Knowing Your Audience–The Cookies Analogy

No problem, you think. You’ll just bring a thoughtful gift to make a great first impression. Hoping to get some insight into what to bring, you casually ask your date to tell you a bit about their parents. Then this happens:

“My mom is female, caucasian, between the ages of 45 and 65. Some college education. My dad is male, latino, between the ages of 45 and 65. Bachelor’s degree or higher. Together, they have three kids and a household income between $75,000 and $150,000.”

“Am I dating a robot?” You ask yourself. Intent on not spoiling your date, you play it cool.

Fortunately, you make famously good chocolate peanut-butter cookies, and basically everybody loves cookies. No problem.

Except there is a big problem.

You don’t discover the problem until later, when your date’s mom, after her first bite of your famous cookies, asks, “do these have peanuts in them?”

“Jif extra creamy!” You grin. But she isn’t grinning. She’s making oddest expression you’ve ever seen. Sort of pouty. No, puffy. Swollen!

Rather than impressing your date’s mom, you get to watch your date stab her with an epipen. Everything blows over, including your relationship.

The problem wasn’t with the cookies. They really were delicious. It was that you didn’t know anything useful about who you were making them for.

There is a huge difference between knowing your audience and knowing things about your audience.

Let’s rewind the tape. This time, when you ask your date to tell you about their parents, they reply:

“My mom’s name is Barbara. She’s a little shy but the quintessential adventurer—that’s how she met my dad, backpacking in Costa Rica. He was her guide. They travelled a lot before having me and my sisters. My dad, Martin, is really creative. He’s a studio photographer. Oh yeah, and my mom is super allergic to peanuts.”

Now you know something useful. You show up with tamales and flan. It reminds your date’s parents of their travels together. Nobody gets stabbed. Your love flourishes.

In branding and marketing, “market research” is too often cold and clinical. I get it—number impress people. But to really connect, we need to know an audience in the same way we “know” anybody else. Having this knowledge can mean the difference between major brand blunders and winning undying loyalty.

So next time you are building a brand or baking cookies, make sure to dig deep on who you’re serving.

This article is based on one I originally wrote for Vigor’s Insights blog.