The Death of Demographics
Values over age groups. Trust wins loyalty.
marketing“Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today,”7 as Malcolm X famously said,
AQ's take: Malcolm X right. Ignored education prep, future clients ditched me.
Sep 21, 2023while a product-centric marketer’s goal is to find more customers for its products, a customer-centric marketer’s goal is to find more products for its customers.
AQ's take: Finally admitting I sold products first, customers second. Burned millions that way.
Jul 1, 2023It’s not so much that customers love to say they value “trust” in a company, but when they do trust a company, they believe the company understands them at their core, looks out for their best interests, doesn’t create hassles, and is proactive.
AQ's take: Trust hits hard. Clients ghosted me when I chased sales over their real needs.
Jul 1, 2023Our core human values are the driving force behind every decision we make. They determine what we choose and why and how we behave. This is the proven scientific truth behind valuegraphics—a new way of looking at people based on what they care about.
AQ's take: Values drive my every dumb choice. Explains why I chase shiny objects.
Jul 1, 2023This is our moment to abandon demographic stereotypes and look at each other based on what we have in common, the core values that make us human.
AQ's take: Ditching demo stereotypes freed me from assuming age predicts behavior. Game-changer.
Jul 1, 2023They didn’t show up because people who resemble each other demographically have almost nothing in common.
AQ's take: Chased lookalikes for campaigns. Zero turnout. Values align, they show up.
Jul 1, 2023Demographics were, in fact, a complex system of stereotypes and expectations set down for the greater good to ensure the survival of the species, or at least of your particular tribe, village, corporation, or community.
AQ's take: Demographics boxed me into tribal thinking. Wasted years on wrong hires.
Jul 1, 2023Demographics create stereotypes that cause divisiveness and strife. Homophobia, ageism, sexism, racism, classism—these are enormous social problems that come from looking at people with a demographic lens, the way our ancestors did.
AQ's take: Ageism in my hiring? Guilty. Cost me killer talent.
Jul 1, 2023Demographics are useful, but we’ve been using them for the wrong things. We’ve been using them to profile a group of people and say, Now that we have their demographics, we understand who they are. But we don’t—we simply understand what they are. And there’s no link between what people are and what they’ll do next.
AQ's take: Thought demographics unlocked behavior. Nope. Just predicted nothing useful.
Jul 1, 2023Demographics are the Dewey Decimal System of humanity: a great way to organize people into groups based on similar outward-facing characteristics but not an indication of what those people are all about on the inside.
AQ's take: Dewey system for souls? Spot on. Organized people, ignored their fire inside.
Jul 1, 2023Marketing as we practice it today relies on accidental impact.
AQ's take: Accidental marketing? That's my entire failed agency playbook.
Jul 1, 2023demographics are useful for putting people in categories, but they are terrible at explaining who they are and why they behave the way they do. And the same is true for psychographics: they are a great way to record what people have done so far, but they don’t tell you how to impact what they will do next.
AQ's take: Psychographics logged past fails but predicted jack about next moves.
Jul 1, 2023The first fact is this: around the world, people agree roughly 8% of the time.
AQ's take: 8% global agreement? Explains every botched global campaign I ran.
Jul 1, 2023The second fact is this: people within any demographic cohort are aligned with each other, on average, 10.5% of the time.
AQ's take: 10.5% demo alignment? Why my targeted ads bombed every time.
Jul 1, 2023“Values are like fingerprints. You leave them all over everything you do.” —Elvis Presley
AQ's take: Elvis nailed it. My screw-up values stained every failed project I touched.
Jun 26, 2023