people, two actually bought.

So, we are talking about a successful business.

Why?

Because there are thousands of people who pass in front of the store every day.

So, in that period, it was this statistic.

But what I want to bring is the result of the research, which is as follows.

As many campaigns are made and the look of the showcases needs to change, it is very difficult to design showcases.

It's not just displaying products on a pedestal.

There is a whole setting that is done.

When it comes to fashion, there is a storytelling through that aesthetic expression.

So, there is a very high investment, there is that space that is very expensive.

So, the result of a well-designed showcase can be measured by the number of people it attracts to enter the store.

So, a KPI is the number of people who enter the store.

And inside the store, we have the merchandising visual, which is the harmonic distribution of the products.

Just like at home, we have a harmonic distribution of objects, or food in the closet, or cutlery in a drawer.

It's the same thing.

Inside the store, where people channel their attention first, is where the product that sells the most should be.

The most important of the store, the one that has the most attractiveness at that moment.

And when it comes to fashion, it is very ephemeral.

What is fashion today may not be fashion in a month or two.

It's all very fast, the dynamics are fast, because of the innovations, the new trends that are emerging.

So this test, or exam, or observation research, without having contact with the consumer, just observing his behavior, brought us two pieces of information.

The first is the KPI of the quality of this aesthetic elaboration of the showcase, and the other is the quality of the merchandising look.

I had a team of 12 people just to distribute merchandising looks within the store, in this brand.

So I would say that they are complementary researches, they bring different information.

Thinking about what you said, I thought that this is what it works for, that is, for you to know how to set up this storytelling of a showcase.

Where would I be in this process?

In the process of thinking about what will be in the showcase.

What attracts these people, what do they understand as fashion, how do we translate a thought of this fashion into models, clothes, colors, etc.

That's my part.

And then, very cool, because what you said, I thought, wow, super complementary.

The technology, these technologies.

Stenography is a technology, it is a technology, it exists to solve a certain problem, this is technology.

It doesn't matter if it's analog, it's technology.

You said that and I thought, complementary.

That is, what is in the showcase should, not only by the way it is being shown, by the way it is being organized, but it has to make sense to people.

And that's where I think the complementary exists.

It's no use thinking that only this way of organizing will handle the message.

If I have the wrong product.

If I have absolutely a product that doesn't talk to the context where I put the showcase.

So, there are some discussions about this.

Sometimes you have a store, a brand, that has a super adequate showcase, etc.

In a context that is intimidating.

I'm afraid to enter this store.

Why?

Because I don't feel like I belong to this world.

The showcase is correct, you did everything right.

But I, who frequent this place, don't feel intimate enough.

I feel embarrassed, I think the sellers look at me differently.

I don't fit in.

So I think that's it.

This complementarity of questions and information that we have to ask.

In this same brand, I also had an experience of an anthropological research, that a qualitative research would not bring answers that we needed.

And I'm going to bring this example because it's very curious.

In this brand, and I'm talking about accessories, shoes, bags, a large portion of sales was made by consumers who resold the products.

And what was the mechanism?

Who had a reward card, a store score, an active consumer card, let's call it that, frequent, had a 20% discount on purchases.

So consumers who had a capacity for argumentation and sales and who lived in a more remote region of the centers where the stores are, in the malls, began to buy on a scale with this 20% discount.

And these 20% were added, plus 5, it seems to me, on the person's birthday.

So two things happened, they began to make this a business and buy with this discount and resell at full price to consumers who were not so close to this region.

And they also made more than a card, putting fictitious names and different e-mails to be able to have a birthday every 15 days and buy in different stores.

And it represented a large portion of sales and I wanted to understand their motivation, how did it work, why didn't we sell directly to their consumers?

Then we did an anthropological research and I, out of curiosity, went to observe.

So we went to a remote corner, very simple.

Her store was a store on the edge of a highway, very simple, that sold a lot of things from several brands that are in the mall, which pay a very large rent, structure, communication to have that product at those points.

And they then bought, in this way, they did a resale.

Well, to sum up, the big answer was, first, a business opportunity that they observed, then the business creativity of young people, young women who were studying and making it an income and then a business.

And then the access they generated to people who didn't even have time to go to the mall or felt intimidated to go to a mall in Santa.

The example you brought.

So they attended to two premises, right?

One is their own and the other is the people they attended.

That in our stores, the environment in which the store was, the mall itself, in a certain way, already inhibited.

Or because the person worked seven days a week, which is very common.

I'm talking about another country in Asia, I'm not talking about Brazil.

So this was a very interesting example of anthropological research that brought very valuable information.

You said, I remembered a case, can I tell you?

Do you have time?

A Dutch customer and the brand wanted to transform its gym line at the time.

They said, this is the gym line, a popular clothing brand, but there is no technology in the gym clothes.

After all, the women who buy here do not understand technology, they do not know what a t-shirt is for, something that absorbs sweat.

And then my research question was, well, it's a fashion brand, but it had a part that wanted to turn it into technological, into exercise clothing.

And the way they were thinking was huge tags explaining technology and such.

