Friendly Farmers & Fat Words
I am pretty lucky in my choice of career – no, I don’t have a gold plated pension, there is no “career path”, but I get to work (mostly) in Ag. I get to meet farmers, farm families and people all over North America and sometimes in countries across the ocean. And my job is not just to meet and enjoy the moment, but to create a sense of understanding of their lives and what motivates them. One of the keys to achieving understanding is to recognize that we all use the same words, but we aren’t all speaking the same language.
Sometimes these insights just jump out. Sometimes it takes a friend asking a seemingly innocuous question to crystalize a thought. A short while ago, a co-worker asked me one such question: Of all the places you have been, where are farmers the friendliest? My initial response was to say “hands down, the Atlantic Provinces in Canada”. A place where we typically book only two onsite interviews per day, as it is assumed that if you visit the farm, you will be staying for a meal. Then I got to thinking. “Where have I been that hasn’t been friendly – according to their custom?”
“insight comes from understanding the cultural context of the words people use”
“Friendly” is what I call a “fat” word - a word that can convey different meanings to different people. Too often, we hear the word and think that the speaker is intending the same meaning as we assume. “Friendliness” is a great example of a fat word because the underlying meaning is a cultural phenomenon and means very different behaviors in different cultures. In Latin countries, it may mean taking time to talk about family before getting down to business. In Switzerland, just the opposite – it would be considered impolite to get “personal” too soon! Working in Japan was an eye-opening experience given the habit of providing “face saving” opportunities in any interview! We see this mirrored in a North American context as well - being “friendly” has a different cultural meaning to a Minnesota sugar beet farmer than to a Georgia peanut grower.
I think the most intriguing juxtaposition in the art of friendliness came while visiting a farm in Oklahoma. The person we were to interview was delayed off the farm and he had called home to warn his mother of our impending visit. As we sat (awkwardly) at the kitchen table she served us fresh brewed coffee and muffins straight from the oven, while carrying on a running conversation with her daughter “I’m not sure why these people are in my kitchen, do you?” A delightful combination of directness and hospitality! We must have been appropriately friendly in return – as she left a bag of those muffins in the rental car for us to find as we left several hours later!
What can we learn from these different definitions? Real insight comes from understanding the cultural context of the words people use. Labelling farmers as “friendly” provides no insight to us as marketers. That understanding comes from unpacking the particular definition of that word.
