On-Site Research Associates

This page is currently under construction. Please check back in the near future for bins, movies, etc.

Message From Maren Elwood—Spring 2008

Traditionally, ethnographic studies have been conducted by research companies for clients who then own the content. The proprietary nature of ethnographic information and protection of respondent privacy have been standards of the qualitative research industry for its history.

In 2004, On-Site embarked on our first cross country ethnographic learning journey (The Pulse Of America) to start a longitudinal study of American attitudes and cultural insights. Without realizing it, this study represented our first foyer into the content ownership and distribution business. We sold the study data and media bins to a few sponsors, but didn’t really comprehend the overall meaning of owning the rights to this multimedia data.

In early 2007, with the popularity of ‘user generated content’ on sites such as YouTube and the growing desire for media sources that could be trusted, I had an epiphany. Ethnographic research, if conducted well, is one small step away from being user generated and, in my opinion, can be looked at as facilitated user generated content. At the same time, I found myself frequently providing edited movies to my clients for uses outside the original research goals. Requests for research based movies for team ideations, management presentations, new product development briefs and even as interactive media for online use were increasing. The fact that On-Site owned media rights to large quantities of consumer media enabled us to meet a need that our clients had.

Then, in mid 2007, when everyone recognized that the model for the advertising and marketing industry was changing, we decided we had to change too. With advertising moving to online and mobile devices with alarming speed, we decided it was time to start offering our ethnographic content for sale on a pull basis. Thus, Ethnovision was born.

We welcome your comments on our new concept and invite you to peruse our media bins to see if there’s anything you’d like to PEEK at, BUY, or EDIT. Of course, this multimedia content is for internal use only. Any use on television or the Internet must still be cleared with us for release.