The Hidden Danger of Personas
You've probably created a customer "persona" or seen one, but they typically have a huge flaw that could lead you in the wrong direction.
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The Hidden Danger of Personas
At nearly every company I’ve worked for or with, I eventually came across a customer “persona.” Sometimes I was tasked with creating these and other times, I was given the job of putting together a marketing plan for this “persona.” I’m intentionally using persona in quotes because it always feels like a buzzy marketing term than a word that you’d actually use in a normal conversation. I’m also not a fan of the concept, so I’m trying to make it feel like less of a real word.
Personas suffer from a few problems, but one major one. It’s called representativeness.
That’s a big word, but it’s basically how easily a situation fits into a prototype or stereotype we already have in mind. The danger this creates is that it causes us to believe that certain scenarios are far more likely than they actually are. In the case of personas, this means that we’re going to assign far more people to the persona than makes sense. And the problem this creates when it comes to marketing is that your target persona group actually contains far fewer people than you think, which is going to make your marketing far less effective.
Let’s take a quick look at a quick example from one of my favorite business books, Thinking, Fast and Slow by Danny Kahneman.
The following is a personality sketch of Tom W written during Tom’s senior year in high school by a psychologist, on the basis of psychological tests of uncertain validity:
Tom W is of high intelligence, although lacking in true creativity. He has a need for order and clarity, and for neat and tidy systems in which every detail finds its appropriate place. His writing is rather dull and mechanical, occasionally enlivened by somewhat corny puns and flashes of imagination of the sci-fi type. He has a strong drive for competence. He seems to have little feel and little sympathy for other people, and does not enjoy interacting with others. Self-centered, he nonetheless has a deep moral sense.
Ok…given that information (which sounds a lot like a typical “persona” to me). Here’s the exercise that I want you to stop and actually do.
Tom is in a graduate program at your local university. Rank the following programs based on which Tom is likely most enrolled in order of most likely to least likely.
Business
Public administration and social services
Computer and information sciences and support services
Education
Health professions and related programs
Actually, do the exercise before moving forward. And to make this a bit more interactive, go ahead answer the following poll.
I’m willing to bet that you selected “Computer and Information Sciences” in the poll and ranked it first among the 5 options. It makes sense, right? Tom likes “neat and tidy systems” and he likes “corny puns” and has “flashes of imagination of the sci-fi type.” That certainly sounds like a lot of the computer scientist types that I’ve worked with. You also probably ruled out public administration and social services because Tom “seems to have little feel and little sympathy for other people, and does not enjoy interacting with others.”
There are two big problems here though. The first is that the source of this “data” (the description of Tom) is of dubious reliability (a quality I’ve found most personas share). I told you that the persona was written during “Tom’s senior year in high school by a psychologist, on the basis of psychological tests of uncertain validity.” How similar are you in graduate school versus high school? And more importantly, all of this is based on tests with “uncertain validity.”
The second problem is that you constructed a stereotypical view of a computer engineer and stereotypes of all kinds are generally problematic (more on this in a minute).
So, what’s the right answer? No idea.
But I can tell you that it’s unlikely that he’s a computer science student. How do I know that? Well, let’s take a look at the percentages of graduate degrees conferred in our five different areas:
Business - 23%
Public administration and social services - 6%
Computer and information sciences and support services - 6%
Education - 18%
Health professions and related programs - 16%
(Ranking data from here.)
Those 5 areas make up more than two thirds of all graduate degrees. And given these rates, a student picked at random is most likely (57%) to be either in a business, education, or health related graduate program.
But you assigned Tom to the long shot choice (6%).
Now imagine you created a similar persona of your ideal customer (Tom) and based on that persona you determined that he’s probably a computer science student. So you create an entire campaign targeted at computer science students.
And you just wasted all of your money because Tom isn’t likely a computer science major.
The issue here is that you likely didn’t consider the base rates (e.g., 23% of graduate degrees are in business). Base rates are absolutely critical to determine anything related to probability or how likely someone or something is to belong to a group. You intuitively know this, but disregarded it in the Tom example.
If I just pulled 2 red marbles out of a sack and asked you what the probability of pulling out a third red one is, you would likely want to know how many red marbles are in the bag (as a percent of all marbles) before answering the question.
But you didn’t apply this same logic for Tom.
Most people will fall for this trap when presented with something that is representative of a prototype or stereotype in their head and that’s one of the things that makes personas dangerous. The caution here is to be very careful when you’re using generalizations or groupings to make predictions without considering the base rates. Plausibility and probability are not the same thing. It feels more plausible that Tom is a computer scientist, but it’s more probable that he’s a business major.
Adding more detail to any scenario, makes it LESS likely to come true but it feels MORE persuasive (which is what we fall for). Consider the following two scenarios (also from Thinking, Fast and Slow). Which is more likely?
A massive flood somewhere in North America next year, in which more than 1,000 people drown.
An earthquake in California sometime next year, causing a flood in which more than 1,000 people drown.
It’s clearly the first one, but I bet you were very tempted to pick the second since it sounds more persuasive and plausible since you associate earthquakes with California. But the entire second scenario is already accounted for in the first scenario. That is, if the second scenario is true, the first scenario is true also. But it doesn’t work in reverse.
Our brains are programmed to not spend a lot of time and resources when the answer to a question seems very obvious and matches what we already have in our head. This is an important survival skill because if your brain didn’t automatically do this all day you’d be overwhelmed with decisions. But it’s very important for you to know when to override this setting with some additional critical thinking. If you don’t understand these concepts, you will fall for biases that will make you far less effective as a leader and less successful in business (and life).
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First time I've seen a Substack poll - great use case
Hate to say but I have seen them used incorrectly more than done right. I think there are better ways to understand your customers that have less ‘landmines’.
Great post!