I am speaking with my co-presenter JL at the AQR-QRCA International Qualitative Research Conference in Rome, Italy, on April 26, 2012.  Here’s a preview from another cultural anthropologist, AF, describing from an interview with us what the workshop is about.  The story behind our workshop…a global iconic brand required deeply archetypal qualitative research to validate a new corporate brand mission that would successfully renew its equity and consolidate its product offerings around the world.  Here is that story.  If you can be in Rome, stop in on Thursday morning at the Radisson Blu at Via Filippo Turati, 171-1-00185 Roma, for this biennial international celebration of qualitative research.

“I had the pleasure of visiting Ava Lindberg in her lovely New York apartment, and to virtually meet JL (by speaker phone), and talk about their presentation at the upcoming conference venue in Rome. I was fortunate to get a preview of a very thought-provokingpresentation that poses an intriguing question from both a theoretical and methodological point of view. The authors undertook an international project aimed at repositioning a particular iconic brand, and had to solve the problem of translating the inquiry, techniques, brand, and mission across cultures. The challenge of the research was to bring qualitative depth and rigor to a quasi-quantitative assignment, namely “validating” the brand’s future mission statement.  Lindberg and JL put together a design rich in complex methodologies that required precision of execution alongside understanding of their theoretical archetypal foundations, within a structure flexible enough to allow for the skills and sophistication of the international team to be fully utilized.

“One of the problems they encountered was how to create a guide that could withstand each country’s differences in terms of moderators, translators, projective techniques, category usage, consumers vs. business, and understanding of that particular brand’s array of offerings. How could they, in this scenario, maintain consistency and minimize the variety of factors across differences? As the title reveals, the focus and the opportunity lay within the script that the authors developed. The script had to hold true, like a loyal traveling companion, across the changes and transformation that the brand might have assumed in each culture, with all its different interpreters. The challenges were both theoretical and methodological.

“In tune with our conference theme of the Renaissance, Lindberg and JL’s presentation explores issues of change and transformation. In particular, they tackle the possibility of maintaining consistency and continuity with the use of symbols and archetypes applied to the collectivity of our daily lives yet differentiating of consumers’ and business segments’ emotional motivations. Thus, the script becomes a pivot of the whole project, like a travelogue that keeps recounting a tale, that, notwithstanding different people and environments, is able to maintain its identity even while going through motions of changes and adaptations. The research structure is metaphorically like an actor that recites the same script, but is still able to enact and reenact the same part authentically, and in many different ways.

“Like Lindberg and JL’s ‘script,’ our field, qualitative research, is ever changing, renewing, adapting, and embracing the challenge of new theories and methods. Qualitative research, with its deep roots in humanism and therefore its emphasis on people’s habits and forms of interactions, has been able to embrace new techniques and technologies. For example, while we may have initially frowned upon the digital age, for example, which often forced a departure from direct human contact, we seem to have mastered and integrated digital techniques with our other techniques. What will the next challenges present, and what kind of impact will they represent for our community?

“Let’s come together and put our creative forces together to start a new Renaissance. The 2012 joint AQR-QRCA conference will take place in the cradle of civilization, and will help generate new ideas, thus enriching our perspectives and practices. Our meetings not only provide ways to refill our bags of tricks and knowledge, but they also, more importantly, represent moments to regroup and share our stories in order to later open new roads and take our practice to new dimensions.  So, come to Rome and share your own qualitative research story!”

I am working with a client team on a hybrid qualitative research study (online, then focus groups, then ethnography) related to a consumer packaged goods category, first in Hartford, then Atlanta.   In the midst of this research, in conversation relating to the science and enactment of ethnographic observationals and qualitative research, one of my clients teasingly asks me, “So, what is the strangest research project you’ve ever been on?”

Since there have been many strange and wonderful projects, I pause to think.  Then one study comes to mind:  on fire ants.  It is many years ago.  The work is for a famous insecticide brand, Amdro which is connected to Raid as a subdivision, who needs to develop a creative TV campaign that will intensify motivation to use Amdro and provide clear understanding of how Amdro’s revolutionary bait works against fire ants in the South.

Fire ants are a powerful, insidious, ant nuisance that have come in from Central America, slowly, inexorably.  They are ever spreading, mile by mile, through the south, moving northward.  They only can live in warm weather that does not freeze, but warm weather in the U.S. covers all the South and Southwest.   At that time, the pest is mostly in Texas, Louisiana, Florida, and South Georgia areas where we end up doing our research.

