Do you ever feel like your brand is just another face in the
crowd? Well, today, I have a super special guest on the podcast to talk
about how branding and marketing are joining forces and and and and
the best part, why we are ditching the outdated label
of underrepresented. That's the reason I wanted to talk
with Chloé Nwangwu on the podcast today. But first, hi. Welcome.
If this is your first time, we are the Mindful Marketing Podcast. This is episode
number 327, and I'm all about helping
you scroll less and create more impact with the work that
you do. And today's guest, Chloé Nwangwu,
welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me.
I'm very excited to talk with you. When I saw this,
topic come across my desk, so to speak, I was like, oh,
yes. We need to talk about this. But I wanna talk a little bit about
your background first. How did you get into branding
and marketing? Yeah. So this is a funny story.
I will try to keep it brief, because I didn't go to school for
marketing or branding or business or any of
this. I was trained in international
conflict resolution and mediation. So essentially, I was
trained to facilitate peace negotiations in the context of civil
war. So that's just a light light
study topic. Totally light. Totally light. So
basically, social psychology in super high stakes situations.
Yeah. And I got into the work that I do
now because I noticed
that folks who should have been
at the negotiating table, in order for those
negotiations to actually be sustainable and last
past 5 or 10 years, some of these folks weren't even getting in the
door. And from a practitioner standpoint, that was a problem,
especially since my speciality was on
using what we know about the human mind and
human relationships and the ways those things interact, using
what we know about those things to make these settlements more likely to
happen and more likely to last. Right. That was my focus. And so
the fact that people who really should have been in these rooms weren't, that was
a problem for me. So I started investigating and looking into, okay,
why why is this happening even in a place like, you know, at
the UN where everyone is very educated and has the
best intentions and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, How can this sort
of thing still be happening? And how
can we fix it? And the realization that I came
to at the end of the day was brands. Brands is how we
fix it. That every nation state that I
have ever worked with, that I have ever liaised with, they all have brands.
And those brands teach others how to treat you. So there are
certain reasons that we don't make certain moves with, like, Germany or France or
the US. Right? Because their brands have informed us, have taught us how
they'll respond. And so what I
learned from that time of research and study and
investigation was that I could and others could
use brands for the purpose of getting folks in the door. Right?
To teach others how to treat the folks that they'd been
overlooking before. So that's how I got into this
work. Oh, that is so fascinating. So you
studied this, like, liaison, you know, we're
we're helping people communicate. We're studying human psychology. When did you start
your business out of all of that? Yeah. So my business
officially started, I wanna say I'm probably in year 7 right
now. And so I'll say that
my business had already sort of existed
in some form by the time this research
began. But at the time it wasn't really
brand focused. Right? Like, that's that's not what the focus was because that you know,
I hadn't come to that answer. I was working on
the civil war in Yemen. And so I will say this was
probably I wanna say this was 2019, 2020.
It was a very junior member of this team, so I cannot stress how junior
a member I was on this team. And, we were
brought in by an ethnic minority in Yemen who was
not yet a part of the peace process. And our job was to make
them part of the peace process. Right? And they were a pretty sizable chunk of
the population. So the fact that they weren't was a problem, right, again,
from an efficacy standpoint. And it
was really in the process of making this happen. And
yes, spoiler alert, they did end up becoming part of the peace process,
but it was as we were making that happen that my
business really took that turn and said, oh, it's
brands. And we need to be looking at them from a scientific
perspective. That's what's going on. It was during that period in
time. Yeah. Okay. That's so fascinating. And I know one
of the questions that often comes up when we start talking about branding
is is how is that different from marketing? Like, what what are the
key differences between branding and marketing? Yeah. Yeah. So
what I would say is that marketing is when you are
leveraging memorable assets to tell people about what
you do, and then it's also the process of
refreshing people's memories of, of that. Right? That's what I would
consider marketing to be. Branding is the
development of those memorable assets. And I realize as
I say this now, that might actually help to back things
up and actually give the definition of what a brand is. And I
know that this seems like it would be super elementary and
also super annoying because there are a million
definitions of what a brand is. Right? But from a scientific perspective,
I think it's interesting to look at this. A brand is
simply a system of ideas that influences the
behavior of other people. Okay.
