Off Target

Through recent meetings with clients and agency partners I came to the realization that the perspective on how to target a market is still incredibly narrow for most.

For most, if you're targeting a 35 year old tax broker you make an ad that screams "Hey 35 year old tax broker!"But this perspective assumes that a 35 year old tax broker has no aspirations beyond their present existence and no internal vision of who they are.

Consider that in the 80s Wall Street broker scene Sun Tzu's "The Art of War" became popular reading. None of these brokers were on their way into a sword fight, but they could relate based on their vision of themselves as warriors. Thus an ad "targeting" samurai might perform better than an ad targeting a broker sitting at a desk. Even though actual samurai are unlikely to purchase our product.

A more common example is in car commercials where the details given on a car are far too complex for the layman to follow. The layman may be more interested in the car based on the perception that the car was created for the enthusiast who would understand all those things (sort of a "it's what the pros use" perception).

Though it's easy to follow, this thought isn't necessarily intuitive. We need to be careful to close this gap as we present these kind of ideas. Otherwise our clients will think we're idiots selling investment software to ninjas.