The problem with fire ants is manifold.  Fire ant nests are hard to see and easy to step into.  Sometimes they’re almost invisible, appearing and disappearing without notice.  If a young child, unsuspecting adult (drunk or gets out of his car near the side of the road for a quick break), a calf, puppy, or other vulnerable creature steps into a fire ant nest without seeing it, the ants have a maddening, instinctual behavior:  they swarm over the body and then, as if interconnected with a single nerve synapse, begin biting the victim all at the same time.

The bites are extraordinarily painful, sometimes fatal to young animals and children, leave utter burning sensations, horrible pustules stay unhealed all over the body for weeks.  The victim is in misery, requiring hospitalization if severe enough.  The ants live up to their name:  fire.

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So, now it’s 15 years later on this refreshment beverage study.  The clients and I are researching outside of Atlanta, in Duluth, GA, and I continue to relate the story that the issue I needed to contend with was to interview farmers and other agricultural people who rarely were seen or interviewed in traditional market research….we set up research stations in location like Stark, Florida, where we recruited fire ant sufferers and set up closed circuit TVs in motel rooms and conference halls to create the research environment that Amdro and agency clients could then observe.

The creative issue, at that time, is interesting, actually.  How to communicate that Amdro as bait would eventually reach the queen of the fire ant nest, kill the queen, which would eventually wipe out the entire nest…when most farmers and landowners were pouring gasoline down the fire ant holes hoping to blow it up violently.   The issue creatively was that when we personified the killing of the queen and the hive in TV ad storyboards, the ants looked cute. The imagery of the ants and queen engendered sympathy and heroism rather than malice and deadliness.  How to un-herocize the queen and the ants?  To solve the creative issues at that time, we used focus groups and an iterative process to work it through.

So, here we are in late March 2012, and I’m talking with altogether different clients about this intriguing subject, who find it rather amusing as a creative problem.  it’s different from their own, but just as hard to figure out.   Not more than three hours later, we do an afternoon ethnography and go out for a run (exercise during authentic ethnography) with a respondent during a real-life observational in Duluth, GA.  As we (the respondent, me, and two clients) all run along a road, we notice mounds of gravel, sand, and small holes at the top of each mound.  The female respondent that the 3 of us are observing says with excitement, “Look!  There!  Fire ant mounds!  They’re dangerous!”  We discuss them quickly, and with amazement.

I can’t believe the fire ant scourge has reached midway into Georgia, near Atlanta.  15 years, farmers and Amdro had predicted it would, and now I’m seeing it.  The northward, spreading course of the nuisance is continuing.

The current clients with whom I have just finished discussing fire ants are astounded to hear about the subject of fire ants from this unsuspecting respondent.  Then, the respondent says, “You know, Amdro bait is the only thing that really kills them….it gets to the heart of the nest, bringing the bait down into the nest to kill the queen.  When the queen is dead, the rest of the ants die.”  Clients hear my words repeated from the mouth of a respondent in the midst of and talking about exercise and cold beverages for hydration and replenishment.

To me… It’s obvious that the TV campaign we developed for Amdro 15 years ago worked in terms of communication with education–since the education on how fire ants can be eradicated through Amdro bait is crystal clear to this respondent.

I am left with wonder.

As an observer of synchronicity, I am thinking to myself now that I’m back from this particular piece of research:  What does fire ant mean, more universally?  Is it just a coincidence?  Is it potentially a meaningful coincidence?  Why does the sight of these nests return into my experience?  What is the meaning of conquering pests through bait?  Is the fact that the educative effect works from the Amdro campaign…the reason?   What about Amdro anyhow?

What is the symbolic, archetypal, metaphorical, metaphysical meaning of ant?   Ants?   Fire ants?

There are threats of “global warming” relative to market research, written up in venerable research periodicals, but my personal feeling is that qualitative research remains alive and kicking.  There is no end in sight to discovery, understanding, discernment, and exploration, even if the form changes and the inquiries shift.

I left this post on the Qualitative Research Group on Linked In and on G. Heist’s Gongo Research blog, published today in the online version of The Green Book, but it is worth repeating here.   Market research may be changing, but God is not dead.  I think that respondents want to participate in consumer research–more than ever–and clients continue to want to explore and listen to in-person research.  Despite online or perhaps because of it, many want to hear and listen to real people discuss real issues in a real, interactive, exciting way.    Great recruitment still comes down to precision of screener, additional time, and paying incentives on the high side.