Said another way, it's a kind of influential real estate in
someone's head. And so when we are talking about
branding, right? We want to understand
that in order for a brand or really
anything, but in order for the system of ideas to be
influential, to influence behavior, at
the very minimum, it has to be memorable. It
has to been remembered at some point in time. Right?
And that's where these memorable assets come in because they
serve as sort of memory anchors. Every time you see or
hear or interact with a brand's branding or their
memorable assets, you are if the branding is doing its
job, you are reminded of that system of ideas.
Right? So that's that's what that's
what the interplay there is. And I'd say
it's a bonus brand strategy then in that
situation. Brand strategy is sort of the development of that
system of ideas that those assets refer to.
Okay. That's so interesting. So for those listening, y'all
know I've gone through the rebranding process. And
I feel like you really nailed down that
definition of it because there's so much sculpted
into this rebrand that really is, like, me ideating on
how I want to be perceived Mhmm. And how I
assume other people will perceive me based on, you know, visual
cues, my stories that I tell, the words that I use. Yep.
Even some of, like you know, I I tend to use, like, a lot of
Internet culture references. I literally will say the word hashtag
sometimes when I'm like, that's hashtag awesome. You know, things like that where it's
like it's the whole vibe that it that I've packaged up.
And so just being, like, really clear on that has
been like, it's it's a painful process. Honestly,
like, I never wanna do it again. Yeah. It it
absolutely can be. It absolutely can be. And that's I mean, and
I'm really glad that you brought up the idea of perception. Right? Because
that's sort of the other side of, of brand strategy, I would
say, right? That you are trying to develop a plan for bridging
the gap between that system of ideas
and the stakeholders that exist in the ecosystem around you. Right?
Yeah. And so in order to do that, yeah, you're absolutely
leveraging, influencing, shaping
perception, the impressions that folks have of you, because that's going to be
required. That's going to be the foundation, the soil for the
influence of that system of ideas needs to have in order to be effective.
Yeah. Okay. So do you have an example of, like, a
really strong brand and what that looks like? Yeah.
Okay. I there's so many examples that I can give. The ones that that
came to mind immediately, the ones that are making me laugh right now are Jake
from State Farm Okay. Yep.
And, the Doritos logo. Now
I know that that's kind of unusual. This looks to be like, not Beyonce, not
blah, blah, blah. Okay. Work with me. Give me some rope. Okay.
So Jake from State Farm, for those who are unfamiliar, is
this guy who ostensibly is an agent
at State Farm. Right? And he shows up in all of their commercials.
And he's been a part of their branding for over
a decade at this point. They there was an an origin
story. There was, like, a literal baton toss to, you know,
another actor who's playing Jake from State Farm. And now we have, like, the
younger, cuter, more racially ambiguous guy who's
currently playing Jake from State Farm. Okay? So, like, someone knew what they
were doing. Right? The first Jake from State Farm
commercial was so memorable, was so
well done that, goodness,
That people still associate it
with State Farm and that's remember when I mentioned that a brand's
branding serves as a mental anchor, right? Anytime
someone sees your branding, you know that that
branding is doing a good job if they immediately think
of your brand. Yeah. Jake from State Farm is one of those.
Right? I I remember that I was watching the
review of a movie that I would never watch, and I happened to
see the actor who plays Jake from State Farm in, like, one of the screen
captures. And I said out loud,
apropos of nothing, to a room of strangers,
Is that Jake from State Farm, like, actually said this out loud? Right? And
that's the reaction that you want people to have when they see your various branding
assets. Right? That's a really, really
strong piece of branding. Right? Yeah.
Doritos logo? We could talk about that another time. Does
the same job. Did the same thing. Yeah. Yeah. It the all of these
examples are so memorable. I think about, the flow
lady from Yes. Exactly. From Progressive. From Progressive. Yeah.
Or even the duck or, like, Aflac. Like Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
Like, why do we know all of these things is because it the anchor. I
love that you said that word anchor. So when I'm thinking about anchors, what
are some examples of branding anchors? Like, what are like,
especially when I think about the people who are listening to this podcast, you know,
service providers, course creators, marketers, like,
what are the anchors that we need to think about incorporating into our brand? Yeah.
