"Let it Go." How to Ditch Ideal Client Avatars (ICAs)
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 (you are here)
You’re in part 4 of a series on the spectacular failures of Ideal Client Avatars (ICAs) and Client Personas. In part 1, I made a bold claim.
Ideal Client Avatars (ICAs) are garbage for 3 reasons.
They obscure insight
They don’t deliver the results they promise
They actually make the world a less equitable and more poisonous place.
The kicker? None of this is hyperbole. Read on to understand why
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:
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.
It would need to assess and prioritize information that is actually helpful to the behavior change process
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
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.
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
Right between being precisely positioned and powerfully credible is the capacity to articulate advantage in a way that foundational to creating, managing and developing a brand that is impossible to ignore—despite the ways in which the visibility game has been rigged.
Framing your Intel leveraging stakeholder spectrums and relationship portfolios sits firmly in the articulate advantage camp. And if you’re interested in adding that capacity to your toolkit, then I’m interested in certifying you.
That’s right.
I want to teach you, so you’re not only prepared to handily meet our 5 criteria but you’re also equipped to do so in your own work. Everyday.
The Visibility Engineering™ Certification (Level 1).
Here’s a quick preview of what the Level 1 Certification—also known as the Frame your Intel (FYI) Certification Lab—is going to look like.
1. In order to understand which stakeholders you’re likely to overlook, you first need to understand what underrecognition is and how it works.
In your orientation you’ll gain access to a number or supplemental materials to read, watch and listen to at your leisure. These are for the real nerds out there and aren’t necessary for mastery of the material. Then as part of your first session, we’ll cover the essentials of underrecognition.
2. We’ll reframe analysis and insight through the lenses of behavior change, the attention economy and motivation.
It’s crucial for you to learn what information is actually helpful to the behavior change process and how to include that type of data in your analysis moving forward. So in our first session together, we’ll familiarize ourselves with these key concepts and adopt a framework that teaches us what to look out for and what actually produces results
3. Next, we'll do your very first stakeholders spectrum, together.
One of the things that separates certifications from trainings is the fact that the name of the granting institution (in this case, mine) sits alongside your own. Why bring this up? Well because, I’m not going to put my name on anything that doesn’t work. That includes any work you do leveraging my methods. I have to make sure you and your peers leave knowing what you’re doing. And that means practical, hands on experience.
You and your peers will each be working on your own case studies throughout the certification. This practicum approach means you’ll be privy to what stakeholder spectrums look like across types of projects, and you will begin to appreciate the hidden stakeholders of these many types of projects as well.
4. Finally, we'll pick one stakeholder and construct a relationship portfolio 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-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- Assessing how ready a stakeholder is for change and what elements are responsible for that state of readiness.
In session 2, we’ll start developing practical, useable insights. Insights that easily lend themselves to strategy, creative and communications. 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.
5. Extra Data Collection module
Many of us have our own approaches to data collection. For those who don’t or who are looking restructure, renew or invigorate their own, I’ll also be providing a prerecorded module where I walk you through my own qualitative data collection approach. It’s something you can leverage easily, and doesn’t require a huge amount of resources in order to be effective.
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 the FYI Certification Lab?