What type of person is Don Draper?
In episode 402 of Mad Men, titled “Christmas Comes But Once a Year”, we get to wade the waters of a typically frustrating episode that will at some point prove to be paramount to our understanding of what’s going on. The series is filled with these go-nowhere episodes. Ones that leave you wondering “what was that all about” as the credits roll. And yet, it somehow works for the show. You have to somewhat admire writers who are willing to take enough time to fully develop their characters, even if it leads to a little boredom for us, the viewer.
So it took me a bit to figure out what lesson I really reaped from this episode that I could possibly apply now. We could discuss the kiss-ass approach toward the biggest client. Or the constant struggle between old-fashioned and modern, regardless of the era. We could even talk about Don breaking one of his very few principles of never sleeping with his secretary.
But the quote I keep coming back to is that of a new character, Dr. Faye Miller. At the Christmas party, she and Don are talking alone in his office, when she concludes with this statement: “You’ll be married again in a year,” Faye predicts. “What?” he asks. “I always forget,” she says, “nobody wants to think they’re a type.”
“Nobody wants to think they’re a type.”
3 Ways to Think of Types
- Everyone’s a type. Like it or not, we all have predispositions. We act like people who are like us. Conversion rates depend on types. Landing pages thrive on types. Magazine advertising lives and breathes by types. Targeting your market works more and more effectively the more you can hone and define the “types” that make up your market. Too many marketers rely on guts and guessing, when just knowing the type of your customer would tell you so much.
- But I’m not a type. We all accept that everyone’s a type … except for me. I’m unique and deep. A mystery. You can’t pigeon-hole me. You can’t paint me with a broad brush. This is how we all feel about ourselves. And it’s why it’s imperative that we as marketers remember to not let our customers think we think of them as a type. They are an individual. And the brands that succeed today are those who market to individuals, not groups. The individuals just happen to all be the same type.
- You’re also a type. The customer isn’t the only one that’s a type. Don Draper definitely attracts a certain type of customer … and repels other customer types, as we’ve learned. Like attracts like. What type of customer does your type attract?
It’ll be interesting to see how the revolutionary approach to market research is handled in Mad Men. In the meantime, which side do you find yourself erring on: in depending too much on the data and not enough on your own insights, or too much on gut and not enough data?
Read other posts from the Mad Men Marketing series now.
————–
Subscribe now to MarketingInProgress.com by email or RSS feed.
You’ll automatically be notified whenever something new is posted.
———-
This article was originally posted at http://www.marketinginprogress.com.
Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.
Another great installment.
I’m definitely a data type, as sad and unexciting as hat particular box appears. Because of that, I’m a big fan of types. I’m all for creating personas (fictitious but representative customers created from analytic data) and then building marketing programs that address each persona. The assumptions are then testable.
But you can’t ever tell a customer that, partly because it assumes we’re all far more predictable than we want to believe (like I said, I want to be the “Mac” not the “PC”), and partly because it makes marketing look much less sexy than the jeans-wearing prototypical ad agency guy with the soul patch and latte we all want to be. He’s the guy (we imagine) swoops into the office for a 10am meeting, where he quickly draws some circles on a whiteboard to explain the genius idea for a revolutionary new ad campaign that came to him in a dream the night before, and then leaves the room to the applause of the wowed client.
Frank – I think it’s tough to know which side of the line you should be on. You don’t want to ignore the data; I mean, we are all types, and while we certainly aren’t cookie cutters of ourselves, the same type of person is gonna do the same types of stuff. And yet, I can make a strong case for following your gut, data be damned.
I sometimes think the best approach may be to go with your gut on ideas, and then cross-check with data, asking the question “Why wouldn’t this work?” Don’t know why, but I’ve found asking “Why wouldn’t this work?” rather than “Why would this work?” is much more effective at prompting my own clarity.