Olson Zaltman’s First 20 Years
Jerry Olson and Jerry Zaltman, Co-founders
Wow! It’s been 20 years since we founded our cleverly named consultancy specializing in revealing consumers’ unconscious thoughts and feelings and helping companies leverage that deep understanding in their marketing actions. We would like to offer some thoughts about Olson Zaltman’s journey and what we learned along the way.
Before OZ. It took us awhile to get around to founding Olson Zaltman. Although we have known each other since the mid-70’s, through our published works and occasional meetings at academic conferences, our first collaboration occurred in the early-80’s when we served in back-to-back years as President of the Association for Consumer Research. Much later, Jerry O participated in a Harvard/General Motors project led by Jerry Z regarding the future of consumer behavior, where he experienced his first ZMET interview…and was hooked. More collaboration occurred after Jerry O joined the advisory board of Harvard’s Mind of the Market Lab, codirected by Jerry Z
and psychologist Stephen Kosslyn. Finally, on a wintery Boston day in 1997, we formally committed to the OZ collaboration. Our primary motivation was to have more fun (intellectual fun — the kind professors like) by applying state-of-the-art theories and methods from the mind sciences to real-world marketing problems. And we have had a lot of fun. Several principles have guided us on that journey.
Build on a solid scientific foundation. We agree with Kurt Lewin, “There’s nothing so practical as a good theory.” From the beginning, we were determined that Olson Zaltman ground all its thinking, methodologies and interpretations on the best available scientific theory and practice. Moreover, we apply those same foundational principles in helping our clients use our insights to create effective marketing actions.
Treat the unconscious mind seriously. In the past 20 years, much has changed regarding a key premise underlying ZMET and OZ’s other neuroscience-based methodologies — that most mind processes and outcomes occur below the level of awareness. In OZ’s early days, the idea of unconscious thoughts and feelings was not widely recognized or accepted in marketing, and unconscious thoughts and feelings were not captured by the dominant methodologies of the time. Today, the importance of the unconscious mind and System One processes are widely acknowledged in marketing, although most researchers and managers have yet to fully incorporate those ideas in research practice or marketing action. We continue to proselytize for studying the unconscious mind.
Leverage metaphor. The idea that metaphor is not just a literary device, but rather is a mind process central to human thought, was hardly recognized in marketing in the mid 1990’s. And, at the time, most marketing professionals were unaware of the groundswell of insights emerging from the “cognitive revolution” in psychology. In fact, these foundational principles underlying our ZMET process, which now are generally accepted, were often met with raised eyebrows in our early days. Still, the ZMET process, which leverages metaphor as a research tool to probe the unconscious, attracted a few early adopters and gradually became a recognized methodology for uncovering deep insights about human behavior. It’s a source of pride that OZ has contributed to raising the consciousness of marketing professionals about those highly relevant ideas.
Integrate people. We knew from our academic experiences that collaborations between people with different orientations can produce unique and unanticipated outcomes. In our case, we had different yet complementary skills and interests — Jerry O is trained in psychology, while Jerry Z is trained in sociology. Lindsay Zaltman, trained in anthropology, added to the mix when he joined us in the mid-2000’s as the third partner. From our beginning, Olson Zaltman has sought out people with different ideas and orientations (mental models), academic backgrounds and outside interests. By combining those different skills and perspectives on a project team, we enhance the chances of breakthrough insights.
Integrate ideas and theories. Neither of us believes the world is divided up the way academic departments in universities are organized. We know that no single theory or concept can explain everything we need, and no single methodology can provide all the answers we seek. This is especially the case in today’s dynamic marketing environment. So, OZ has always had an eclectic orientation, and we do not shy away from combining good ideas from different disciplines and theoretical orientations to generate novel ideas and better insights. ZMET, for instance, integrates ideas and methods from several disciplines including cognitive and social psychology, neuroscience, art therapy, cultural anthropology, ethnography, and psychotherapy, among others. By combining different methods and theoretical perspectives, we avoid the blinders of a single theoretical perspective, and we maximize the chances of developing unique insights about a topic.
Guided by values. Five core values guide OZ’s work. (1) Continuous pursuit of excellence: Strive always to improve, never be satisfied with the status quo. (2) Passionate curiosity: Explore new ideas; always ask the “why” question. (3) Boldness: Be daring; think and act boldly; get out of our comfort zones. (4) Intellectual devotion: Pursue understanding; always be intellectually rigorous; do not take short cuts. (5) 360 empathy: Strive to deeply understand and appreciate the mindsets and goals of consumers, our clients and work colleagues. We try to live these values in all that we do.
Client centricity. From day one, we sought to understand our client’s problems and deliver insights that address their desired outcomes. Since, we have continued to refine our sensing skills and are committed to treating our client’s problem as our own. We strive to develop partnership relationships with key clients who trust OZ and appreciate the deep insights we provide and with whom we can collaborate in co-creating value.
We got bigger. OZ has grown from our initial two-person staff (the two of us, plus several freelancers) to our current 18 colleagues (and only a few freelancers). We started out working from our homes, but soon had to rent office space, a big psychological hurdle for us. In our mid years, we operated offices in Boston, Pittsburgh, and State College, PA, but now we are consolidated in our comfortable headquarters office in Pittsburgh. Although we are small in size compared to our clients, we feel, think, and act “big.” We have conducted more than 900 projects in 30 countries for a variety of non-profit and Fortune 500 companies representing many different industries. We have several Global Partners trained to conduct ZMET projects in different parts of the world. And we take on big challenges in addressing the difficult, sometimes messy problems our clients bring to us.
We got smarter. Over these twenty years, all of us in OZ have experienced significant intellectual growth. We deepened our understanding of the unconscious mind. We expanded our appreciation of metaphor as a key process of mind. We advanced our interpretation processes by integrating deep metaphors with mind maps and behavior analysis. We developed new methods (ZMET in situ; ZMET Concept Development, implicit association testing or IAT, mobile ethnography combined with ZMET, and artificial intelligence) to address a wide range of client problems from broad foundational questions (e.g., What is the meaning of good health?), to brand positioning, new product innovation, and the effectiveness of marketing executions.
What’s next? We are committed to making Olson Zaltman an even more adaptive enterprise that can assemble people, methods and conceptual models to address the varied asks from our clients. We are dedicated to maintaining a culture of intellectual growth and respect in which our staff, and our client partners, can grow personally and professionally and achieve the successes they seek. We will closely attend to developments in the behavioral science, especially the mind sciences, and incorporate the best of those ideas into our processes. In all this, OZ will strive to be more effective partners with our clients by improving how we sense and respond to their needs. Finally, OZ will continue to uncover and develop deep insights that can change our client’s world.
Thanks. As expected, our 20-year journey as had its ups and downs, but overall the voyage has been immensely satisfying. We are proud to have provided personal and professional growth opportunities for our gifted staff. All of us in OZ have benefitted from working with, and learning from, so many able managers from the best marketing companies in the world. We send our heartfelt thanks to our OZ colleagues, our Board of Advisors, our consultants, and the managers in our client companies for their many contributions to OZ’s first 20 years of growth, success and fun. Here’s to 20 more!
