Best Buy gets to know its customers better. Well, a little:
At the same time, it has begun to woo a roster of
shopper profiles, each given a name: Buzz (the young tech enthusiast),
Barry (the wealthy professional man), Ray (the family man) and,
especially, Jill (CEO of the household).
Neat. Except I’m a Buzz and a Ray who hopes to be a Barry someday and my wife is a Jill who is usually with me if I walk into Best Buy.
My name’s Mike. I’m not an archetype; I’m a person. Don’t make up a story about me; converse with me.
Customizing to archetypes is better than one size fits all, but I fear a lot of companies are about to spend a lot of powder customizing to archetypes in the name of targeting. That’s sad, because with only a little more effort, you can customize to people.
People buy stuff. Archetypes don’t.
