Kendal Amos 
From marketing businesses to marketing yourself for things like college and jobs, it can only be beneficial to learn more about honing the skill of marketing. You might find yourself using marketing more often than you’d think in everyday life. That’s why the recent True Star Session with Pros segment featuring True Star alum Tayler Ulmer was so valuable. Alongside her colleague Kevin Satterfield, the two of them sat down to talk about anthropology, ethnography, and how it all can be connected to marketing.
Both Satterfield and Ulmer have a shared background in anthropology and ethnography, while their career paths differ slightly.
Satterfield worked at Facebook for six years before leaving the company recently and will be joining a startup that’s more focused on the business/development side rather than marketing (which he still expresses love for). While Ulmer went on to study anthropology, she now focuses on the field of international development and has her own consulting company.
The first thing the presenters did–after introductions–was break down the concept of what anthropology actually is.
“It’s the study of culture and how people put meaning to their lives,” Ulmer said. Ulmer then went deeper into explaining ethnography—a method used to understand anthropology–and participant observation. We were even given examples of case studies of what it could look like when anthropology is applied in marketing.
For example, the yogurt company Yoplait tried to create a better product market fit for people like working mothers, moms with hobbies, moms who did activities, and every other sort of mother. Yoplait studied their consumers and product sales and noticed that they weren’t seeing much success. This is where anthropologists and those who study ethnography actually go in and put participant observation into use by researching the mother and kids’ eating patterns. From these techniques of ethnography, Gogurts were invented. This is only one of the many interesting and surprising examples that the pros talked with us about.
We went even further into what exactly marketing is as well. “Marketing is really just the act of promoting and selling your specific brand, or brand of the podcast to the audience that you care most about,” Satterfield explained. He also went into depth about the three core purposes of marketing, and their desired effects.
Overall the session was an educational and interesting space where room was provided to ask specific questions, get specific answers and learn something regarding marketing and its connection to anthropology.
Check out the full session for yourself by watching the video below.
By Kendal Amos, Junior, Chi Arts
Instagram: Kendal.amos