So, honestly, the answer I'm about to give is gonna suck,
and I'm sorry. It depends. It really does depend. But
a good, model that you can use to sort
of think this through are our senses.
Right? You want to have at least one set of
assets that deal with what we can see. Right? And folks,
when folks are thinking about branding, they're usually thinking, oh, a logo and a
color palette and typeface and, like, all of these things. Right? That's one
modality. That's one modality of branding. Right? Then
you want to think about stuff that we can hear. Right?
Sometimes folks do that with taglines and, like a good
neighbor. Right? Jingles. Right? Things like that. Right?
Folks who are going really deeply into this then can look into
things that we can smell. Right? Especially if you have a physical
location, things that we can touch and feel when
you send the package. Right? Like, how does the box feel?
How does the product, you know, like, x things like that. Right? So if you
look at our different sensory modalities and you can
come up with reasonable anchors, right,
memory anchors for at least 2, but like
stretch to do 3 of them, then you're in pretty good shape.
Yeah. Okay. Beautiful. I love that. One of the things that
always comes up too when I think about branding is this concept
of, creating a story line. And you mentioned this
with the Jake character, how there's an origin story and there's a passing
of baton. So when we're thinking about creating
or building stories in our marketing, what are some of the things we should ask
ourselves as we're trying to decide if this is a story that
lends to branding or are we just kinda having fun? Yeah.
That's a really good question. So the thing about stories is
that they are a tool. They're
a tool that well, as as far as we
know so far with the science, I have to, like, add all of the possible
caveats. Right? Like, given what we currently know about the human
brain, many of us are
predisposed to processing things
as stories. Right? This is why they're used so often. This is why they're such
a useful tool. Right? At the end of the day, we are in the business
of behavior change. Right? No matter who we are. Whether or not that's
getting someone to go from not buying from us to buying from
us, voting to not voting, or vice
versa. Right? Whatever it happens to be. We're in the business of behavior change.
What we want to be able to do is to motivate
that behavior change. And so
if the storytelling that you are doing
beat for beat for beat is contributing
to and pushing forward motivationally
the various stakeholders that surround your brand, then that's
something that you wanna do. Then you know that you're doing a good job. Then
you know that you should be storytelling, and you're not just having
fun. And I know that that's a bit abstract, but
it honestly really does depend on the kind of brand that we're talking about and,
and what it is they're trying to accomplish. I'll give, I'll give a
small concrete example to, to help here.
Something that a lot of folks will do
is they will develop what are called sort of category
entry points, right? And a category entry point
is essentially a scenario within which someone might
consider using or leveraging your brand. Right?
And this is why I said that we're in the business of behavior change, right?
Because in order to change someone's behavior, like I said before, we've gotta be
memorable. And the reason for that is because when
someone sits down to make a decision, what they're actually doing
is they're pulling up their shortlist of candidates and saying, okay, which seems like
the best? And they're picking 1 and then they're going with it. Right?
And so you want your storytelling to support that process. That's
where category entry points come in. So if you're
if you're going to try and leverage storytelling, I would
suggest starting there, starting with a category entry point.
What is a scenario within which someone might leverage your
brand? Tell a story from that particular frame of
reference and make sure that you are,
as I said, beat for beat for beat, managing
and leveraging and guiding their motivations
towards the behavior change you're trying to have happen. So that's what I will say
on that. It's a very wide complicated topic, but Yeah.
I hope that helps. No. It's super fascinating. And I think
the words that we use are so important to help with
that decision making process. And one of the words you used when you,
when we were kind of, like, planning out this episode is this term
underrepresented. Mhmm. And I do see it a lot.
That term and the term gosh. I can't think of the other one that I'm
thinking of right now. Underrepresented, is the main one.
And so when I think about the term underrepresented, you talk
about moving away from this idea. Can you
talk to us a little bit more about why you're on this
mission? Yeah. Yeah. So honestly, it
is because underrepresentation and a
lot of the other language that we use to discuss that phenomenon
are actually just symptoms. Right? And
and I'll take you back to the example that I brought up with the the
the civil war in Yemen. Right? And the folks who weren't even
getting in the door. Right? Yeah. They were an
underrepresented ethnic minority. Right? But the fact
that they were underrepresented was not why they weren't getting through the door. It was
just a symptom of they're not getting through the door. Right?
