Target Market: Humans

Millennials don’t buy diamonds — what does that mean? What can I do with this information? Translation - a group of dazzlingly, diverse people born over a 20-year period don’t buy diamonds. That’s it. It’s told me nothing, that opening statement is as useful as a waterproof towel.
Oxford Dictionary definition:
Millennial/Generation Y — The generation born in the 1980s and 1990s, comprising primarily the children of the baby boomers and typically perceived as increasingly familiar with digital and electronic technology.
“Our target audience is millennials”. No it’s not, because for your (insert product/service here) it’s an age group. It’s a good start, but you need to go deeper.
I don’t know who those people are, I don’t know what drives them, their fears, what makes the happy, what upsets them, what jobs do they do, what jobs would they like to do. Nothing.
The world has changed, we have access to unlimited information, travel is easier so we are exposed to different things meaning that it’s possible that a millennial could be:
Tasha, a 26-year-old a Half Ghanaian, half German woman with diplomat parents, who grew up in Hong Kong, studied Linguistics at Harvard, now works as a Creative at FCB in Sao Paulo and is married to a Japanese architect — and that’s just the scratching the surface.
If we are going to create amazing work for clients, ideally we’d like to go at least go a little deeper.
Take me for example:
25 years’ old
Caribbean family heritage, born in the U.S, did most of my growing up in London, mother was a carer.
Occupation: Co Founder of Content Content
Education: University of Westminster
Dream Career: Running an agency remotely (working on the beach looks fun) writing novels and scripts- Why? Because I love creating things, love words, love helping people and have a lot of thought experiments in my head that I couldn’t run in real life (so I turn them into stories instead)
Innovation Adoption Cycle: Early Adopter/Early Majority (I’d like to be an Innovator but that would bankrupt me)
Hobbies: Climbing, Cycling, Creative Writing (until it’s a career) Why? Because all three activities clear my mind of noise.
Internet Usage: Daily across 3 devices.
Favourite Shows: House of Cards, Daredevil (Marvel) Sense 8.
Things I love: Creativity, Travel, Fitness
Things I hate: Lies, Ignorance, Rudeness
Me and Tasha are both millennials– see the difference?
Now I know not everyone has the funds to run expansive qualitative research to get to know every Jermaine Sarah and Tariq, and it isn’t always needed.
However, some logical thought and small scale qualitative research can go a long way to creating more accurate audience profiles of your consumers.
Audience profiling is something we as an agency are scaling so we can offer it to more clients. Any qualitative research geniuses reading this, please get in touch so we can partner up.
Until next time,
Asher

