Mom, can I have five bucks?

Imagine that you want to get $5 from your mom so you can run down to the nearest joint and grab a burger. How would you go about it? What would you say to her? Pretty simple proposition, you know your mom really well. You know what makes her laugh, her favorite movies, where she stands on taxes and you’ve argued with her, eaten a few meals together, garnished untold fortunes from her, made her furious with your sister, gotten her to do you laundry for 20 years, and she loves you. You know what to say and do – you’ll have that $5 inside of a minute, it just depends on how far she has to go to grab her purse.

Now imagine that you want 20,000 women aged 35-54 to give you $4.95 to buy their kids a value meal at your chain of fast-food establishments. Is this a tougher proposition? Absolutely. Should you go about it differently? Absolutely not. The only reason it’s a harder proposition is that you don’t know what to say and do to make it happen. And more often than not it’s because you are thinking of how to get 20,000 women aged 35-54 to give you $4.95 to buy their kid a value meal at your chain of fast-food establishments. But, what if you knew that these 20,000 women shared a lot in common with your mom, and you thought of “them” as “her.” Now everything changes because you know what makes your mom laugh, feel good, spend money and you know what she wants from a meal, why she would buy you a burger and where and when is the best time to talk to her.

Effective campaigns simply come from thinking of a single, ideal person within your target audience(s), regardless of who the group is or if you know someone in that group. Plan and work hard to know your audience as a collection of real individuals, and you’ll quickly see how new and authentic ideas, tactics and messages spring forth from this personalized understanding.

(And by the way, thanks for everything, mom.)