Who would care if your brand disappeared?
Who will buy this is the wrong question. Calvin Ross Carl argues brands should ask which group would care most if they disappeared, and what void they’d leave.
Summary
Calvin Ross Carl suggests dropping the question of who will buy a product, since it doesn’t reveal much. A better question is which group would care the most if the brand disappeared. Parliament uses this kind of brinkmanship in its strategy work, and applied to subcultures it forces a brand to step back and see what void it would leave.
Highlights
- Who will buy this doesn’t tell you much.
- Ask which group would care most if you vanished.
- Brinkmanship reveals the void a brand fills.
Key insights
Buyers aren’t believers
Purchase intent shows who might transact, not who feels a real connection to the brand.
Imagine the absence
Picturing the brand gone exposes which people would actually miss it.
Detailed analysis
This question turns audience definition from a sales exercise into a test of meaning. The group that would feel the loss most is usually the subculture a brand truly belongs to, and naming it gives the brand a clearer sense of who it serves.
Conclusion
Find the people who would miss you most. That’s your subculture.
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 brinkmanship: if we vanish, what happens? And I think in this case, when we’re talking about subcultures, asking a brinkmanship-type question like what group of people will care the most if we disappear forces us to take a step back and ask, if we disappear, what void is left?