And when we use the term underrepresented, what that
does is a lot of things, but it it, one, pretends that this
is just a scenario that happened to be the case. Right? I don't know
how it happened to be the case that folks became underrepresented, but it just so
happens to me. Right? But there's no active doer.
There's no active agent when we're talking about underrepresentation.
And then on top of that, it puts the impetus on the folks who
are underrepresented to fix the problem. Right?
So underrepresented has a lot of issues with
it and actually contributes a lot of harm.
And for folks who are interested in reading more about this, I do have an
article in the Harvard Business Review that I wrote about it, and I can sort
of include that in the resource page that will be linked, I'm sure, in the
show notes. And so that's
that's why I feel like we need to move away from that term in
terms that are like it. And I know I'm jumping
in jumping jumping the insert appropriate
metaphor here, but, but that's why
I like the term under recognized instead.
Ah, okay. That that yeah. That was gonna be my next question is, you know,
if we're not saying underrepresented, under
recognized is a good replacement. And I think too,
underrecognized, when I hear that, it
does feel like it could be situational as
well. Yeah. So talk to me more about using the
term underrecognized instead of underrepresented.
Yeah. So one of the things that I love about the term under recognized is
that it allows us to say, yep. There's an active agent here. Right? There is
someone doing the under recognizing. Right? And that also
means that the folks with the power to actually
shift the situation are now in the position to do so.
Right? Because they're like, oh, I'm under recognizing someone. So now my
behavior needs to change. So that's one thing I love about it, right?
That it puts the impetus where it needs to be. It also
gets us to focus on behaviors rather than, you know,
passive scenarios. And on top of that,
it points to this reality, which is really at the
center of all the work that I do. And the reality is
this, that our attention is not neutral.
We have been all of us have been conditioned
to overlook and underappreciate the
contributions and ideas of certain kinds
of people. Right? And from a mechanical standpoint, what that means is
that our attention is allocated in discriminatory
ways as the status quo. And so often what
that looks like is certain kinds of
people like that ethnic minority in Yemen or, you know, folks like
you and me. Right? It'll almost be like you
have an invisibility cloak on and, like, not in the fun way.
Right? Sometimes you want an invisibility cloak, right, so that you can go
off and do all sorts of fun stuff. But not when you're trying to run
a business. Right? Not when you're trying to change the world,
not when there's a civil war going on and the
fate of your nation is in the balance.
And under recognition is happening everywhere all at
once in all of those scenarios, big and small. I find this
conversation fascinating because on one
hand, it's a little bit of a relief to be like, oh, right.
There are instances where, you know, take for
example, people of color, black and brown skin can
feel under recognized. Right?
But on the other hand, I go, well, what's a gal to do about it?
You know? Like, what do we what do we do with this newfound information?
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's my life's
work. Like, hi. Right?
I casually say it all in the next 10 minutes. You
know, MBD, it's fine. I got it. We could do this.
So, honestly oh, boy.
I would say you wanna tackle under recognition
and its causes and its costs
in a few ways. And under there are sort of two
sides to the underrecognition coin. Right? There is the cause of
underrecognition. I call these visibility biases,
and these are the cognitive biases that allocate our attention in
discriminatory ways. Right? And so part of what
we've gotta do is neutralize those, address
those. Right? And often
what that looks like when I am working with clients
is first, we've gotta make sure
that your platform is not just memorable, but it's
also influential, right? It's based on motivation. And when
I talk about your platform, all that I mean by that is your
premise about how the world can and should be different and your
positioning, which is just what makes your
premise distinct. Right? So take that and all
your memorable assets together, and that's your platform. We've got
to make sure that those things are motivationally based so that they can be
influential. That's the first thing. And then
the second thing I would say, and this sort of gets into
the other side of the under recognition coin. The second thing
that I would say is then that we've got to focus on what
I call your circle of recognition. Right? And
that's just fancy talk for your network. Sure. Right? But it's
your network structured around the very specific behavior,
namely recognition and understanding that your
network can be designed towards certain
behavioral outcomes, literally designed. I mean that in a literal
sense. The stakeholders can be selected and designed into it.