My sense is that qualitative research is like gardening–for those with the expertise, delight in learning and discovering, the seeking of new ideas, colors, and insights, and patience to till the soil, weed, nurture, love the process, and revel in th blooms and fluorescence–there will never be an end to market research. Like gardens, there are changes and shifts in what qualitative research may look like and how the various methodologies are created or enjoyed, but qualitative research is a perennial process that will not go away.  It will remain until, and after, the last person in the world stops being interested in finding out what others of importance to an inquiry are thinking, feeling, doing, and needing.

So, here’s my original post to G Heist of Gongos Research, and I’d be interested in how readers who are researchers respond to these ideas:

“For complex focus group, IDI, and ethnography recruits–with online hybrids such as bulletin boards or diaries to begin as part of this qualitative process–and which are specific to difficult, complex, emotionallly evocative projects, we are finding that adding more incentives and giving the fields longer lead time are very helpful strategies. This means getting go-ahead from clients on difficult, multiple-stage projects earlier so that recruitment can start earlier, with needed changes at midpoint of recruitment to motivate consumers if there is a lag. We try to have many status reports from fields throughout the recruitment process, and make changes wherever necessary to create a successful recruit. However, we are achieving success continually…if we pay what is suggested on the high side from field recruiters at the bidding stage and if we make the screener and invitation enjoyable. With additional time to recruit, we are discovering that high quality respondents are excited to attend.

So what is this timing? A 5-7 day turnaround is impossible, however, while 2 full weeks–10 days of weekdays plus 2 full weekends–for a complex recruit does give optimum results. The last minute recruit we will, of course, try if the client really wants it, but we put in warnings and caveats, then we have to pay or bid out overtime and much higher incentives…and perhaps lower the past-participation to the past 3 months or less. We set this up from the beginning with the client so all is known and all contingency plans are in place. There is total transparency.

I am curious what other qualitative researchers find they can achieve in terms of great project results when powerful money and additional time are adequate to recruit.

As for recycling Easel sheets, that’s a wonderful ecological move. G Heist shows a picture of himself shredding Easel sheets.  I applaud.  I love Easel paper, pads, and writing ideas on them.   On a more transcendental note: What I find is that scheduling two debriefs for each qualitative project is useful and allows us to get plenty of Easel sheets with great ideas on them.  Specifically: one is at midpoint in the field between regions so that we discover what we are learning and can make revisions before the next or final field. The second is an all-hands, long debrief immediately after the last field back at client headquarters (or at the very least, a long phone call with everyone on it), to be sure we on the core team and invited guests have a chance to play and think….to coalesce findings, gain early hypotheses, and bridge the gap between what we just saw and heard and what the final report will convey. Often, this 4-hour pre-report debrief at headquarters is the most valuable experience of the entire project.

There are lots of Easel sheets which can be worked from by me and my team of researchers for the report, and then, of course, recycled properly.

Thinking seriously about this…. (one of) my favorite parts of a study is often the moment when the report is sent, reviewed by the client, accepted, ready or finished for presentation, and I can clean up all my papers, piles of notes, Easel sheets all over the office, post-it notes, transcripts, and recycle them. Ahhhhh!”

At the moment, I am working on and writing up a powerpoint workshop on the archetype of Superhero that I will give to a client team in Toronto next Tuesday.  For days, I have been researching classical and contemporary legends of heros, superhero icons, historical and famous contemporary figures that Americans and Canadians find to be their personal superheroes, and looking at brands that represent a Superhero archetype.

I am also considering applying for the doctoral program in Depth Psychology with emphasis on Jungian and Archetypal Studies, at Pacifica Graduate Institute in California, where there will be a major emphasis on archetypes and mythology as key to my Ph.D.  I am in the decision stages, and actually am writing now from Santa Barbara where today an interview with the head of the department JS will take place.

Two days ago while running along the Hudson River in New York City–after a silent request to the Universe to please help me figure out the Superhero presentation, which is complex and related to a specific brand that I’ve done a large ethnographic study on, as well as to help me figure out what to do about the doctoral program and if I should go ahead–I saw a truck that said Hercules prominently on it.  Hercules Cleaning is its full name.  Apparently, Hercules Cleaning is a cleaning company that promises strength of cleaning results, but the important sign for me was the name Hercules.  Then another truck with Hercules on it came into view. I walked by another one.  Another passed me on the street.  Then another.  Yet another.

With my mouth agape and my mind astonished at this visual synchronicity, I witnessed seven Hercules trucks within a 10 minute period of time–parked, moving, in traffic, going by me, in front of a warehouse, etc.–they were all different and all these signs of Hercules were occurring within a very short period of time.

