Why Data Is Diminishing Marketers’ Ability To Understand Their Audiences

Data Blinders, Calvin Klein's Couch, Ad Rodeo Anvil Awards

Author

Pedro Porto Alegre
January 24, 2024

In this edition:

  • Column: Why Data Is Diminishing Marketers’ Ability To Understand Their Audiences

  • Inspiration: Calvin Klein’s Legendary Red Corduroy Couch

  • Upcoming: The Ad Rodeo Anvils Awards Deadline

Column: Why Data Is Diminishing Marketers’ Ability To Understand Their Audiences

Oftentimes I’ll see campaigns or marketing initiatives in which the target audience isn’t clear.

This is far more common than one might think, here’s why:

  • Audience studies typically only take place once per year, more commonly taking place once every 3 years. This is because when marketers write their brand strategies, they’re looking at 3-5 year time-spans;

  • When a marketer begins writing the brief for their creative agency, they feel quite confident in who their target is, therefore not spending too much time double checking assumptions;

  • Agencies oftentimes get their target audiences from their clients, therefore very little effort goes into verifying assumptions, as the bulk of the work tends to fall on uncovering human, category, and brand “truths”;

  • Meaningful audience research is expensive. It takes a lot of work to come up with hypotheses about your brand, which oftentimes gets passed around from brand manager to brand manager every 18 months or so. And primary research now is no longer comprised of just running focus groups — clustering statistical analyses around interests, behaviours, consumption habits, and more take a whole life of its own after primary research is completed.

All of this is to say that marketers today have more data about their audiences than ever before, yet seem to know them far less than in decades prior.

Data Blinders

While the explosion of data available online has largely been a boon for brands across the world, marketers’ over-reliance on quantitative analysis completely overlooks elements of human behaviour that simply cannot be effectively measured.

Psychoanalysis used to be a major resource in marketers’ toolboxes. When thinking through how their products were consumed, agencies used to go far deeper into what drives people, as opposed to the mechanics of driving behaviour.

This is seemingly a small difference, but it has consequential repercussions. What you often see today are strategists that know all the ins and outs of Google Adwords, LinkedIn lead-gen forms, and SEO optimization, but what’s missing here is the sensibility to understand human-behaviour.

You see, how to move a person through the marketing funnel is one thing; understanding their motivators is another. Take for example the series Mad Men when they were crafting a campaign for Heinz Beans.

For several episodes the series depicts a classic conflict between agency and client — creative shows the work, the client struggles to communicate what doesn’t feel right. Then one day, one of the creatives (spoiler alert!) lands on an universal insight: for millennia moms around the world have been feeding their children beans at the “dinner table”, from the middle ages all the way to the likely future on the Moon. This is because “some things never change”.

While expensive datasets could have pointed the agency towards this creative territory, it’s likely that it would have instead uncovered a bunch of facts about moms and their children — but not this emotional ritual that remained constant across generations.

This last “creative leap” is what I believe to be largely missing in most campaigns.

The Creative Leap

Data is incredibly important to gather facts. But facts don’t necessarily add up to the truth. Let me explain.

Facts are objective statements and data points that are verifiable and concrete. For example, $19.99 is a whole lot cheaper than $100, 10g of sugar is better for your health than 20g of sugar, men consume more beer than women, and so on.

Truths, on the other hand, are subjective. They refer to the impression something creates in people’s minds. But lived experience can distort said impression, therefore what’s true for one person could very well be completely false to another. For example, a $100 product implies a higher standard than a $19.99 product if you’re looking for quality, 20g of sugar is preferable to a triathlete than 10g, beer and sports go together no matter the gender, and so on.

These subtle differences constitute major distinctions in how one might choose to position their product had they only leaned on quantitative research.

While psychographic analysis is taught in all business schools, there is a lack of followthrough in the real world on how to go about understanding their customers from that vantage point. Understanding your audiences’ motivators, pain points, and values are just as important as understanding their demographics and media consumption habits.

Design Audience

A common pitfall marketers commit is looking at the primary target as whom they’d like to talk to first, and the secondary audience as whom they’d hope to reach as a consequence of going after the former.

But the secondary audience should instead be seen as the next level in decision making when engaging with your product. For example, if you’re marketing a toy for children, then your primary target are kids and the secondary target will be their parents.

Sounds simple, right?

But here’s the caveat — who you target might not necessarily be the same people whom evangelize your product. These die-hard fans are who are known as your design audience.

The design audience serves as your compass to anchor your brand truths around. For example, if you sell Apple Macbooks your design audience should be graphic designers, because they’re the gatekeepers that validate the quality and reliability of your product promise.

Now let’s take this example one step further and say that you want to drive Macbook sales for back-to-school season in September, meaning that your primary audience will be students, and your secondary audience will be their parents. You see, the primary and secondary audience become largely circumstantial based on the objectives you’re trying to achieve.

But one thing you cannot compromise on is the authenticity of your communications, which is shaped around your design audience.

Quit Overthinking, Start Validating

Sometimes we forget that the people we’re marketing to are not that different from us.

I don’t mean that in the sense of socioeconomic status, political affiliations, or geographical location — I mean in the human sense.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is as relevant today as it was back in the 1940s, when it was first published. Humans haven’t changed that much in the past one million years and likely won’t change all that much in the next a million years.

We still long for food, water, and shelter; we still fear the worst no matter the circumstances; we still need to feel like we belong somewhere; we still drive for achievement and praise; we still need to believe in something bigger than ourselves.

These are all rich creative territories to make sense of your audience. Therefore, starting with your gut and then validating your assumptions with data will take you further (and much faster) than the other way around.

Attempting to validate our laborious quantitative findings with qualitative assumptions is the surest path to leading with implicit bias.

Think like a human, validate like a marketer.

Inspiration: Calvin Klein’s Legendary Red Corduroy Couch

The best part of this ad came after the ad itself.

After 2 weeks of non-stop debate about the CK+Jeremy Allen White rooftop underwear ad, the infamous couch used on the shoot went up for sale on Facebook Marketplace for $0.

This was the listing that garnered tons of earned media:

"Guess what? I've got the hottest seat in town—the legendary red corduroy couch that a famous celebrity chef (in not-so-many clothes) sat on in the commercial everyone’s talking about... Long story short, my husband (who works for an agency that works with Facebook) asked me ‘why don’t you list it on Facebook Marketplace?’ So here it is! Know there’s lots of fans out there who’d love to get their hands on it. Must be willing to pick up in New York."

That's how you tie a bow on it.

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The Ad Rodeo Association is the celebration of creative excellence in the Prairie provinces. Each year, Ad Rodeo provides creative professionals the opportunity to meet, talk, learn, mentor and celebrate what they do through several events that culminate in the Anvil Awards. The Anvil Awards represents the special talent and effort it takes to be recognized by your peers for creating the very best.

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS IS JAN 31, 2024 – 12:00 AM MST

Good luck!

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