I greatly enjoyed my recent interview with David Allison, who heads up Valuegraphics, an innovative company that’s collected over a million surveys across the world asking people about their values, which, as he observes, are the main drivers of all human decisions. David is also a sought-after keynote speaker and author, whose 2022 book, The Death of Demographics: Valuegraphic Marketing for a Values-Driven World, instructs marketers about the importance of knowing the values of target audience while noting the inadequacies of existing research methods.
As Valuegraphics’ web site notes, the company has mounted extensive efforts to gather and analyze values of individuals: “we asked people what they value, want, need, and expect from life. From this data we created the largest and most accurate global record of human values ever made. It was specifically designed to give you insights that will influence outcomes for any group of people on earth.”
Our discussion emphasizes the importance of aligning marketing efforts with the values of the target audience, using data to identify shared values among diverse groups. We discuss the importance of values in persona development and the need for a values-based framework in research to create a more values-driven society. We also delve into the inadequacies of demographics and psychographics in comprehending individuals and the importance of aligning organizational values with customer values. Topics covered along the way include:
- Why overly relying on demographics and psychographics to create personas is insufficient, as people within a demographic or psychographic group can have diverse values and behaviors.
- How corporate “values” more closely resemble instructions than “values” in a human sense; corporate values and employee values are distinct, with the former being more about the company’s mission and the latter being about individual values.
- How identifying shared values across customer groups can guide marketing strategy, even for competitors.
- Why companies often don’t know what values drive customer behavior.
- How data can help identify common values across political affiliations, even within professional associations.
- How publishers can use values data to justify higher ad prices and create a win-win for both themselves and advertisers.
- How innovation is often killed by inertia when it comes to developing new metrics and new ways of understanding audiences.
- Why understanding an audience’s particular values can provide a great boost to the creative team.
- How values-based research may prove especially fruitful in dispute resolution.
