If part of your work involves understanding humans in order to make strategic decisions affecting your bottom line, then you’ve probably heard of an Ideal Client Avatar (ICA) or persona before. Turns out, that practice might be the very reason your work is getting easier and easier to ignore, folks haven’t been getting to ‘yes,’ and why it may also feel like you’re losing the content war—especially given how quickly AI is crowding the attention economy.

In this quick essay, we’re going to discuss 3 of the most critical ways ICAs are getting in your way and what you can do about it.

“Information doesn’t lead to sustained behavior change.”

I remember sitting in on a chat with Kristen Berman—a sterling behavioral scientist—as part of her team’s behavioral design program. One of the participants—it may even have been me—asked a question about behavior change and equity. And after providing some helpful context, Dr. Berman dropped that gem.

“Oh,” I thought. “This is why ideal client avatars are garbage.”

At the time, all that had occurred to me was the fact that Ideal Client Avatars (ICAs) weren’t an effective behavior change tool. But as I explored my own relationship with them, and the hesitation around them I’d never quite shaken off, it became clear as day why ICAs were not only a waste of resources but were also a source of unnecessary risk.

Here’s the typical ICA loop:

OBSCURING INSIGHT

First things first: we are in the buisness of behavior change. That behavior change can be anything from the transformation our brands bring about in the world, to the flip folks make from not biting to buying in. All of that is behavior change.

Behavioral science is really clear about what leads to behavior change. Shifting context, removing or adding barriers, leveraging motivations, incentives and motivational drivers.

Suspiciously absent are demographics and psychographics.

Def/n: Demographics are census level data. Age, gender, etc. Psychographics are things like habits and preferences.

Said another way, deciding that my intended audience is made up of 35 year old women that are particularly fond of grapefruit seltzer doesn’t tell me what will motivate them to change their behavior. And yes, that’s even if I’m selling grapefruit seltzer.

You’ll also notice (or not) that I used the word “deciding.”

At the end of the day, when you develop an ICA you are choosing an audience to profile. Unfortunately, you can only profile the stakeholders you’re aware of.

(Stakeholders are more than just the clients who invest in your products, services or brand. Case in point: there are at least 4 other key stakeholder groups you're probably ignoring without meaning to)

So if you don’t know all the stakeholders that are relevant to your success and the intel you’re equipped to gather isn’t actually useful to the behavior change process, how on earth are you going to be able to glean the insights you need to deliver results?

DELIVERING RESULTS

The overwhelming industry response to that question has been, “‘more,’ bigger, louder and more controversial.”

“More” looks like a consistent, omnichannel presence. “More” looks like more data, more details, more intrusive ways to get that data, new tools to help us parse out all that new data. “More” looks like longer and longer ICAs, hotter takes, tighter segments, everywhere all at once at an increasingly unrelenting pace.

That’s why we now have more noise to contend with than ever before in the history of humankind. Because folks have taken competition in the attention economy to the next level.

Here’s the thing: we’re human beings.

Human beings are limited.

There is a literal, biological limit on what we can pay attention to.

So the more there is, the more there is to ignore.

Adding more and more and more is just…teaching human brains to filter you out.

Think of it this way: We all have a limited amount of attentional coins.

We don’t often get more.

But we do often get less.

Whether by the slow decay of time or as a result of our environments, our attentional resources will fluctuate downwards.

First, consider the effect of economic and societal instability on the allocation of those coins. Those environmental factors mean that more of our attentional coins are (and have been for years) given over to the goal of keeping us and our loved once safe. Leaving precious little for everything else.

And when we look at everything else we are meant to filter, sort and allocate our smaller pile of attentional coins to, we get…a literally unprecedented deluge of information.

As it is, our brain’s filters are already in overdrive because of our economic and societal realities—remember that little pandemic?

Our already limited resources haven’t suddenly grown to accommodate this.

And that makes it easier to talk to all of them while seeming to talk to each of them.

Easier.

But with all the noise our poor limited attentional resources need to filter through, a milquetoast approach unrelated to anything but our ages, gender and hobbies/affinities is less likely to actually be noticeable. Mechanically, that means it’s less likely to get past the brain’s filters which means it’s less likely to be memorable. And all of that means it’s easier to ignore.

Oh right. Who the heck are you?

Contributions Seen in

ICAs literally set us up for failure.

Impact on the World

And if that weren’t bad enough, ICAs don’t stop there. They don’t leave it at setting you up for failure. They actively make it easier to overlook certain kinds of people. The visibility game is rigged. And ICAs help keep it that way.

Most of us know about cognitive biases—the learned brain chemistry that often subconsciously determine how we behave. The scripts that program our brains. Think the reciprocity rule and the rule of threes. Well, as it turns out, that learned brain chemistry is also responsible for the underrecognition of certain kinds of people and communities. More specifically, we’ve all been conditioned to allocate our attention in discriminatory ways as well.

Take for example the Racial Attention Deficit.

The researchers who discovered it were able to empirically demonstrate that white Americans are 33% more likely to overlook their black peers for their white peers. And that’s even when they’ve been incentivized to pay attention to those peers.

33%.

At least.

The Racial Attention Deficit is one of dozens (and growing) of cognitive biases I have taken to calling visibility biases.

Learned brain chemistry that allocates our attention in discriminatory ways.

The visibility game is rigged.