The structure of their relationships with each other can be designed.
Right? Like the actual geometric shape of
your network contributes to the outcomes that you're getting right
now. There are whole scientific traditions, network science
being one of them, that are dedicated to this. Right? And this is how I
address that. So that's sort of the second thing. Then I'll pause
here to talk about the other side of the under recognition coin,
which is what it costs to be under recognized. I call that
the invisibility tax. And the
invisibility tax, it's the extra bit of
time, energy, money, resources, frankly, that
are, I'll be honest, extorted from under
recognized folks in order for them to be visible at all. And especially
for them to be as visible as their peers who enjoy more environmental
protections, let's say. And we need
to neutralize those as well because the
invisibility tax is what is actually putting that
gap between folks who are under recognized
and folks who are leveraging the same tactics and strategies
and tools and blah blah blah, but are leagues ahead.
Right? The invisibility tax is at the crux of why.
And so we address the invisibility tax
again by doing those first two things that I mentioned, but then adding a third
element. And that third element, I call it your attention
management system. Right? We've got to make sure
that all of the stakeholders that are required for your
success, that we are able to gain, maintain,
and translate their attention predictably,
understanding that that's gonna look different depending on which stakeholder
we are talking about and the motivations that they hold. And
so your attention management system, a, has to
exist and b, needs to be multifaceted and able
to, like, maintain that
multitude. So, yeah, that's in a
nutshell, my life's work.
And Yeah. That's I mean, this is
like, my my brain is, like, spinning in a 1000000 different directions. And
one of the things that always comes up for me is probably
something that's just deeply personal. I have no idea if I'm projecting or not. Maybe
you could tell me. Sure. But sometimes I find in this so if I'm
gonna use your language too Mhmm. In this,
the the network, part
of my tax that I have to pay to get ahead feels
a little bit like I am the token one. Oh, girl.
Yes. And, I don't know if this is just me. This
is just me. I just sometimes feel like, oh, I'm the only got it. I
know my role here. How what do I like, I don't know how to do
that. I usually look at those situations as an opportunity
and and just take it and run with it. But there's still that piece in
the back of my mind where I'm like, you know, do I belong here? Should
I be in this room? If my skin were a different color, would
I even be considered? What's what's a gal to do about that? Yeah.
Yeah. So what I will say to this is your instinct is a 1000%
correct. That is actually in fact, one of the facets of the
invisibility tax. Okay. It's the not only
being like an only and a token. Right? But there's this
sort of validation paradox, which is what I've taken to calling it, where
you are in this space. You are made
very visible, but then you are not actually given the
support or structural things that you need in
order to execute on the very visible role that you've
suddenly been given. Right? And so often this looks like
someone who is very visible, but they don't have a lot of power to
change things or open the door behind them, or, you
know, what have you. And then people sort of wink
knowingly if that person doesn't remain in that space.
Right? And honestly, this brings me
back to your circle of recognition. Right? Your depending on this opportunity that you have
gotten. Right? Do
You're depending on this opportunity that you have gotten, right?
Do you know who your advocates are in
that room? Do you have any advocates in that room? Do you
know who your mediators are? Right? The folks who are directly
connecting you to opportunities. Did you know the
gatekeeper on your way in? Right? The person who's standing
between you and that particular opportunity that you now have. Right?
And awareness of these stakeholders and their motivations.
And furthermore, a relationship with those folks
allows you to neutralize sometimes and
circumnavigate in other cases, facets of the invisibility
tax. Right? Because when you have that understanding, when you
have that knowledge, right, when you have those relationships,
then you're able to say, Hey, I'm kind of the
only person in here to that one advocate
who might be better positioned to say something about it than you are. Right?
Or, hey, I I think that
this room might benefit from more perspectives like this. You might say to that gatekeeper
who was standing between you and this perspectives like this. You might say to that
gatekeeper who was standing between you and this opportunity to begin with. Right? So it
all it all depends, but that circle of recognition is going to be really key.
