Eight O’Clock Coffee Co. wanted its advertisements to hit people right where they live – in their own homes, just waking up in the morning, craving that first cup of coffee. They asked their advertising agency, Kaplan Thaler Group, to get involved. 

Kaplan Thaler’s director of strategic planning and research, Chris Wauton, says that whereas the traditional approach was to ask a bunch of questions in a focus group or in a quantitative survey, people began to realize that the observational approach might be a powerful tool. “Actions speak louder than words.”

Instead of sending out interviewers they sent out videocassettes and asked people to film themselves getting up and out the door, in the process using an innovative form of research : commercial ethnography. A mix of marketing and the techniques used by anthropologists, commercial ethnography can unearth information that more traditional research methods such as focus groups might miss. 

“The idea behind this was to see what people really do and think” said David Allen, director of advertising for the coffee company.

The Agency was not sure how many tapes they would receive back or what they would be like. The segments show a struggle to get moving. 

A teenager, for example, slides from her bed to the floor and tries to protect her eyes from a bedroom light. One man waves away attempts to get him up, and a distracted tips a bowl of cereal she is preparing, spilling milk onto the kitchen floor. 

Using the videos as inspiration, Kaplan Thaler created two television commercials that began airing in October along the East Coast and parts of the Midwest in a $7 million, four month campaign. 

 “In real life, people stumble, around  trying to get the kids up and coffee is the fuel that gets them dressed, fed and out the door” Wauton commented.