And then, when they called, we said, well, let's think first if these people know technology, what do they know about clothing technology, but who are these people?

Well, people who practice sports.

We made a picture of what it is to practice sports, first of all.

What are we thinking, who do we think buys?

Is it that guy who goes to the gym once in a while, twice a week, or is it that person who runs on the street?

This, for me, is already part of the research project.

You have to think about this diversity and how we can approach diversity from different ways of being in the world with your product.

The client really liked it.

And one of the things we proposed is that he thought that those who did sports, knew technology, were only the rich.

They could buy amazing clothes because the guy took protein bars and so on.

And we proposed it.

Obviously, we can't know what these people think if we don't know what they think.

And then I proposed it.

Your niche are people from the outskirts.

They are the ones who buy your clothes.

If you want to talk to them, we will talk to them too.

We need to know what they know.

Even if we don't know what they know about the clothes.

To sum up, let's stop at the house of a person who was an athlete.

She was a long-distance runner.

I would say a root runner because she only had one pair of shoes.

It was a good pair of shoes, but she only had one.

She would run from her house, which was at the outskirts of the South Zone.

She would run to Brás.

And in Brás, she would shop for clothes, for gymnastics, and come back by bus.

This was her running training.

Best of all, and he was with me in this observation, above her house, in Laje, she created an academy.

An academy in Laje, in the outskirts of the South Zone, São Paulo.

This academy was made up of equipment that I had never seen before, because they were very old.

But they existed, the academy had a monthly fee of 10 reais.

The academy was full at certain times, which were totally out of the ordinary, because these people also arrived late, worked on Sundays, etc.

So the academy had other schedules.

There were these equipments that my Dutch client was amazed and shocked.

First, she was amazed to understand that it existed, but she was also shocked, because she said, but how are these people going to exercise here with this heat, with this treadmill that doesn't work properly?

But the academy was called Helps, Helps Sport.

And the owner of the academy, this runner, is called Socorro.

The best name, perfect.

Perfect, perfect.

When she joined us at Helps, we said, no, this is a case.

And what did she show?

She took the gym clothes, and how did she perceive the technology?

First, by touching it.

It's no use putting a label on me, saying such and such.

It was tactile, tactile observation.

Total.

The most wonderful thing is that when she did that, my client took it apart, and to know if a pair of pants is good to do gymnastics, she put both hands on one leg and opened it.

To see if there was resilience, elasticity.

And to see if it wasn't transparent.

It wasn't transparent, because it's in a context where you...

A more traditional context, with a lot of sexism, where you have concerns about the way you will put yourself in a public context, like an academy.

She ran on the street too.

And when she did that, I joked that he took it apart, because he said, everything we were doing...

It's not that you have to abandon the tag.

The label is still important, the information too, but it's realizing that there is another way.

Is this a qualitative research, and not quantitative?

Exactly.

And that's why we exist, to be able to say, how do we dialogue with these people?

This experience is very rich.

It's a beautiful case, it's a case that could be on the TECO website.

Yeah.

Well, we now enter the segment of quick questions, which I call Pinga Fogo, and which we do to all the guests.

First question.

What are the virtues of a successful entrepreneur?

When I'm a successful entrepreneur, I tell you.

I think the virtue is this ability to resist.

Resist, resist, resist.

I don't think it's just resilience, I think it's resistance.

Resistance to a system that is not for you, that was not thought for you.

Social resistance, family resistance.

I think it's something to resist, but to look, to wake up every day and be sure that I still have strength, you know?

It doesn't mean that life is hard.

Life is hard for everyone, but it's a thing of resistance.

And I think it's even ideological in a way.

I resist here in this place.

Somehow I dominate this place.

I give the rules too.

I think in this broader sense of resistance.

I like that word.

What differentiates dreamers from doers?

Dreamers don't have a strategy.

A dreamer doesn't have a strategy.

The strategy is interesting because it's the thought that puts the dream into action.

I always think that you don't have a good strategy if you don't start from a good dream or a good desire.

Then the strategy doesn't work.

But when you have a good desire, a good dream and a good strategy, you do it.

You act.

I think there's this difference of putting it into action, of being able to draw a plan.

Even if everything goes wrong, there's a path.

The dreamer dreams and sleeps.

The doer wakes up and wants it to happen.

And lastly, what is design?

Look, I've thought about this a lot.

I think the good design is what you need and don't know.

The resolution of a problem that you didn't even know was a problem.

That, to me, is a good design.

Something you don't even realize was done.

It's something that is so part of the universe, so incorporated, that you think it was born that way.

Like the mezcal bottle I showed you.

I think the good design, in general, is simple.

The good design is human.

It's recognizable by humans.

It's usable, reusable.

It's absorbed.

It's so absorbed that it's part of a long duration.

When I think about this question, I really thought about the design.

I could only think about things that have existed for a long time.

That have simplicity.

For me, what is a good design?

It's something I can always find.

Anywhere.

It exists, I can find it here, I can find it in the interior of Brazil, I can find it in the south.

This is a good design product.

A simple idea that was put into action.