And that's Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So I'm curious about the the
flip side of that. So let's say there is an advocate or a gatekeeper in
this kind of circle of influence and, gatekeeper in this kind of circle of
influence, and, they're, you know, on their own journey to recognize those who previously have
gone under recognized. Mhmm. How do they
go about it without,
you know, creating this feeling of of tokenism or
or feeling, superficial in the ways that they're making their
decisions? Yeah. So there are a couple of
things here. So what what I'll do is I'll speak about
this generally while also
narrowing the scope and talking about this in a branding and
marketing context as well. So I'll sort of like feed 2 birds with 1
scone, let's say. And so what I what I tend to suggest to
folks who are like, oh, okay. Under recognition is a thing. Got it. And I
can contribute to making it less of a thing. Amazing. How do I do that?
Right? In the branding and marketing context, one of the first things I tell people
is stop using ideal client avatars. I'm pro this.
I'm very pro this. Yeah. And and so what I'm
what I mean by this and, like, why this connects
more largely to what we're talking about is because an
ideal client avatar is just us as folks who are
in this particular industry. It's just us
segmenting the world demographically and psychographically.
Right? So for those who are unfamiliar, demographics are like census level
data, age, gender, race, that sort of thing.
Psychographics are like hobbies, preferences, affiliations.
Right? So what ideal client avatars do is they segment
the world into those groups, and then they invite us
to make assumptions about human beings based off of those factors. Right?
Which is just, you know, not what we wanna do
Right. At all. But especially if
we're thinking about saying like, hey. Let's stop under recognizing
certain kinds of people and experiences. Right? Because it's those
very assumptions that lead to the under recognition
that we're talking about in the 1st place. And so ideal client avatars,
like, from a marketing and branding perspective, they reinforce underrecognition.
But even just from, like, a conceptual
standpoint, they are problematic in that they reinforce
as well. So that's what I would say. And for those who I'm sure are
listening to this and they're like, hey, wait, wait, wait, woah, woah, woah, woah.
Right? Like, what do you mean? How are we supposed to
get anything done that right? Like, I get it. I get it. I get it.
I get it. Riddle me this. Riddle me this.
If we are in the business of behavior change and we are trying to change
people's behavior, then why are we relying on
information that doesn't tell us really anything about what would
motivate that behavior change in the first place? Yeah. K. Because
someone's race isn't going to tell me what's gonna motivate their behavior change.
I can make some assumptions. Someone's age isn't gonna tell me what's
gonna motivate their behavior change. I can make some assumptions,
though. Someone's preference of Hulu over
Netflix is not gonna tell me. The fact that they
really like grapefruit seltzer is not gonna tell me what's
gonna motivate their behavior change. And that's even if I'm selling grapefruit
seltzer. Yeah. Right? Like, yeah, I know that they like grapefruit seltzer,
but that's not gonna tell me what's gonna get them to buy more of
that if that's the behavior change I'm trying to make happen.
Right? So on top of, like, reinforcing these things that we're
like, we maybe don't want that to happen anymore.
They're also not as useful as we're making them out to be, and they're
inviting us to make some pretty dangerous leaps in logic to
accomplish our work.
How how how soapboxy do we want me to get?
Like Get on the soapbox. Because listen. So one of I'll give an example
of this. One of the things I've been very adamant in my business since the
beginning, 10 years in business, is that I don't use gendered
language to talk about my people because I don't
like, a lot of people assume things. They go, oh, you work with only women
or whatever the case may be, and that's not the case at all.
Nope. And I'm very, very
intentional about this in my business because I I think it's
exclusionary actually to a lot of the folks that I work with.
Yeah. All sorts of genders, non binary
folks, men, you know, like, I I I'm
not I'd I'm very intentional not excluding that. And
so when I build my when I'm working on my branding,
and especially right now I'm in a pivot Mhmm. It's more
about the outcomes that they're seeking Thank you.
Than who they are as a person. And who they are as a person, I
still use examples. Like, an example would be,
I work with people who have small children, for instance, that the time that they
have available is different. I work with people who have chronic illness. The time that
they have is different. So, like, I use those examples to, like,
call in my people, but I'm not saying I only work with moms, for
instance. That's that's not my only group of people, that I quit.