As almost everyone knows, Hercules is a great hero from classical Greek and Roman mythology, celebrated as a contemporary icon, appearing within adult and children’s movies, and used as common parlance to mean superstrength.   “A Herculean task,” etc.   Hercules is the original legendary hero known for his half-god/half-human origin, his mighty superhuman prowess, his many feats with other superheros, and his ability to perform tasks of impossible difficulty.   The 12 tasks of Hercules are archetypal.  One day I’ll note them in a posting if it seems relevant.

So, with my iPhone on me that morning, I quickly and intensely photographed these seven Hercules truck sightings.  Realizing the dramatic news and sign represented by so many Hercules appearing to me, I am now seeing–while developing this post–that a) the Superhero presentation in Toronto will go well, it will have strong results for the brand, corporate team, if followed will enjoy success in the marketplace, and be a strong connection between archetypes and my mythological/brand work, and b) I need to and can take seriously a positive decision to accept the doctoral program on mythology and archetypes within a depth psychology perspective were it offered to me.

Superhero strength like that of Hercules will be required, but it is sure to become available.

I am posting several photographs of these Hercules sightings, but remember, there are actual seven sightings.  There were more than seven but some “got away” from me because I couldn’t get my camera out in time, assuming each time I did a photograph of a truck with Hercules on it, it was the last.  And, then I saw another.  And another…

Seven is the number of Explorer-Adventurer/Chariot archetype, which implies movement within stability, the time of the new adventure, with total permission to be exploring new worlds.

Signs like these act quickly and with great focus during a time of intellectual ferment.  The owl seems a fitting symbol of ideas and thoughts rushing in from self, others, and from what Carl Jung called the collective unconscious, that vast storehouse of legendary wisdom underlying spiritual and powerful symbolic iconography with synchronous events appearing with meaning in the world.  Classically, the snowy owl is associated with Athena, the Greek goddess/archetype of wisdom.  Remember the snowy owl flying in with the letter for Harry Potter to announce his entrance to the school of magic in the first Harry Potter movie?   Athena also appears visually in my powerpoint presentation, the expanded version, as a model for contemporary female icons like Wonder Woman and perhaps a building block for target audiences related to the brand I’m working on.

This categorization of learning by Rumi seems particularly vital today; I have never seen the distinction quite this way before.  I offer the poem called Two kinds of intelligences

“There are two kinds of intelligence: One acquired,

As a child in school memorizes facts and concepts

from books and from what the teacher says,

collecting information from the traditional sciences

as well as from the new sciences.

With such intelligence you rise in the world.

You get ranked ahead or behind others

in regard to your competence in retaining

information

You stroll with this intelligence

in and out of fields of knowledge, always getting more

marks on your preserving tablets.

There is another kind of tablet, one

already completed and preserved inside you.

A spring overflowing its springbox

A freshness

in the center of the chest

This other intelligence

does not turn yellow or stagnate.  It’s fluid,

and it doesn’t move from outside to inside

through conduits of plumbing-learning.

This second knowing is a fountainhead

from within you, moving out.”

From The Essential Rumi, by Coleman Barks

Can one be enamored of both styles?

I specialize in the first, which moves from the outside to the inside, but find myself drawn to the fountainhead…the one from within, moving out.

For the past two weeks, I have been intensely developing my application for the doctoral program in Depth Psychology with Emphasis on Jungian and Archetypal Studies at Pacifica Graduate Institute.   Still lacking one or two vital pieces of the application on this day, I was driving my Lexus out of town, leaving New York City, wondering if I would be accepted and how it would be to do a full-time research practice and do a full-time doctoral program–at the same time.  Could I?  Should I?  Would I?  Yes, it’s too exciting an opportunity to pass up.

Then…

In front of me, I see a plain white minivan, while traffic is stopped at a light.  It has the logo Pacifica.  It is subtle yet dramatic.   Like a breath of fresh air wafting into a dark cloud of worry, the logo brings me up sharply and I relax.

The pale white imperceptible Pacifica logo on the car is a sign that…

…news or a next-step is imminent with Pacifica the university.    I realize that it really doesn’t matter what I think, obsess, or worry about because what will be, will be.    The Ph.D. program is actually a foregone conclusion, part of my destiny, the next stage of my intellectual progress…signaled in a flash by this small synchronicity.  The program, my life, and my continuing-t0-evolve research practice will happen as it should.

