The persona trap (They’re lying to you)

by Matt on January 17, 2010

Marketing Personas

Meet Edward. Edward is a 23 yr old son of two married professionals with high disposable income and he is 50 percent more likely to have a post secondary education. Stop thinking this way - you're deceiving yourself.

Side note: I’m not sure what I’m more embarrassed about. How long it’s been since my last post, or that for two months there’s been a giant picture of a seven patty Whopper on the front page.  Also, mattscottnelson.com placed 5th in this year’s Canadian Blog Awards in the ‘professional living’ category.  Thanks.

Your personas are lying to you…

Wikipedia says that personas are “fictional characters created to represent the different user types within a targeted demographic that might use a site or product“.  Since popularized in 1999, product managers and UX professionals have used personas to help them build more relevant products. Based on the success that personas were enjoying on the pruduct side, marketers  embraced the concept to help them build the associated brands.  Unfortunately, we took the easy path and began relying too heavily on them, allowing face value persona attributes to define our brands. When used correctly, personas are a nice starting place – a signpost we can glance back to check our work against.  In my experience though, that signpost easily becomes a crutch and that starting place becomes too comfortable to leave.

The truth is this:  Persona’s (from a marketing perspective) do little more than mitigate risk. After all, if marketing is building brands around personas that are born from good market research, the organization can sleep at night knowing that the brand is safe. Wrong.  Risk is a necessary component of building great brands .  Or, in the words of Oscar Wilde: “An idea that does not involve risk, does not deserve to be an idea”

The problem with personas is that they don’t adequately consider the most important variable in marketing – human psychology.  This is exactly what psychologist and social researcher Hugh Mackay meant when he said, “everything you need to know about advertising comes from how people fall in love”. If we’re going to use personas, it’s imperative that we explore the human behavior behind them.

Underneath the description of Edward (above), we see a 23 year old male who is desperate for adventure who is tormented by the reality that his window for adventure may be closing.  We  see a young man whose instincts to commit, protect and care are in violent and constant conflict with his urge to explore the world around him.  This is exactly why the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life” is so popular across generational lines – it’s about the basic and instinctive desires of a guy in his young twenties.  The goal is to build brands that resonate with Edward on that level.

Building great brands is a fine balance between art, human behavior and research (personas).  The core of a great brand lies deep underneath the surface of a persona.  If the goal is to build great brands that connect, last and impact lives – personas are not enough.  Personas want to lull you into mediocrity.  Don’t let them.

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The Windows 7 Whopper

by Matt on October 22, 2009

No words of mine could add any value.  Unfortunately, this ad is real.

Windows 7 Whopper.  Sorry, only availible in Japan

Windows 7 Whopper. Sorry, only availible in Japan

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On Launching Google Wave

by Matt on October 22, 2009

Google Wave

*Note:  If you’re not sure what Google Wave is – watch this 1 min video to find out.

Earlier this week, I watched a wonderful talk by Rory Sutherland on changing perceptions.  In it, Mr. Gallagher tells a story loosely attributed to the king of Prussia.  After discovering the potato, the king returned home eager to introduce an additional vegetable to his kingdom.  However, the people didn’t take to the potato.  After brute force had little affect on the the people, the king tried a new strategy.  He set up a royal potato garden outside the palace and instructed his guards to pretend to ‘watch over’ the garden.

The result?  An underground potato theft and growing operation developed and the potato caught on like wild fire.  The king changed the perception of the potato from necessary obligation, to exclusive indulgence – and we all love exclusive.

Back when Google launched Gmail, it used the same tactic.  Leak the news to influential press and then hand out invitations to an exclusive list – while the ‘unworthy masses’ chomped at the bit to get invited.  The strategy worked – just like the kings potatoes, Gmail caught on like wild fire.

After getting it right with Gmail, Google made a mistake that so many of us are guilty of:  It viewed past success as a formula and then applied that formula to a future problem.

The reason why I think the strategy is a mistake for Google Wave is because the application is only useful if you’re ‘waving’ with others.  Google gave out 100,000 invites and in doing so created 100,000 islands each with one stranded person.  Of course this wasn’t a problem with the Gmail launch because we can send and receive email with our contacts regardless of their email platform.

Here’s how I would have tweaked the launch strategy:

Add one last area to the invite request form:  “Google Wave is more fun when you have people to ‘Wave’ with.  Please select an area of interest and  we’ll add you to a pool of people who share your interests so you can fully test Wave together, and hopefully make some really great connections in the process”.

Dear Google:  Adding this one small wrinkle in the launch not only yields far more valuable test results, but also gives back to your early adopters by facilitating new connections and relationships between them.

Being stranded on an island is a lot more fun, if you’re stranded there with friends.

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Happy 50th!

October 18, 2009

Just under one year ago, I decided to start this blog.  People ask me why I do it. It’s not self marketing, its not about career advancement, and it’s not with grandiose visions of becoming a pro-blogger.  It’s simply this:

The process of building this blog has taught me one important lesson that will [...]

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You Can’t Trick Your Customers

October 16, 2009

My wife and I are purchasing a home.  An inevitable part of that process is calling around to find the best mortgage rate we can.  Below  is a paraphrased version of a real conversation that I had many, many times this week:
Me: “Hi mortgage guy, I’m purchasing a home and looking for the best rates [...]

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The Beginning, Middle and End

October 9, 2009

We tend to view our businesses as a collection of silos – direct marketing, sales, accounting, finance, creative, customer services ect.   However, our customers don’t.  To our customers, our brand is a continuum – a story.
Think of the novels we’ve read:

If a story has a poor beginning, we abandon it
If the middle lacks punch [...]

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Cups and Balls

October 3, 2009

Confession:
Years ago on a busy side street in Paris, I fell for the classic tourist scam -  ‘the shell game‘.  During a long day of city wandering, I noticed three or four guys kneeling around another guy who was shifting a little ball around under three cups.  Curiously, I watched for ten minutes. The players [...]

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Letters to a Marketing Student. Part Four: Study the Greats

September 20, 2009

This is the fourth and final posts in a series called ‘Letters to a Marketing Student’. (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)
I’m willing to wager that you’ll make it through your entire marketing degree without hearing the names of the great marketing minds of the past.  Given how potent of a learning tool it can [...]

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Letters to a Marketing Student. Part Three: Your Professors Are Everywhere

September 13, 2009

This is part three in a series of posts called ‘Letters to a Marketing Student’. (Part 1, Part 2)
During the last two years of my marketing degree two significant movements were underway online that would go on to represent the biggest shift in marketing thinking since the birth of television:  The eruption of the blogosphere [...]

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Letters to a Marketing Student. Part Two: Step Out of the College Bubble

September 10, 2009

This is part two in a series of posts called ‘Letters to a Marketing Student’. (Part 1)
The ‘College Bubble’ is this: Class, sleep, study, party, eat, repeat.  It’s accepting the lie that four years of university incubation is necessary before applying your craft in the real world.  This school year, challenge yourself to step outside [...]

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