We design encounters with people all around the world. Whatever form they take, what unites our research approaches is a desire to get to the bottom of people’s behaviours, values and perspectives on the world.
People fascinate, endlessly. We’re driven by a great curiosity about ways of life and patterns of thought – a relentless hunger for stories, knowledge and wisdom.
We gather people together in discussion groups to talk about these things with their peers and their friends. We sit them down with their partners or by themselves. We go to see them in viewing facilities, at work, in bars, and in their living rooms, and our interactions are guided by honesty, intuition and emotional intelligence.
The results are conversations and debates that are revealing, absorbing and enlightening – that distil clamour into understanding, possibility into direction.
Ethnography is show, not tell. It’s about the behaviour and experience of real people in the real world. It’s an immensely rich source of understanding of what’s actually going on.
Ethnography looks at life as it’s actually lived. We spend time with people on their own turf (playing football with teenagers in Brazil; working out with women in Russia; singing Karaoke with salarymen in Korea). Or we ask them to go out with a camera or a phone and record what’s going in their world, in their own way – what we call Self Ethnography.
In the process we uncover how people interact with the world around them. We learn what they do and how it makes them feel. We identify how they experience environments and communications, and we discover how they really use products and shape brands to meet their own needs.
We capture all this on film, and we use the footage to tell stories. Vibrant depictions of environments and lifestyles that might be unfamiliar. Revelations of hidden motivations and unexpected behaviours. Worlds where the commonplace becomes fascinating.
Our Digital & Mobile approaches harness new technology to offer clients immediate and vivid insight into what is going on in people’s lives.
Digital and mobile don’t exist in a parallel universe to real life: they’re technologies people are using intuitively as an integral part of life. And we use them to gain privileged access to their intimate worlds.
We use applications and online tools that allow people to connect with research in their own way, liberated from the process of asking direct questions.
Through our mobile app (Flamingo Fieldnotes), we get the people we’re researching to complete quick-fire tasks on their smartphones, transmitting instant, textured feedback on products, places, communications, or just what they happen to be doing at that moment.
Our tailored online spaces capture the most private and thoughtful reflections from the heart of people’s lives.
And our geo-equipped mobile ethnography app can map, record and upload behaviour, opinions and experiences over time, whether people are at home, in store, at work, or in their car.
Flexible, rapid and endearingly personal, Flamingo Digital & Mobile puts clients in the moment. It lets people be people and brings their lives up closer than ever before.
Research output is the start of a story, not the end of process. It should launch strategic decisions and animate future thought. It should reveal new truths and have the power to mesmerize.
We don’t just present ‘results’. We make knowledge manifest in whatever form will be most tangible and memorable to our audience.
It could be a compelling, visually driven presentation. It could be a set of posters, an illustrated magazine or a documentary film. It could be an online hub for digital response and discussion, or even a gallery exhibition that people can experience and explore. We’ve used all these, and many more, kinds of output.
Whatever shape the story takes, it’s crafted to the highest standard. It’s designed to be useful and expressive and it’s built to last. To act as a live resource well into the future. As a font of insight and inspiration that can be returned to again and again.
