Transformers - Colloquy

18
C O L L O Q U Y / Volume 18, Issue 1, 2010
S T R A T E G Y R E P O R T
The Perils of Pauline
The pitfalls of relying solely on “persona-marketing” segmentation
THEATRICAL PLAY PROGRAMS OFTEN start
with a section called “Dramatis
Personae,” listing the production’s
characters and describing each in
broad, thin brushstrokes. As the play
progresses, the dramatis personae
reveal to observers the depth of their
characters through their actions.
So it is—or as it should be—with the
“persona” marketing strategy that
surfaced in retail some years back
and is still employed with varying
degrees of success today. In the
persona strategy, marketers create
distinct customer profiles of typical
customers, outlining such factors
as their product preferences, the
needs and aspirations that drive
those preferences, their shopping
habits, their income ranges, their
genders, and generalizations of other
B Y C O L L E E N B E C K E R A N D D A N R I B O L Z I
pertinent factors affecting their
buying decisions with specific
retailers. Personas are even given a
first name to make them, well, more
personable. “Pauline” is an
enterprising businessperson, for
example, driven by frugality and a
do-it-yourself attitude. “Marvin” is
a corporate manager, with a bit more
budget flex, enabling him to seek
complete end-to-end solutions.
Personas were developed by
companies pioneering the
transformation from productcentricity
to customer-centricity.
Personas provided a natural, simple
approach to segmentation, customer
identification, and relevance in
response to a lack of customer
information or a limited view into
existing data. Consider, for instance,
a specialty retailer lacking a way to
identify customers and tie them to
specific purchases—the sort of datagathering
capability that a loyalty
program provides. These pioneers
leveraged this basic demographic
segmentation to rally the organization
around the customer from the
perspective of merchandising, store
operations, communications,
marketing, and so on.
A primary strength of personas lies
in breathing life into segmentation.
They enable you to begin painting a
picture of who your customer is,
particularly for those who aren’t used
to dealing in consumer research.
The downside of such picture
painting is the corner you can paint
yourself into. Personas can put a
human face on the customer, but they
can also serve as a disguising mask.
Since its introduction, persona
marketing in general has evolved
significantly. The pioneers launched
their personas with a test-and-tweak
approach, and based on their
learnings have adjusted how they
focus on and deliver customer
solutions. Other companies, after
discovering the drawbacks of
depending only on personas, began
integrating other methods of
developing customer views. Still
other customer-centricity pioneers
took two parallel paths from the
very start, developing personas and
launching a loyalty strategy.
Act I
In large part, such evolution was
necessary because relying only on
personas presents a number of
inherent dangers, among them
potentially creating stereotypes as
one-dimensional as silent movie
heroine Pauline, whose melo -
dramatic perils were portrayed in
early 1900s’ movie serials. Among
other persona perils:
Overlooking or discounting
individuals or entire segments.
Many loyal customers simply don’t
fit into broad personality-based