Perfect.

Paula, we always ask for a reading recommendation.

Which books impacted your trajectory?

Maurício, you can see that I have a library, but it is still small, I have others scattered around the house.

I separated some, I brought them.

I like the subject, the subject book.

I'm kidding, I'm not a woman who has many bags or shoes, but I can't say the same about books.

I brought some.

This one, Argonautas do Pacífico Ocidental, by Bronislaw Malinowski.

It is the starting point of ethnographic studies.

It is a difficult book for those who are not anthropologists.

I would say that even for anthropologists it is a difficult book, because it tells in detail the life on the Estrobrian Islands.

But it is very beautiful and it has, I think, this very mythical thing for us, how a thought is created that we are practicing until today.

So, this book is one of my favorites.

He did a study, I think it was in Papua New Guinea, wasn't it?

Exactly, Papua New Guinea.

And Malinowski is considered the father of ethnography, precisely because he creates, he founds the method based on assumptions of how it should be.

The person who goes to Argonautas to find a cake recipe will not find it.

The method is like that.

No, it's not.

It's not how he writes.

But it's from here that it starts.

That's why it's a book for us, considered seminal.

There is another, which is a book of my heart, which is Tristes Trópicos, by Lévi-Strauss.

Tristes Trópicos speaks precisely about a trip, the trip of Lévi-Strauss, his first trip to Brazil.

When he arrives, more or less in the 1930s, he comes to help found the University of São Paulo and he looks at Brazil from this perspective, which is the perspective of a foreigner.

But it's very beautiful, it's a book...

Here, I would say it's almost a romance.

I like to read, reread, it's in my head.

I brought another one, which is The World of Goods, by Mary Douglas and Byron Eichelwood.

Mary Douglas is an English anthropologist.

She is a classical anthropologist who will study...

She will only start studying consumption from a provocation from her husband, who is Byron, who is an economist.

One day, he will make this provocation saying, well, you anthropologists study everything that doesn't work, everything that doesn't work.

You don't study contemporary society, what is needed, and so on.

Mary Douglas got very angry.

I joke that nothing like a good provocation from your partner to make you nervous and say, no, anthropologists think about the good, think about things, think about consumption.

This is considered, from my point of view, the book that inaugurates the thought of anthropology about consumption.

It shows how anthropology thinks about consumption since the 19th century.

But we think in ways that are not defined as consumption.

From here comes Daniel Miller, a lot of others, and I would say if you haven't read Mary Douglas, you haven't understood anything.

And finally, just to finish, any book from the Exit collection, from Ubu, the Ubu publisher, which was created by Florencia Ferrari, who is a wonderful anthropologist.

And she brings this collection specifically, several books are great, but this collection specifically are provocations, they are thinkers, philosophers, anthropologists, technologists, but they will make very contemporary provocations.

For example, this one is about Big Tech.

So he will make a provocation about this idea of ​​technology.

There is another one that is a Chinese author who will just say, well, you are thinking about technology from the West.

But how do we think differently?

How many books are there in this series?

For now, I think there are about 15, 12, I don't know, but every semester we have news.

This one that I brought is also from the same collection.

The author is Franco Beraldi, an Italian, and the book is called After the Future.

This kind of provocation interests me more than thinking about the future.

I say, what about after the future?

What should I think about?

I love this collection.

It is a very provocative collection and quite accessible in terms of reading.

Anyone can read it, it's very cool.

These were the ones I separated.

Excellent!

So, just to inform people, the link to the books recommended by Paula and the other guests you can find on the website podbrand.design in the Books tab.

We have a curatorship with more than 300 books dedicated to our guests.

We still have a tradition at Podbrand which is the previous guest leaves a question to the next.

Professor Gonzalo Castillo, founder of ProCorp in Santiago, Chile asked this question.

What are the big threats and what are the big opportunities for design since the eruption of artificial intelligence?

Great question!

The big threat to me is that we lose what is human in design.

To believe that design doesn't need humanity.

If we fall into this, I think we'll be bad.

The opportunity, therefore, is the opposite.

To understand that any type of intelligence has to add up to human intelligence.

It has to add up to human intelligence, and not the opposite.

For me, this is a challenge.

How do we combine?

How does design, for example, combine this humanity that it should never lose?

Because design exists, I imagine, to be used by people or by beings.

And if we lose sight of it, we lose the function.

Maybe then it ceases to exist.

So, I think we have a way.

I agree with you.

And Paula, what question would you like to leave to our next guest?

Look, I'm going to leave it here, let's see if you're going to kill me, but the question is very simple.

What is the purpose of design?

Very well, it requires reflection.

Very good.

Well, we're wrapping up this episode.

Paula, I want to thank you very much for sharing all this wisdom, your experience in this study, so rich in anthropology and study focused on anthropology and consumption, the intersection between anthropology and business, which I consider fascinating.

It is a territory that generates a lot of curiosity and is so important, so valid for society, especially for our audience, which will certainly come out of this episode with its improved version.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Maurício.

It's a pleasure.

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Until the next episode here at Podbrand, the Design Podcast.