desing strategy Archives - EMERGENT ELEMENT

Who is your future customer?

We experience disruption with new technology and industry changes. However, demographic and customer expectations are fundamental driving forces in challenging how things are done.

Demographic change is a good indicator of who your future customer could be. You can look at age composition, income, education. However, the ethnic composition of the future population is one factor that sometimes becomes an afterthought.

What makes demographic shifts so rewarding is that it brings innovation and growth opportunities that will impact society and the economy.

For instance, the US Census has projected that Latinos will reach 111 million by 2060, becoming 28% of the population. That means that soon it will be one in three people who could be a future customer. However, 70% of Latinos say brands don’t understand their culture, a 59% increase from a year ago, according to H Code.

Why does understanding their culture matter?

Because culture matters to tell authentic stories and to create remarkable experiences. People don’t care about you unless you care about them. They look at content through their personal lens of values, knowledge, experiences, attitudes, and beliefs. And if you cannot meet them where they are, cannot see their worldview, and provide a solution that fits them, you run the chance to become irrelevant.

The implication is that addressing a new population segment rarely fits the way you currently do things. It will require you to see things differently, look at your current capabilities, identify your key and future customers’ challenges, and deciding what you need to do to serve them.

Make Your Customers’ Story your Story

Make your customers your story is the story of how you help them achieve their dreams and desires. We sometimes forget that their world view and experience are different from ours. We push for the outcome we want to see, get the flu vaccine, use a net to avoid malaria, and exercise or diet to mitigate diabetes risk.

But are these the jobs they want to get done? And are these important to them?

The products provide a functional aspect of a job, but how about the emotional and social aspects of them.

In a way, the product, the vaccine, the net, the diet is a means to an end. And we might assume they want to do these for health reasons. However, when we look deeper and see with their eyes, health concerns might be on the priority list.

For instance, when working on the Zika virus campaign in Puerto Rico, preventing behaviors were the least of their concerns; moms were more concerned about stigma and economic issues. And in South Africa, many people were more concerned about sleeping well without bugs and that the net look good than preventing mosquito bites.

As marketers and innovators, we need to make our customers’ stories our stories. If we can help lower the stigma and design a beautiful net, making the people feel better and helping them achieve their goals would help us achieve our objectives?

Making your customer’s stories your story requires empathy to understand their aspirations and what jobs they want to get done, so we can design a strategy to help them solve those challenges.