Does focusing on an audience exclude others?
Marketers tend to hate the idea of excluding anyone. In this clip from You’re Not the Audience, Parliament Creative Director Calvin Ross Carl answers a viewer question about that tension, explaining why Parliament deliberately lists nopes in its audience work and how focusing on the radical buyer gives marketers permission to stop wasting time and money. He also shares the brinksmanship question that defines a brand’s group: who would care the most if we disappeared? It’s from the You’re Not the Audience episode on subcultures, Build a Subculture, Not an Audience.
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Outline
Summary
A viewer asks Calvin Ross Carl whether to frame audience choices as exclusion or simply as not our focus, since marketers would hate excluding anyone. Calvin says Parliament runs into this constantly. Its brand strategy work deliberately names nopes, and putting them in a formal document signals that the decision has been made.
When marketers push back with what about this person, he reminds them that the brand always needs to speak to its radical buyer, the aspirational insider at the center of the audience. Using the mezcal example, he notes that some people simply don’t like the product, and spending on them wastes time and money.
He closes with a better question than who will buy this: what group would care the most if we disappeared? It’s the same brinksmanship Parliament uses to test mission, vision, and values.
Highlights
Parliament deliberately lists nopes in its audience definitions.
Focusing on the radical buyer gives marketers permission to stop chasing everyone.
Spending on a nope is wasted time and money.
Ask which group would care the most if the brand disappeared.
A value is real if a company is willing to lose money on it.
Key insights
Writing it down makes it official
Naming nopes in a formal strategy document helps marketers accept that the decision is settled, rather than relitigating every possible buyer.
Frame focus as saving money
The most persuasive argument for marketers, Calvin says, is that targeting people who don’t want the product wastes time and money.
Ask who would miss you
Who will buy this says little. Who would care the most if we disappeared forces a brand to see the void it would leave and the group it truly belongs to.
Some exclusion is necessary
Subcultures are inherently cliquish and a little gatekeepy. Calvin argues that isn’t always bad, and that talking about exclusion becomes almost necessary.
Detailed analysis
The clip addresses a practical obstacle to subculture thinking: the instinct to keep every possible customer in play. Calvin’s answer pairs a strategic anchor, the radical buyer, with a financial one, wasted spend, so that focus reads as discipline rather than rejection.
The disappearance question extends Parliament’s existing method. Just as willingness to lose money tests whether a value is real, asking who would miss the brand tests whether an audience is real.
Conclusion
Focusing on an audience does exclude others, and Calvin sees that as a feature. Naming the nopes and asking who would care if the brand vanished helps teams find their people and stop spending on everyone else.
Transcript
Oh, we got Fuel in the Tank here: “What’s your experience been phrasing it as exclusion versus not our focus? Seems like marketers would hate the idea of excluding anyone.” Oh, yeah. I mean, we bump into that all the time. I think that’s actually the interesting thing. We do that with brand strategy all the time. We deliberately put nopes—we call them nopes—in our audience. And there’s something about putting it in a formal document like that that makes marketers say, okay, it’s been officially decided on.
But I think you definitely are right. When you tell a lot of marketers that we can’t target everyone, we can’t do this broad swath, they get a little bit of pushback. They’re like, what about this person? What about this person? What about this person? But when you remind them that we always need to be speaking to that radical buyer, that person who’s right in the dead center of our audience, the aspirational insider of our target, I think that really helps them. Because then you give them permission to not waste time and money on those other people. That’s usually what all those other people end up being. When you have a nope, you’re just wasting time and money.
The mezcal one is a great example, because you have people you might think align with it, but they just don’t like mezcal. This is a very simple one, because it’s a consumer good that people either love or hate. But I think it just gives them permission to say: focus, don’t waste money there. And that’s the way you always get a marketer: don’t waste time or money on these people. So I think it does give you permission to find your people, and not just hunt for customers.
So the thing I always like to ask is, essentially, stop asking just who is going to buy this. That doesn’t actually tell you a lot. But if you start asking what group will care the most if we disappear, then you start getting somewhere in really defining that group. And this is a thing we do a lot in our strategy work, where we put in that brinksmanship. We’re like, if we vanish, what happens? We do that when we’re talking about mission, when we’re talking about vision, when we’re talking about behaviors in a company, the actual values behind a company.
Sorry, let me back up. Values are the way that a company behaves at their core, and all brands have values of some sort. And the way we always test if values are true is we ask them: what are you willing to lose money on? You make decisions based on your values, and you know something is really a value if you’re willing to lose money to stick to that value.
And I think in this case, when we’re talking about subcultures, when you are asking a brinksmanship-type question like what group of people would care the most if we disappear, it forces us to take a step back and ask, if we disappear, what void is left? And I think that just really heightens our perception of the end consumers of our products and the groups that we belong to.
But yeah, Ryan, Fuel in the Tank. Talking about exclusion is hard. I think it almost becomes a little bit necessary when you’re talking about subcultures, because it’s inherently a cliquish, gatekeepy kind of thing. But I don’t think that’s always bad in a lot of these situations.