Happydog conducts what it calls "download sessions" with its observers -- several days to compare notes, retell anecdotes and share discoveries. From this kind of exchange they build commercially relevant insights -- identifying the submotivations, triggers and barriers from which clients can develop brands and products. "The really hard part in ethnography is what to do with the information in order to uncover subtle behavior," Safari explains. "It's not straightforward yes and no. We're looking for insights into what brands can build into -- how consumers might interact with brands or on certain occasions."

Darren Kemp, group brand planning director at Diageo, used ethnography in a study focusing on new product development. "We had a business requirement to understand a segment of the market we had traditionally spent less time exploring. We wanted to get closer to the reality of these consumers and their lives and specifically what and where they drink at home. For this particular project, it felt less appropriate to rely solely upon consumer recall in focus group environments and more important to get into consumers' homes to observe more closely the reality of the occasions and the motivations."

The BBC has also commissioned ethnographic studies. "The BBC uses a wide range of research techniques to keep close to audiences. It's always interested in pioneering new ways to get close," says Claire Evans, head of genre management (entertainment commissioning at the Beeb). "We saw it as a useful complement to existing techniques.

"Sometimes research results can be dry. We want new ways to get interesting information and insights into audiences to stimulate new ways of thinking. We felt that it was a technique that big brand companies were getting involved in, and so should we, though we approached it quite experimentally at first I suppose," Evans explains.

In a few cases, companies have actually embraced ethnography in its academic glory. Nokia, for instance, is paying for a doctoral student to "hang out" with young people to see how mobile technology fits into their lives.

Intel and Sapient, meanwhile, fund ongoing projects at the INCITE research centre based in the University of Surrey in the UK. One project tracks individuals and groups as they are mobile around London, trying to discover how and where they get consumer information, including digital content. Both Intel and Sapient send their designers and engineers over for workshops where the data from projects is displayed, often visually, so they can take insights into European culture back to their North American headquarters.

Edwin Colyer is a science and technology writer based in Manchester, UK.