Building Stronger Teams and Campaigns with Cultural Intelligence
You may have noticed we’ve been talking a lot about culture and cultural anthropology at Experiences For Mankind. As the world becomes increasingly diverse and interconnected, the role of culture in marketing and creative agencies has never been more crucial. My journey from anthropology to advertising has allowed me to bring and share an anthropologic perspective to not only the webs of meaning that impact brands and audiences, but also those that influence creative agencies like ours. In this article, I’d like to break down just how significant culture is behind the scenes in agencies and how an anthropological perspective enhances understanding and collaboration among employees.
Culture Beyond Marketing
As creators and marketers, our work involves understanding and interpreting cultural cues to create impactful campaigns. By immersing ourselves in the richness of different cultures, we gain insights that fuel our creative strategies. We strive to be more than just marketers; we aspire to be cultural translators who effectively bridge the gap between brands and their target audiences.
However, culture doesn’t just stop with brands and audiences. It permeates every aspect of our lives, and it extends far beyond the marketing endeavors we engage in every day. As such, it’s crucially important that we pay attention to the many cultures at play within our own agency teams. Just as we analyze consumer meanings, we must also examine the cultural understandings and agreements shaping our own work environment.
Creative Agencies as Cultural Hubs
Creative agencies, like Experiences For Mankind, serve as cultural hubs where diverse perspectives converge. In reality, this applies to all workplaces — not just those in the marketing and advertising world. Nevertheless, employees at creative agencies are multifaceted, intersectional individuals who bring an array of complex perceptions, lenses, and behaviors to their work. On our team, for example, we have individuals who hail from the Midwest, the South, the West, and even Japan! With each of these upbringings comes different ideas about food, communication, relationships, and social norms. Where Nick (from Colorado) says “sick” when something is cool, I (from SoCal) say its “rad” or where Angela (from Indiana) says “pop”, I say “soda”. These seemingly small lingual differences hint at the distinct perceptions and experiences that color our worldviews and interactions with one another.
Culture within organizations is also reflected in physical workspaces, organizational rituals, and internal communication styles. Employees are constantly negotiating and sharing meaning around how to work and collaborate. This is something my graduate advisor, Elizabeth Briody (a well-known organizational anthropologist), studied extensively with General Motors. She found that the company’s ingrained cultural tradition of autonomy for its global business groups made collaboration difficult. And this is also something we’ve also seen firsthand at Experiences For Mankind. Where Miyu (from Japan) is used to a cultural of collectivism and social harmony, most of us in the office (from the U.S.) are more familiar with a cultural of individualism and independence. As a result, this has greatly impacted how we respond to emails, read verbal cues, and approach projects together. Though it takes a bit of understanding and adjusting, such cultural differences work to our advantage because they help us expand our creativity and innovation.
In addition to individual employee cultures, agencies often espouse their own culture through their mission, values, and the collective experiences of their team members. An agency or company’s positioning provides a shared purpose and direction which helps weave a collective identity and foster a sense of belonging. At Experiences For Mankind, we rally around the concept that “It’s Powerful to be Human”℠. We believe that emotion, connection, and belonging are what make us human and that these strengths help us tap into the empathy, insight, and creativity that we produce. What this looks like for our teams is that we all approach our work with a human-centered lens:
- Our Strategy team (me included) takes a people-first approach where our research focuses on human experience to glean insights.
- Our Creative team uses engaged, active listening and creates with intent so that they always add value for clients and their end users.
- Our Client Experience team acts as master relationship builders who are adaptable, curious, and focused on problem solving for clients and internal teams.
While our initial experiences form much of our current worldviews, being in constant interaction with our shared home base in San Diego, with each other as coworkers, and with our agency mission continues to alter the ways we see and work in the world. This is an ongoing process whereby our culture is collectively built and reworked by all of us. To continue building a vibrant and cohesive culture that includes us all and fuels our creative work, it’s crucial to understand these ever-changing perceptions and behaviors.
“So, how do we do this?”, you might ask.
Learning from Each Other at EFM
One of the significant contributions of cultural anthropology to agencies lies in its ability to facilitate mutual learning and collaboration. That’s because cultural anthropology, at its core, is the practice of examining meaning and co-creating it. By looking at how we are all constantly negotiating values, communication, and practices, we can see how each of us contribute to this cultural exchange. The best way to look at these ever-changing meanings is by using ethnography.
Ethnography is more than a method. It’s a practice of curiosity and of empathy — constantly acting as an outsider and asking why. For instance, some of the questions I’ve asked within our creative agency have included: “Why do we use particular language with certain clients and not others?” and “Why does it seem like the designers and copywriters argue during concepting?”. By paying attention to the dynamics at play in each interaction and holding space for those on my team, I’ve come to understand the “whys”. First, our Client Experience Team has used their own empathetic practices to understand client worlds and modify their language (or code switch) to integrate themselves and strengthen relationships with clients. Second, our creative team isn’t arguing, they’re passionately debating how creative executions will bring the strategy (that my team works on) to life in a way that impacts audiences. This is often heated because they care about creating with intent. Ethnography and empathy allowed me to gain a deeper understanding of the behaviors, motivations, and needs of my team and radically changed how I saw the interactions.
Bringing my anthropological knowledge and ethnographic perspective has helped me understand and integrate into our creative agency culture. More recently, my goal has been to expand this thinking among our team. Ethnography is a powerful lens that allows us to understand and navigate the cultural landscapes within our agency and in our work with each other. By embracing cultural anthropology and ethnography, we can dismantle barriers, foster empathy, and promote effective communication among our team. All it takes is asking “why” and a little bit of empathy.
Final Thoughts
In today’s globalized world, culture permeates every aspect of marketing and creative agencies. By embracing cultural anthropology and ethnography, we unlock new ways to understand, connect, and innovate — not only for our clients and their audiences, but for ourselves as well. At Experiences For Mankind, we celebrate the cultural tapestry that weaves through our agency. It allows us to leverage our collective experiences to create impactful campaigns that resonate deeply with diverse audiences. But equally importantly, it helps us learn from one another and collaborate in ways that enhance our connections and improve our work lives.
By embracing the intersectionality of our team members’ cultures, our agency culture, and our industry culture, we harness a wealth of insights and creativity to work better and be better. Using an ethnographic perspective, agencies like ours can also encourage open dialogue, knowledge sharing, and the recognition of diverse expertise. It’s an opportunity to learn from each other’s unique cultural insights and foster an environment of continuous growth and innovation.
You can learn more about our strategy and creative agency, Experiences For Mankind, on our website or contact us. We’re always looking for brilliant clients and teammates.
