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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