Yes. Exactly. And so you are practicing actually what I tell
other people to do. Right? Yay. Okay. I'm doing it. You're doing it. No.
You're doing it. This is amazing. Right? At the end of the day, what
is important is their motivation. Right? The thing that would
motivate them to change their behavior. Right? And, yes, you're correct. It is
that outcome that they're looking for. It is that aspiration that they are reaching
for. Right? And then it is the motivational
drivers in their environment that shape those
motivations. Right? So you're absolutely correct. Right?
Someone might consider the fact that, you know, this person has a chronic
illness. They might be like, that's a psychographic. You know what? Sure. I'm fine
with it because it's the right kind of psychographic. Because what that tells
you is that their time and that their energy is probably at a
premium. And that is a motivational driver. Yeah.
Okay? Yeah. Not a grapefruit seltzer. Not grapefruit
seltzer for the love of god. Right? Yeah.
And any honestly, any any segmentation
that does not allow me and this
adorable, fluffy, giant baby Yoda
to be in the same group is a problem. It is a problem.
Yes. So and,
I mean, I know that, like, we're laughing and, like, we're talking about this from
an efficacy standpoint. Right? But I do I do
want to stress that, like, this isn't just a
a a small thing that's, you know, in the world of
branding and brand strategy and marketing and advertising and all the like, it's
not just a small thing. Right? We're in a
world right now where we're kind of in a
crossroads of our own making. Right? We've
we assumed that people with similar demographics
and psychographics would have similar perceptions of the
world and similar experiences rather than assuming that people
who had similar motivations and motivational drivers would. Right?
Then we segmented the world according to those
details, demographics, and psychographics. And we did that so it
would seem like we were talking to each of those individuals while we were
talking to all of them at the same time. Right? And we
did that because it was easy. What we didn't admit to ourselves is that we
were actually doing that because the structure made those groups easier to manipulate. That's what
we were doing. That's
what we were doing.
And then we got surprised when that manipulation
allowed for the explosive spread of disinformation and
misinformation and violence. Yep. So, like,
I know it's just ideal client avatars, but it's also not just ideal
client avatars. You know? Yeah. Yeah. We see it so show up in so many
different ways. I mean, you know, at the time this, episode's coming out, we're
headed into the US election, and that's, like, ideal client
avatar 101. Like, every like Literally. All the candidates put everyone
into these categories, and then the manipulation for each
whatever group you're in, it's like, we're gonna speak to that. Interesting. Okay.
So I know that for those people listening, they're like, okay.
Ideal client avatars. I need to learn more, and you've
got a resource for us all about that. So tell us about what that
is. Yeah. So I do have a piece that I
wrote about why ideal client avatars are trash,
and what some of the things are that we might wanna look for
as far as alternatives are concerned. Right? Now don't get me
wrong. I have my own alternatives. I have designed them, and I use them with
my clients with great success, and I enjoy them immensely. Right? But I
also don't necessarily want to push onto you my own
alternative. Right? And so what I've done instead is I've listed
what some of the things you want to look for are as
far as what a helpful alternative would be is.
So I hope that sentence ended correctly. I don't know. There were lots of
but that's what I have for you. It'll take you through some of the
things that we talked about about what makes ideal client avatars
dangerous and also just not useful and effective. It'll tell you
about what you wanna look for as far as alternatives are concerned, and it'll tell
you some of the things that, my own alternative
has in case you're curious about that. So that's something that's interesting to
you. Give that a read. It'll be in the resource
page, that we link. Yes. And I'm linking that in the
show notes y'all. Online.com/ 327.
Chloé, this was amazing. Thank you so much for being on the show
today. Thank you for having me. This is so fun. Yeah. And I'm gonna put
all of her links, with this episode. Definitely go check out all
of the things. It's gonna be so good. And thank you, dear
listener, for tuning into another episode of the Mindful Marketing Podcast. Make sure
you give us a 5 star rating on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. It helps
keep us in the top 100 podcasts, and that's because of you and your listenership.
So thank you so much. Next week, I'm gonna be talking about the
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isn't visible. So stay tuned for that. I'll see you next
Tuesday. Bye.