Think Small
Demographics are bullshit. Here’s why:
The “mass market” is a concept, not a real thing. As Seth Godin eloquently explained in his book We Are All Weird, the mass market doesn’t actually buy anything, because it doesn’t exist. Individuals buy things. We are individuals: human beings with countless options first; consumers second.
Furthermore, people are naturally tribal, and tribes are not defined by demographics; they’re defined by shared values. As long as shared values are there, age, race, gender, and all sorts of other fabricated social divisions are irrelevant.
Products and services aren’t valued and appreciated only by specific “demographics” anymore. We are far too connected and far too aware of our options for the choices we make to be limited by a few controlling interests, like in the early days of television. Even more than our own personal belief systems, normalization shapes our society. What once was considered strange becomes commonplace. Albeit subtle, there is always a new normal cropping up. Because of this, there is room for all types of folks out there now — Octogenarians who love Hello Kitty, Millennials who love film cameras, boys who love wearing make up, and countless more examples of people who were once considered anomalies — and they all have spending power. The rules have changed, and it’s wise to sit up and take notice.
Start At The Core
If you have an existing brand and you want to stay relevant in changing times, it helps to revisit your origins. Why did you start doing what you are doing? What made it special? Why did it matter? Who does it speak to? Do those things still apply in today’s market, or have things changed?
By doing a little soul searching for your brand, you can learn a lot. It can remind you of why your brand mattered to begin with, and even give you ideas about how to apply that same thinking in new ways — ways of bringing the same authenticity you once demonstrated to a new audience.
Clinton C. Filson founded C. C. Filson’s Pioneer Alaska Clothing and Blanket Manufacturers in 1897 to meet the needs of prospectors passing through Seattle on their way to the Klondike Gold Rush. Filson supplied them with a variety of outdoor gear–clothing, blankets, boots and sleeping bags. Unexpectedly, the Gold Rush ended only 2 years later, taking Filson’s “demographic” along with it. Fortunately, the brand understood that they weren’t just in the business of outfitting gold miners — they were in the business of providing high-quality goods to anyone that loved the outdoors. They adapted quickly, expanding to provide gear for all kinds of outdoor-oriented activities and occupations, like hunting, fishing, and logging. This approach served them well, and their products are just as relevant to the outdoors audience today as they were when they started (though nowadays there might be a few more Creative Directors than loggers wearing Filson).
Know Your Audience
Every successful brand inevitably faces these facts: people age, kids grow up, and tastes change. Your brand might be perfect right now for kids 12 and under, but then what? How do you stay relevant to a moving target?
It helps to focus on the feeling that you offer to your audience, rather than the thing itself. A kid who grew up watching Transformers™ and playing with the action figures 20 years ago is pretty likely to want to see a Hollywood movie that revives the same feelings he had when he was a kid. Regardless of whether he still has the actual toys in his life years later, the movie evokes the feeling he loved as a child, and that feeling is worth paying for. There’s also a good chance that this kid now has kids of his own — as they watch the family-friendly film together, the cycle begins all over again.
Lego is another great example. After a horrible 2002 Christmas season (some major retailers were stuck with around 40% of their Lego stock unsold), the legendary toy company was on the brink of collapse. They needed to pivot (and quickly) if they were to survive.
At the time, Lego was faced with increasing competition from the rise of digital entertainment, and most people were convinced that they had to compete in kind. Inspired by author Martin Lindstrom, who said, “If you want to understand how animals live, you don’t go to the zoo, you go to the jungle,” Lego Group CEO Jørgen Vig Knudstorp invested in deep ethnographic studies of how kids around the world really play. These studies revealed that people (not just the ‘kid’ demographic) loved Lego even more when it was more challenging and time-consuming. Based on these findings, Lego developed and released toys and games for people much older than their established demographic. Having stared down the proverbial toilet, the brand realized that cultivating this kind of deep understanding of their audience was simply, “something we cannot afford not to do.”
It worked. In a report published in February of 2015, Lego replaced Ferrari as “the world’s most powerful brand.”
Hang With Folks That Get You
Instead of trying to reach the largest possible audience in a general way, we prefer to focus on the opposite. By speaking authentically to the smallest, most specific audience possible, you can garner true hardcore fans who really care, and that creates fertile ground for your brand to spread organically to new converts. Nothing and no one sells a product or service to new customers better than dedicated fans.
Look at Stumptown Coffee Roasters. The company was founded in 1999 by maverick entrepreneur Duane Sorenson, who is now regarded as the godfather of Third Wave Coffee in the United States. Over the next 16 years, the Stumptown brand was essentially an extension of Sorenson’s weirdo mind — no idea was too bizarre to try out, as long as it was in the service of Stumptown’s bottom line: making the best coffee in the world and loving it. The uniqueness and clarity of Sorenson’s vision propelled the company to stratospheric, industry-defining success. Widely imitated and highly influential, Stumptown established itself as an iconic brand almost entirely on instinct alone.
In 2015, Sorenson sold the company to Peet’s Coffee & Tea. Stumptown was at a crossroads. As they continued to grow and expand, the very real danger of losing their voice — and their soul — began to loom. How could they keep the vision of the original brand intact? Would it work at scale?
They asked us to step in and help develop a Brand Book given our history with the company. One part of this process was to develop an Is/Is Not list to help define their personality on paper. We wrote: “Stumptown is a scooter gang. Stumptown is not a biker gang.” Though not quite as tough as a motorcycle gang, a scooter gang is still cool (and still a gang, after all). A scooter gang has an arty weirdness to them that’s even kinda dorky — and this is a good thing. The exercise distinguished Stumptown’s character in specific and subtle ways. Combined with a list of other descriptors like this, the Is/Is Not list paints a more accurate picture, and this quirky nuance is clear to those who’ve experienced Stumptown. Defining it as “a brand for motorcycle enthusiasts” would not only have offered a limited perspective with less personality, but it would be trying too hard, too.
The scooter gang is just one example. When we remodeled Stumptown’s downtown location, we seized the opportunity to layer the audience’s experience of the brand wherever we could, in a subtle, subversive manner (conveying the right feeling, more than the right brand color, logo, or tagline). If you’d like to see more about our process on this project, check it out here.
When clients ask us about repositioning their brands with younger people, they often inquire about what type of deep demographic research and focus grouping we do. We don’t do either of these things and some clients find that disappointing. What they still want to know is: “without focus groups, how can we Jedi-mind-trick those pesky Millennials into buying our aging, outdated brand?”
The real trick is: don’t trick them. Instead, tell an authentic story to an audience who cares. Or, if you really want to speak to Millennials, offer something that is relevant to them and still true to your brand. You can’t fake it — it won’t work. Today’s bullshit meters are better than ever.
The audience at large will naturally align with your brand (or not), depending on what they value and how their own beliefs align with those of the brand. And this alignment changes faster than ever — we’re all human beings, always aging, always evolving. Thus, we are never always one thing. Let people choose you based on their ever-deepening full spectrum of emotions, and be okay when they choose something else. You don’t want to hang out with folks that don’t get you, anyway.
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This is article is the fifth installment in our series called Every Decision is a Brand Decision.
Original illustration © 2018 OMFGCO
