When your audience isn’t who you think
What do you do when your client seems to be missing the target?
Take, for instance, the situation I recently experienced regarding a fashion-related website whose owners have—how shall I say—an aspirational view of their audience. That is, they want to target an older, more sophisticated, style conscious women. I’ll call them the ‘fashionistas’. This happens to be the audience for their parent brand, an offline publication, and also happens to be the people with whom the brand is most associated.
However, the reality is that those who use the website are younger women who primarily want to chat about gossip, fashion bargains, celebrities and the like. I’ll call them fashion ‘fans’.
I suppose there is nothing wrong with having an aspirational target audience; those people whom you would like to be your users. But research shows that the fashionistas are simply not interested in using a website; it’s too low rent, not part of their world. These are people who sip lattes in exclusive fashion boutiques. They live high fashion, they’re not chatting about it with hotThang267. Lol. Wtf?
Research was conducted into a broad cross-section of fashion-minded people and it showed this segmentation; the fans, who are less capable of actually partaking in designer fashion, were at one end and the fashionistas who read the magazine, were at the other. The latter were unlikely to use the website. Unfortunately, the client said we recruited the wrong people, because the participants didn’t match their audience. Rudimentary web analytics showed that the most used part of the website is the discussion forum, and the demographic of users of the forum matches the ‘fans’ segment. More weight to the argument that fashionistas don’t use the website.
I think there are two main reasons for this. The first is something that many designers and experience architects have to deal with: clients who design for themselves instead of who will actually be using their product. My clients are, or want to be, the fashionista. They are style conscious and do participate in the world of high fashion. Through the website design process, they’re trying to cater for themselves, either consciously or subconsciously.
The second reason, closely related to the first, is that the client won’t accept who the real audience is. It reminds me of the “serious” rock band who refuses to accept that their fan base is predominantly 14 year old girls from middle class suburbs—that just ain’t cool. I believe this issue is part and parcel with the field I work in; as people creating websites, magazines and advertising get older, wiser and wealthier, it is increasingly difficult to relate to audiences that are not in the same life-stage. Is there a point at which you can’t, or don’t want to?
Aiming for a certain target audience is one thing—stretching yourself and your product—but it would appear in this case that it’s unrealistic since the people they’re aiming for won’t use their product. Gone are the days when online properties were simple, “me too” attachments to offline brands, with typically little more to offer than a placeholder for the domain name. Now days, these websites need to stand on their own and be successful, even if that means catering for a markedly different audience.
In the future, the ‘fans’ might very well grow up to become the ‘fashionistas’ that my client wants to target, but how long is that going to take? And would they continue to use the web if this did happen? Perhaps I’m missing the point; perhaps the plan is to leverage the fact that the ‘fans’ aspire to be ‘fashionista’, and that’s part of the attraction of the brand. If we targeted the ‘fans’ in a way that reflects their actual age and socio-economic status, maybe they would no longer be attracted because that wouldn’t be “on brand”. If this is the case, it should be openly stated, which hasn’t been.
Having said all this, the website is being developed with functionality for the ‘fans’, so the issue I have is really the perception my client has of who their audience is. Yet this is still troubling, since if you don’t have a clear picture of who you’re designing for, or if the team is not in total agreement regarding this, it’s difficult to design and deliver successful solutions.
I’m not sure how this will play out, my clients are good people and excel in their respective fields, but perhaps are “too close to it”. I’m also open to suggestions, have you found an effective way of addressing a situation such as this?
Photo credit: Missed the target… by malavoda.
Comments
oooh, this is really interesting. I wonder if the site you’re working on is the same one I use as an example with clients all the time… ;)
what I was thinking about the whole time I was reading this was about designing for young people – how there is a certain age group that, if you designed ‘for them’ they’d reject the design entirely – in fact you have to design a few years above them for the design/voice/functionality to be in any way appealing.
I wonder if, in fact, the same kind of thing is going on here. If you did design specifically for hotThang267, would she in fact be turned off.
if both your client and your target audience are both ‘aspirational’ are they, perhaps, both in the same place?
Interesting, interesting, interesting….
Interesting theory, Leisa, and I can see where this might happen, but in this specific case I don’t think that’s what’s happening. Unfortunately :)
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