Consumers or humans?

I have sat in countless meetings where a vastly generalised consumer profile is discussed in reference to the thousands of individuals that tend to invest in a particular branded product or service. While I understand the need to segment one’s market in order to make marketing and communication efforts more streamlined and manageable, it comes at the risk of dehumanising one’s audience and thus losing the very insights that drive a genuine and enduring brand-person connection.

The problem starts with the rhetoric we as brand specialists and marketers use so freely to describe the people who consume or buy our products and services. The very term, consumer, privileges a person’s status as a buyer or user of a product or service and thus somewhat denies them their humanity and broader lived experience. The most impactful brands and communication campaigns have not been the ones that diminished their audience to a few demographic and psychographic statistics, they were the ones that have interrogated the deeply human desires, drives, needs and vulnerabilities evident in people’s behaviour and/or informed by their contexts.

To approach the very people from whom we expect a reaction as consumers first and foremost and not as a dynamic, independent and motivated group of human beings in their own right, limits our brands to just as shallow an approach in return. These people might buy or consume our products, but they certainly will not easily develop a lasting and loyal relationship with our brand.

I’d argue that the most powerful brands are not the ones that insist on uniformity, that have inclinations towards generalised views on the world and only describe the positive and neutral traits of their segment personas. Incredible brands seek out the incongruities and unevenness of life. They look for exceptions in the norm or what makes the norm so exceptional. These brands reflect and speak to humans, not simply consumers.

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