Why Context is Everything with Tim Malefyt, Business Anthropologist and Clinical Professor at Fordham Gabelli School of Business

Tim Malefyt has an amazing ability to make the familiar strange.

He does this by doing deep, ethnographic research, helping brands uncover hidden consumer truths through a combination of carefully constructed activities and thoughtful conversation. 

As a business anthropologist, Tim’s research methodologies and key findings have helped re-energize a number of big name brands across multiple categories, including Campbell’s, Gillette, FedEx, HBO, Revlon, PepsiCo, Cadillac, Crayola, and New Balance.

For Tim, context is everything. 

If you want to understand a person’s behavior, you have to talk to them in the right context. That means getting them out of the focus group room, putting away the interrogation pad of paper,  and talking with people in the environment where the behavior in question naturally takes place. 

Because as Tim puts it, “It is in the doing, in the action, that the ‘knowledge of the body’ starts to come through.”

Some of my favorite aha moments talking with Tim include:

• Reframing Campbell’s “dinner dilemma” into something more creative and communal
• The surprisingly social nature of driving and the challenge that poses for self-driving cars
• Different metaphors one can use during interviews for more meaningful truths
• How to check for and overcome gender bias in research projects 
• The way Tim’s experience as a ballet dancer has influenced his approach to research

Show Notes:

Below are links to books, and other inspiring ideas that came up during our conversation.

Tim’s favorite recent book: The Overstory by Richard Powers

Another great book: Metaphors We Live By by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson