Wednesday 12 November 2025 2:30pm
Mond Seminar Room
About
Navigating Between Two Worlds – From Ethnography to Advertising Insight
Moving from academia to the commercial world is rarely a straight path, and for anthropologists, it can feel like crossing into another culture entirely. In this talk, I reflect on my journey from PhD researcher to strategic insight consultant, tracing how the rigour and reflexivity of academic ethnography can both clash with and enrich the “quick and dirty” pace of commercial research.
Drawing on my transition from doctoral research (sponsored by Diageo) into the world of brand strategy and advertising, I explore the tensions between remaining true to the people who shared their lives with me and responding to clients’ demands for actionable, rapid insight. How do you distil years of fieldwork into a single page, or a sound bite without losing its integrity? How do you protect your narrative when others want to simplify or reframe it for business ends?
The talk highlights four key challenges faced when making this shift: valuing speed over depth, simplifying complexity, adapting to team and client dynamics, and redefining what “good enough” means outside the academy. Ultimately, I argue that navigating between these two worlds requires not abandoning one for the other, but learning to translate, to carry anthropological rigour into spaces where its relevance is not always recognised, yet deeply needed.
Matt is a strategic and creative mixed-method researcher with over 15 years’ experience designing tailor-made research programmes that drive brand, communications, and portfolio strategy. With a career spanning academia and industry, he combines a PhD exploring the role of alcohol in university life with extensive client- and agency-side experience, including Diageo, McCann, and Millward Brown.
Formally trained in both qualitative and quantitative methods, Matt brings deep expertise in FMCG and healthcare sectors, applying innovative and traditional approaches across North America, Europe, and Asia to uncover insights that inform strategic decision-making and brand growth.