%202.png)
How Demographica ran WhatsApp AI interviews alongside in-person ethnography for a bank's SME unit, then used the same platform to launch its first creative test.
How Demographica ran WhatsApp AI interviews alongside in-person ethnography for a bank's SME unit, then used the same platform to launch its first creative test.
In short
Demographica, a South African research and strategy agency, ran 302 WhatsApp AI interviews with SME owners beside its in-person ethnography for a bank's SME unit in early 2026, where an in-person ethnographic sample usually stops at about 20 people. In September 2026 it used Yazi to run its first creative test, in which 56 of the 61 participants who completed screening finished the final activity.
Demographica is a South African research and strategy agency. Its Labs team, led by head of anthropology Claire Denham-Dyson, is known for ethnography: spending time with people in their homes and businesses to understand how they really live and work.
That depth has a ceiling. Each in-person interview takes a researcher's day, so a typical ethnographic sample stops at around 20 people. When a bank's SME unit asked Demographica to understand owners in the beauty and community services sectors, the team wanted the depth of ethnography with a sample large enough to plan around.
In-person ethnography reaches a handful of people per study, which limits how far findings can be generalised.
Every visit means travel and a day on site, so each extra participant adds days to the project.
Clients want lived experience and numbers in the same report, and the two rarely come from the same method.
Creative testing and diary studies sat outside Demographica's toolkit, and building them in-house would take time.
For the bank study, Demographica's anthropologists ran their in-person interviews while Yazi ran a WhatsApp survey and AI interviews with a much larger group of owners in the same two sectors. The two streams were overlaid in one report, and Demographica added a Yazi section to its report template.
The voice notes added detail a tick-box misses. In one example Claire shared, an owner who ticked "I own one salon" explained in a voice note that she half-owns a second salon with her brother and uses its income to build up her own.
Two methods, one set of themes, one deliverable.
Illustrative screen showing how the conversation worked. Not a real participant.
One dot per person interviewed
The bank SME study, compared with a typical in-person ethnographic sample
Across the two sectors, 302 owners completed the WhatsApp AI interview: 221 in beauty and 81 in community services. The in-person interviews picked up sensory detail that a phone can't, while the larger WhatsApp sample showed which themes held across the sector. In both, owners talked about pride and craft.
“There were things found in the human-to-human interviews that were more sensory and wouldn't have come through on an AI platform, but there were ways of finding the links: people talking about pride, and the human insight around craft, aligned the two.”
“People don't want to see numbers on a screen. They want to hear human voices.”
In September 2026 Demographica used Yazi to run its first creative test, for a business-to-business brand whose previous creative study, run by a global research company, had taken four weeks. About 60 buyers and decision-makers worked through six activities on WhatsApp, from screening and a brand baseline to reactions to the campaign line and visuals.
Participants stayed for all six activities
Completed responses per activity
Of the 61 people who completed screening, 56 finished the final activity. Demographica researcher Joshua Streak said Yazi's voice-note summary "really backs up our final deck and findings that we sent to the client", and Demographica has since used a voice-note highlight reel from the study in its pitches.
How the partnership grew
Demographica now builds Yazi into its proposals by default, has a researcher running studies on the platform, and has written to its clients about the new methods in its toolkit.
“It's just one slide on what you guys do, but it beefs up our offering insanely.”
“It also really backs up our final deck and findings that we sent to the client.”
| In person only | With Yazi | |
|---|---|---|
| Sample | Around 20 interviews per study | 302 AI interviews beside the in-person work |
| Evidence | Rich, but hard to generalise | Lived experience with numbers behind it |
| Services | Ethnography and strategy | Plus surveys, AI interviews, diaries and creative tests |
| Creative testing | Run for clients by large research companies | Run by Demographica on WhatsApp |
| Participant effort | Book a visit or download an app | Reply on WhatsApp, by text or voice |
Demographica can now offer ethnographic depth at survey scale, creative tests and diary studies, and has used the work to pitch for new business.
Reports that pair what people say with how many say it. The bank's SME team got owners' lived reality backed by a sample large enough to plan around.
We now have a lot of other capabilities thanks to Yazi... That's basically allowed us to scale our qualitative approach. Before, we could only go to 20 customers. Now you can go to 500.
Demographica didn't replace its anthropologists. It gave them a second instrument: the in-person work still finds the sensory and the unexpected, and WhatsApp interviews show how far a finding reaches. Within a year, that combination became part of how the agency proposes, prices and sells its work.
Demographica's anthropologists ran in-person interviews while Yazi ran a WhatsApp survey and AI interviews with a larger group of owners in the same sectors. Themes from both streams were mapped against each other and reported together, so lived experience came with numbers behind it.
302 SME owners completed the WhatsApp AI interview: 221 in beauty and 81 in community services. A typical in-person ethnographic sample, as Demographica describes it, is about 20 people.
Yes. Demographica's first creative test took about 60 buyers and decision-makers through six activities on WhatsApp, from a brand baseline to reactions to the campaign line and visuals. 56 of the 61 people who completed screening finished the final activity.
Want ethnographic depth at survey scale?
Book a 30-minute demo →