Tonight–moments ago, in fact–a consultant-colleague J.O. in the sustainability marketing field emails me to ask how my degree in Cultural Anthropology at Columbia had gone, and that she’d like to do it or get one, too.  She asks, “What would it be like to study collaborative culture, to shift toward study of cultures that are less materialistic in value?”   No one among my professional friends has mentioned cultural anthropolog for a while although I’ve been contacting former anthropology professors nonstop.  Her question and her desire to talk about advanced degrees is yet another small sign that my new program is right on track, on the horizon, coming up quickly.

A reader, R, has written to request a category called New Synchronicities so that she and others can post totally new synchronicity experiences in its own section.

I am adding this category today, calling it Totally New Synchronicities.

To review the purpose of the blog Secrets and Synchronicities for new readers…it is to create an ongoing forum of interactivity on the theme of building and exploring a compendium of synchronicities recorded from an intentional desire or completely spontaneous, unsolicitied occurrence in order to see and experience such meaningful coincidences on an ongoing basis.

It is also to analyze their meaning, muse, see where and if the coincidences move and expand, and note any connections between personal or professional synchronicities with the field of in-depth qualitative, archetypal research.  Carl Jung, champion of synchronicity, believed that meaningful coincidence and archetypes existed in the same continuum.

Two days ago I was running at the Hudson and on my third cycle going round the dock, saw the Staten Island Ferry slowly making its way up the Hudson.  The location was the 83rd and 84th Piers.   The Staten Island Ferry was going somewhere, but it was out of place.  The seeing of this icon–all gold, worn, with old-fashioned typeface–empty, heading upstream far away from its usual location to and from Staten Island…shocked me.  I stood with my mouth open, my gaze unable to move off the passing ferry.   It continued, very large, slow, and steady, to pass by just as I was running out to the edge of the dock, then I stopped, hung over the railing, and watched it until it was too small to see, as it slowly made its way up river.

I had no digital camera on me during this incident so I post a picture from Wikipedia to show you what it looked like moving up the Hudson.

Had I not gone running at that moment or had I not looked at it clearly–thinking instead that it was a yellow NY Water Taxi–I might have missed the event.

Why was the Staten Island Ferry moving upsteam on the Hudson, empty?  Why was it so far from home?  Perhaps it was going for repairs.  Perhaps it takes a periodic vacation for cleaning or maintenance, which is located up river.  Perhaps it was moving in a new location because this particular Staten Island Ferry was no more.  Perhaps it does this all the time.  But, I run here all the time at this same time of the morning, and have never seen such a strange event on the water.  Once I lived in a penthouse on 94th Street and Riverside and looked from the high floor over the river, but never did I see the Staten Island Ferry on the Hudson during the five years I had this residential perch.

Post script:  Since I originally wrote this post, I found a picture on a July 13, 2008 blog that shows the Staten Island Ferry going upriver on the Hudson.  So, apparently, it happens once in a while even though it seems totally unusual to me, not expecting to see the Staten Island Ferry outside of lower Manhattan.

Whether it’s unusual or not, it is to me.  And, doubly so, because within minutes, another associative “ferry event” occurred.    As I was returning home 10 minutes later, I ran by an old white truck with a clear sign on it, A. Ferry.    I stopped and looked, strangedly moved.  What was A Ferry…what is a ferry?   What is the A?

My name is Ava which starts with A.  Is it a general reference to me as A… the identity of Ferry… or a peculiar connection with my name in symbolic terms relating to ferry?

Perhaps the ferry reference relates to movement, transition, and going somewhere unusual.  Perhaps it is relating to a new project in academia… my interest in taking a doctoral degree in Depth Psychology with emphasis on Jungian and Archetypal Studies from Pacifica Graduate Institute.  This pending decision–serious, not yet made, but in the planning stages–feels like a deeply exciting transition into a new but surprisingly familiar area in my life….the chance to continue full-time qualitative research that already has significant usage of deep projective methodologies like archetypes with a full-time doctoral program that is now specific to Jungian, archetypal psychology– hybrid, some residence in NYC and some in Santa Barbara….with a good portion online.

So, what is A Ferry?   What is a ferry?   What is the connection and synchronicity between the Staten Island Ferry and the truck with A. Ferry?  I just checked with Wikipedia, and it explains the obvious:  that a ferry is a boat that acts as public transportation moving regularly to take passengers between two locations on a scheduled basis.  It moves from one location to another for people who work or live or need to travel back and forth regularly.  Ferries leave and arrive on time, dependably.    It feels as if the ferry vision indicates that I may soon be taking a ferry between two points of the country, signaled by the quiet-, quick-moving, subtle Hudson vision.