2022 · originally posted on LinkedIn
I get asked a lot in my day job about "targeting our ideal buyer," and you'd be surprised the sorts of responses I get from clients when I probe a little deeper.
Client: "For this promotion, sale, or launch, we're targeting ABC." Me: "Yep, had a feeling. What else?" Client: "Well, also DE and a bit of F." Me: "Makes sense. Maybe a bit of GHI and JKL if you can swing it, right?" Client: "Definitely. JKL would be stellar if the reach and traction is there, but I won't get our hopes up." Me: "Alright, and where do we find these people?" Client: "Here, there, and over there mainly, but over there costs a lot, so here and there would be preferable."
After five or ten minutes of discovery, the client usually says something like, "Aaron, this is great, but are you trying to make a point drilling this deep?" Yep. Fair to say that the models in your product photography represent the ideal buyer in a nutshell? "Pretty much, yeah! We spent a lot of resources on those photoshoots to get ready for this."
The problem is that there are so many key dimensions to one's target buyer that often get overlooked and underconsidered, especially when it comes to photos and videos. It's really hard not to be blunt down the stretch on these calls. The elephant in the room is that these models tend to give an impression that the target buyer is a far more exclusive community than it is. Are these things harmful? Definitely, especially to key business metrics. Sometimes they're factors based on race or ethnicity. Extreme beauty standards, very narrow scopes of body shapes and sizes, and the like are also very common. Even subtle references to heteronormativity, ableism, ageism, and what the buyer "should look like" in terms of socioeconomic status pop up from time to time.
I challenge my brands to think really critically about the messages they send with their imagery and who they may be semi-consciously "othering" in the process. There's often a disconnect worth reflecting on between who they think they're targeting and the impact of what actually gets seen by their buyers in their catalogs, email newsletters, and advertisements.
Maybe these thoughts make some of my brands uncomfortable. Maybe it's "too political" or I'm overstepping my bounds as a strategist. Maybe I should mind my own business and do the job asked of me. Or maybe there are way more ideal buyers out there, and that big marketing campaign or new product release could be something even more exciting than it already is.