Pi-Consulting

Winston Churchill jokingly – and affectionately – called them “Two great nations separated by a common language”. The “separation” he referred to did mean that “You say Tomaytos, and I say Tomahtos”, but that part never got in the way of the idea that here was a very “special relationship” indeed. As countries, Britain and America seem to many outside observers to form a kind of indissoluble “Anglo-Saxon Front”, resolutely seeing the world in pretty much the same way, following the same basic domestic and foreign policies, and standing shoulder-to-shoulder to see those policies enacted.

Brits and Yanks may like each other a lot, and visit each other’s countries enthusiastically come vacation time. But does this mean that the two nations share most of their fundamental attitudes? Pi has tested that thesis over several years now, and found it to be almost completely without foundation. More on that below.

Now the august British weekly newspaper The Economist has weighed in with its own findings on the subject. In March this year, they commissioned a simultaneous poll on both sides of the Atlantic, with YouGov asking the questions in the UK, and Polimetrix doing the honors in the US. A thousand respondents in each country were quizzed on their fundamental attitudes to a wide range of “things in life”. “Broadly”, reports the Economist, “the differences between the two countries look more striking than the similarities”.

The full results of the survey make fascinating reading, and can be found at www.economist.com/anglosaxon. Highlights: “The gap between Britain and America is widest on religion. …Britain is famously a post-Christian society, and Americans are …rediscovering the faith of their fathers”. “Britons are more international than the Americans, and keener on free trade and globalization”. Instinctively polarized opinions are more visible between members of the US population, with Britons more disposed to see their fellow-citizens’ point-of-view. By contrast, “Only nationalism seems to unite America’s left and right”. Just don’t look for the fervent American kind of patriotism in the UK these days. In January this year, the figure of Britannia was banished permanently from British coinage. The UK’s national flag has been reduced to a kitsch prop for noisy football fans, when not draped provocatively over the contours of a Spice Girl, or providing the backdrop to irreverent cartoons of Prince Charles looking goofy on a coffee-mug.

If doubts remain as to how different American and British attitudes can be, Pi can now dispel them. We Pi-Charted (what else?) both nations, and realized that they headed in fundamentally opposing directions on way more than half of Pi’s attitudinal measurements.

The average American professes a long-term commitment to “The American Dream”, a culture of ‘can-do’ go-getting, self-fulfillment, serious commitment to acquiring money and getting ahead. The American way is to live by your religious convictions, care what people think of you, “do the right thing” at home, trust in those in authority, and leave the rest of the world to get on with its own affairs.

The equivalent attitudes in the UK are those of short-term thinkers, restless and impulsive opportunists, with little faith or respect reserved for either Earthly or Heavenly authority. British conventionality means shoulder-shrugging resignation to an unsatisfactory state of affairs. After all, what can you do? Better to dedicate your efforts to the pursuit of fun, entertainment, and materialistic opulence.

Pi’s blogmeister is strongly reminded of the old joke about the difference between an American factory worker leaving through the factory gates on Friday night, and his British equivalent. The American watches his boss sweep by in a huge Lincoln, and says “Damn, one day, I’ll have a car like that”. The Brit watches HIS boss speed past in his Rolls Royce, and mutters “Flash git, he should be riding a bicycle like everyone else”.

Joined at the hip? We don’t think so. Pi rests its case, no foolin’.

Anglo-Dutch food giant Unilever wanted to find out not only if their products made people happy, but HOW happy. Enter Visual Recognition, an Amsterdam-based computer innovation lab attached to Amsterdam University. VR’s technology and software is geared to reading facial expressions and translating them into mathematical measures of satisfaction. The system works by creating a 3-D facial map that tracks shifts in twelve key areas of muscle-movement. The result is a consistent and accurate register of emotions such as sadness, distaste, surprise and – of course – happiness. A panel of 300 women (more facially expressive than their men-folk, apparently) were recorded while eating different kinds of ice-cream, confectionery and fruit. 87% registered apples as ‘neutral’, yoghurt was ’sad’ for 28% if the sample, and healthy-option ice-creams scored fewer smiling faces than their full-fat equivalents. Wait. Didn’t we kind of know that already? Source: mrweb.com, WARC, Pi.

The internet, among the many dubious benefits it has bestowed on Mankind, has enabled us all to lead double lives. No, we’re not talking, for once, about sneaking peeks at porn, but about virtual reality sites.

If you want to know more about the real world, take a closer look at virtual worlds, and the way people inhabit them. Join an online game world like Second Life, for instance, and you’ll see what Pi means. Second Life is a 3-D world jointly created by thousands of internet users over time. Once you’re there, you can re-imagine yourself as taller, better-looking and considerably more dashing than the prosaic reality you see every morning in the mirror. Re-cast as your cyber-double or virtual avatar, you can even sprout digital wings and fly, if you’ve a mind.

All of which would suggest that players who inhabit such virtual worlds might choose to leave behind the boring everyday business of working, shopping and hanging around in bars and restaurants. How wrong that supposition would be, however! (more…)

Americans are on a mission to root out their roots. Genealogical searches are becoming more of a passion than a pastime, with the spread of genealogical websites and the wider accessibility of DNA testing. People are switching off the TV and spending hours online, piecing together ever more elaborate family trees. The most widely-used service is ancestry.com, owner of genealogy.com and myfamily.com, which goes beyond root tracing into family networking. Ancestry.com claims 800,000 subscribers, and 14 million registered users. Addicts spend hundreds of hours of their own time tracing their origins, and some even buy the services of professional genealogists, at $25 to $100 an hour. Says one: “I was consumed by finding our story”. One website chief explained the compulsion: “If you’re successful in the early stages, it’s like salted peanuts. Once you start, you won’t stop”. Sources: New York Times, Pi.

As a typical part of the market research industry, consumer insight research tends to have a jargon all its own. Words are bandied about, often applied in varying and different ways, sometimes sloppily or capriciously interchanged, and certainly not always applied with clarity and consistency. (more…)