CRACKING THE CODE OF BUYER PERSONA

Consumer behavior has become even more prominent. Marketers have tendencies to overlook simple questions. Forum for the Future, a global sustainability non-profit focuses on answering these questions to create social impact. We live in an ever-changing world of marketing, and it’s vital that we understand our buyer’s persona. Purpose-driven brands such as Nike are hacking persona-based marketing tactics, a trending philosophy that has made a resurgence. So, what can we learn from them?

NIKE TAKES ACTION TO DESIGN A BETTER WORLD

Taking on a new responsibility, Nike has created an initiative to guide the future of design with its new social venture, Circularity. This new open-source design guide was created for designers across the apparel industry with a common language for designing products geared towards social good for the environment.

Nike’s design team believes that design can change the world. They are on track to strengthen sustainable material palettes without constraints, further creating change.

Overall, the concept of Circularity is to open-source it for collaboration.

They are currently executing this tactic with the creation of an app called MAKING, a platform for consumers and designers to collaborate.

MAKING was created as a convenient tool that evaluates materials from the basis of environmental impact areas. These include waste, energy, water, and chemistry. With the information provided, designers can make products that will help the world’s environment.

FORUM FOR THE FUTURE’S DEVELOPING COLLABORATION PROCESS

For over 20 years, Forum of the Future has been working in partnership with brands to accelerate the shift toward a sustainable future.

“What is the problem, and how are we going to solve it?” An adage that has been around forever and overlooked, FOF addresses this question to develop purpose-driven brands. Their goal is to sway consumers to purchase sustainable products.

Dr. Sally Uren, CEO of FOF, believes the challenge to collaboration is the difference between vision and action. Their purpose is to bridge the gap by building a collaboration process.

FOF finds its successes by promoting honest conversations with clear boundaries to create an active collaborating effort to solve the business problem. To be effective, highlighting the necessity of each organization is imperative.

By enabling a safe space where value creation can be discussed, this method is the first step for participants to begin the collaboration process in a private setting. The motivating factor is the result because it creates recognition of individual roles. The process brings key brands and individuals to the table. They are calling out roles, position, and influence bringing power to participants that will connect brands to consumers.

Dr. Uren points out that no one asked Apple to create smartphones. But, Steve Jobs had the vision to make the world a more accessible place. The difference between Apple and most brands is that Apple takes action with their vision through imagination.

There is a lack of imagination that counteracts the collaboration process. Apple’s vision helped create a straight path for more consumer benefit, and that is what FOF is implementing for other brands.

Practicing FOF’s collaboration process over time will enable sustainable purpose-driven brands to thrive under their developing method of collaboration.

Dr. Uren believes that pioneering the collaboration process; consumers will begin to purchase alternative sustainable products. But, no product is the same, and it only starts by asking the right questions.

APPLYING BUYER PERSONA TACTICS

One method doesn’t fit all. Brands need to know and connect with their consumers. Nike is already executing on its mission with its Circularity initiative with MAKING. FOF, on the other hand, has begun to apply some of these methods.

For FOF to head in the right direction, they need to apply the correct buyer persona tactics effectively. Understanding consumer behavior and using the proper strategy will be difficult, but it is crucial they find a way to execute through taking action at their crossroads with their vision.

FOF needs to apply these three buyer persona questions to their collaborative discussions:

What is the first thing my customer thinks about in the morning?

What is the last thing my customer thinks about at night?

Why?

And they need to do it for different demographics to improve their wide variety of purpose-driven brands.

Each client has a different demographic that needs to be addressed in FOF’s collaborative process through the four perspectives of the buyer persona. These include competitive, spontaneous, humanistic, and methodological personas.

FOF has the challenge of applying the right persona to each brand they work with, whereas Nike needs to focus on the humanistic buyer persona.

Humanistic buyers are drawn to emotion, needing more information than spontaneous and methodical buyers. The humanistic buyers can become loyal and repeat customers when marketed to correctly.

Nike and Apple know how to crack the code of buyer persona tactics and understand the importance of social good for their chosen consumer. For FOF to be successful with their innovative collaboration process, they need to apply buyer persona tactics effectively with their clients.

Remember,

“The Zos Knows”

-David Zosel 

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