Here’s where ICAs come in:

1. You can only profile who you know to be aware of. So if there’s someone you’ve been conditioned to overlook… Well, take for example the story of this company I heard about. They settled themselves into a Brooklyn analog and set up that location to meet the demographics and psychographic realities of their ICAs. One such detail was the payment system. You couldn’t pay with cash or a card. You used your phone. Now their ICAs loved this. Less so the folks who actually lived in the community they’d planted themselves in. Many didn’t have cellphones with tech that made virtual cards possible. And so they couldn’t engage. Underrecognized folks are overlooked as relevant brand stakeholders all the time.
   
   And I barely need to mention what happens when big brand decisions are made without accounting for all of the relevant stakeholders. See: every backlash and seemingly self inflicted injury the Fortune 1000 have ever made.

2. For those who are underrecognized, ICAs introduce different risks. Just about any underrecognized person will tell you that when walking into a room where they need to get folks to yes, it’s not enough to know who your ideal audience is. You’ve got to know who your advocates and other informants are. And that’s if you even manage to get past the gatekeeper. ICAs pretend like that reality disappears when we start operating at the brand level.
   
   It does not.
   
   So while ICAs do introduce unnecessary risks for those on the over or adequately recognized side of the equation, they are especially risky for underrecognized folks.

3. Demographic and psychographic segments are the goal. And that’s because homogenous segments are easier to manipulate. On the surface, that only sounds kind of gross. But when we remember what some of those easier to manipulate, homogenous, echo chambers have been up to lately, we start of understand why this is less a slightly slimy tactic and more a powder keg ready to explode—again.

So…what do we do? What can we do about it?

So, what do we do?

Ideal Client Avatars aren’t just a slightly slimy tactic. They’re part of a dark behavioral engineering toolkit. They create homogenous, easy to manipulate echo chambers prone to extremism without any of the counter veiling influences that keep those echo chambers from becoming powder kegs ripe for violence, and/or easy prey for warped, alternative realities and disinformation.

Now, if I’ve done my job, then I’ve at least convinced you that ICAs warrant another look, refinement or an update. The instinct for stakeholder analysis isn’t wrong. Even the impulse for more robust analysis isn’t problematic on it’s own. ICAs are just the wrong framework to pour those instincts and impulses into. Here’s what a framework that prevents the manipulation of those instincts and impulses would entail:

1. It would need to be both more robust and more precise than ICAs currently are—without requiring a full qualitative research program and data coding situation.

2. It would need to assess and prioritize information that is actually helpful to the behavior change process

3. It would need to be able to bring to your attention to stakeholders you’re likely to overlook and/or stakeholder you wouldn’t even know to look for

4. It would need to be able to produce results for everyone—especially underrecognized folks left behind by business as usual—despite the growing insanity of the attention economy. It would need to actually build towards brands that are impossible to ignore.

5. It would need to not actively contribute to making the world a worse place. In fact, I’d level that up and say, actively contribute to making the world a better place.

There may be other approaches to making all five of these things happen. I do this through stakeholder spectrums and relationship portfolios. These tools do more than give you a framework for gathering the right intel. They ensure you’re able to frame that intel into compelling, behavior changing communications, strategies, and brands.

Changing the game: Stakeholder Spectrums + Relationship Portfolios

Frame your Intel.

Here’s a quick preview of what my alternative approach to ICAs entails:

1. We reframe analysis and insight through the lenses of behavior change, the attention economy and motivation.

It’s crucial to get to the bottom of what actually makes your stakeholders—all of them—tick. For you to leverage what information is actually helpful to the behavior change process and how to include that type of data in your analysis moving forward. So that’s where we start.

2. Next, comes the stakeholders spectrum.

The stakeholder spectrums are the skeleton of the entire process. It is both where we begin to organize the ecosystem we belong to motivationally and also where we uncover the hidden stakeholders within that ecosystem as well.

3. Finally, we construct relationship portfolios leveraging my six Point of View (POV) Filters:

• The Market Lens- Leverage behavioral science to assess what facet of your work, brand or product will matter most to each stakeholder no matter the context (yes, that includes recessions and pandemics).

• Eyeroll Threshold- How to remain one step ahead of "market saturation”

• Resource Breakdown- Understanding the 3 most important resources a stakeholder can have and how much of each they do, so you are better equipped to engage them where they're at.

• Investment Index- A breakdown of the kinds of investments each of your stakeholders are making with their resources and why.

• Stakeholder Engagement Matrix (as needed)-A simple but effective analysis of behavior change needs. What do we need from our stakeholders and how far do we truly need them to move in order to reach our goals?

• Motivational Grading (as needed)- Assessing how ready a stakeholder is for change and what elements are responsible for that state of readiness.

People share motivations across lines of demographic and psychographic difference. Because this insight generation process allows our 35 year old grapefruit seltzer fan and Luke Skywalker to be part of the same intended audience, it also prevents the very things that turn demographic and psychographic segments into the aforementioned dangerous echo chambers.

In order to create things that are impossible to ignore, our stakeholder analysis needs to be both more robust and more precise. Right now we’re worrying about the wrong things (demographics and psychographics) and that single minded focus directly and indirectly leads to the kind of world we don’t want to see. Instead, let’s be good at our jobs and do good with our jobs.

Interested in learning more about Framing your Intel? You’ve got options: