Marketing without knowing your audience is like investigating that spooky noise in a dark basement - a very, very bad idea. Many brands have made the fatal mistake of reducing their audience solely to data points, ignoring the people behind the numbers and causing some costly collateral damage in the process. With Halloween approaching, let’s reflect on some spine-chilling marketing blunders, as well as identifying how you can avoid making the same grave mistake.
The True Horror: Skipping Audience Research
Too often, brands rush campaigns without fully understanding the needs, cultures, and resulting preferences or triggers of their target audience. This regularly leads to exposing a shallow agenda and sows distrust among their hopeful customer base.
When you ignore the REAL people behind the spreadsheet, you run the risk of offending, alienating, or just plain confusing the folks you're trying to win over. These missteps can lead to needing to spend valuable time and money retooling campaigns, and trying to rebuild the confidence you lost in your brand.
Here are some examples from brands that skipped the crucial step of market research.
1. Gerber Baby Food: A Picture’s Worth a Thousand Words
When Gerber expanded into Africa it was business as usual with one of their famous babies front and center on their packaging. However, they were soon stumped by dismal sales. Upon further exploration of the cause they learned that in some African countries, where there are extremely low literacy rates, images on labels are used to show what’s inside the packaging. So, when Gerber’s jars featured a picture of a smiling baby on the label, local consumers were horrified - thinking the jars contained baby food *made* from babies… ew!
2. MGM’s Lion: A Roaring Misstep with Chinese Tourists
When MGM Grand opened its doors in Las Vegas, it wanted to make a bold statement by incorporating its iconic lion mascot into the architecture. Guests were wowed as they walked through a giant lion’s mouth that stood as the hotel’s entrance. But there was one very important demographic the hotel and casino giant didn’t take into account, Chinese tourists. In Chinese culture, walking through a lion’s mouth is considered extremely bad luck. One very expensive renovation later, MGM had to tear out and rebuild the entire main entrance of the largest hotel that had ever been built.
3. Snickers: Too Big for Japan
Snickers bars have always been marketed as “satisfying,” but that size doesn’t translate well everywhere. When Mars attempted to sell their famous candy bars in Japan, they overlooked a key cultural preference - smaller portions. Japanese consumers prefer more modestly sized snacks, in fact, eating too large of food or having to take too large of bites in public is considered downright rude. Snickers were simply too big for the local aesthetic, and it showed in sales. Mars was forced to retool their Snickers strategy for the region by breaking the candy down into smaller bite sized bars.
The Price of Cutting Corners: It's More Than Just Retooling
Brands often find themselves scrambling to rework campaigns or products after they've failed in the marketplace. The problem isn't just in the cost of rebranding or resizing—it's also the lost consumer trust. By skipping this crucial research step, these brands didn’t just have to pull their products from shelves and retool them—they also had to pivot publicly, which cast a shadow on their reputation. Of course, large companies such as Mars and MGM could weather the financial blow of changing their campaigns, but that’s not the case for all businesses, especially if your profit margins are still slim. If you don’t invest in understanding your audience now, you might find your brand being dismissed before it ever truly thrives.
Understanding the Person Behind the Data
So how can you avoid such a marketing blunder? Build a solid foundation for your marketing research by understanding that data points are just the beginning. Once you put them into the context of the humans that those figures represent, you’ll unlock a whole new level of understanding about your audience - and how they might interact with your product.
Don’t just collect data - immerse yourself in the local culture and lifestyle of your audience. What are their values? What daily struggles do they face? What makes them excited, worried, or motivated?
For example, a Black mother in Mobile, Alabama has different surroundings, challenges, and needs compared to a Black mother in Seattle. Data might group them together, but their lives are entirely different. Dig deeper into your audience’s lived experiences so that you can make them feel truly seen.
Whether you're targeting a specific region, a cultural group, or a lifestyle segment, always take the time to understand your audience as individuals. Their buying decisions are influenced by their unique experiences, and treating them as mere data points can and WILL backfire.