81–90 of 138 posts
So for example the small number of categories that Google Ads assigns to me (https://google.com/ads/preferences) are correct - but featureless and quite hard for marketers to target.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you're talking about using personas. I'm not surprised that was your reaction, as personas are often misunderstood, even by marketing folks. The point of using personas is not to stereotype your customers but to establish focus sufficient to permit clear product decisions. In other words the idea is not "all our customers are like this" but "this is the type of customer we care about the most." Or more typica…
Maybe they’re supposed to be individuals, but the problem is that unlike real individuals, you made them up. You can’t learn anything from them that you didn’t put into them yourself. Only a real person with lifelong experience of being themselves can give you insight into what that’s like.
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It was hilarious as an engineer who needed to learn marketing 101 for a startup, its pretty much just stereotyping your customers. "Wendy is a 24-30 yr old professional, slightly insecure, straight, likes wine and dogs."
I covered stereotyping quite a bit in my university studies (I studied marketing) and the broad consensus was that stereotyping is a useful tool because it saves time. As much as we "should" judge people on the nuance of who they are and their individual character, we are presented with an overwhelming amount of information and we need to make a quick decision. This is why I've held the opinion for a while now that i…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It was hilarious as an engineer who needed to learn marketing 101 for a startup, its pretty much just stereotyping your customers. "Wendy is a 24-30 yr old professional, slightly insecure, straight, likes wine and dogs."
I think you're talking about using personas. I'm not surprised that was your reaction, as personas are often misunderstood, even by marketing folks. The point of using personas is not to stereotype your customers but to establish focus sufficient to permit clear product decisions. In other words the idea is not "all our customers are like this" but "this is the type of customer we care about the most." Or more typica…
That is another word for stereotypes.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe they’re supposed to be individuals, but the problem is that unlike real individuals, you made them up. You can’t learn anything from them that you didn’t put into them yourself. Only a real person with lifelong experience of being themselves can give you insight into what that’s like.
This is not necessarily the case and makes light of an entire field. Often times personas are developed by ethnographers, human centered designers, design researchers and are based upon actual users or prospective users. Furthermore, data analytics can be used to generate personas. Personas can be representative of key forks in behavior patterns or beliefs and are a useful tool when making design and product decision…
Unfortunately, stereotypes have utility. No one likes being caught up as a false positive in a stereotype, but when you look at mass market politics / advertising / marketing they cater to charactures of their intended audience because for the most part it seems to work. Every once in a while someone takes it too far and a group gets offended, but let's not pretend that Cambridge is the only one doing this.
one interesting one was that I took 5000 twitter profile photos and averaged the pixel values by male / female. unsurprisingly, the male average had short hair while the woman long. but what did surprise me was that the shirt area of the males had a blue hue and the women had a red one. its not like anyone in particular was wearing red/blue by sex, but on average they were.
would be fun to see if the high contrast M v.s the low contrast F maintained apparent gender
Unfortunately, stereotypes have utility. No one likes being caught up as a false positive in a stereotype, but when you look at mass market politics / advertising / marketing they cater to charactures of their intended audience because for the most part it seems to work. Every once in a while someone takes it too far and a group gets offended, but let's not pretend that Cambridge is the only one doing this.
one interesting one was that I took 5000 twitter profile photos and averaged the pixel values by male / female. unsurprisingly, the male average had short hair while the woman long. but what did surprise me was that the shirt area of the males had a blue hue and the women had a red one. its not like anyone in particular was wearing red/blue by sex, but on average they were.
> Mr. Wylie explained that clothing preferences were a key metric for Cambridge Analytica, whose business was constructing and selling voter profiles drawn from Facebook data. > “Fashion data was used to build AI models to help Steve Bannon build his insurgency and build the alt-right,” he said. Cambridge Analytica built the “alt-right”? Even if that term has any meaning (I don’t really think it does), this statement…
Even with the left-wing spin, arguing that CA (or even Bannon) built the alt-right is just laugh-out-loud wrong.
Are you telling me that people who buy camo clothes are more likely to be conservative? That's crazy talk. Next thing you'll tell me is people who dye their hair pink or blue are more likely to be liberal.
Next thing you'll tell me is people who dye their hair pink or blue are more likely to be liberal. I have been curious about this particular recent feature. Does brightly colored/neon hair indicate the person is part of some particular group? My exposure to this trend has been primarily with people on the internet, specifically Twitter and it seems to be predominantly women, and predominantly associated with being ou…
Are you telling me that people who buy camo clothes are more likely to be conservative? That's crazy talk. Next thing you'll tell me is people who dye their hair pink or blue are more likely to be liberal.
Next thing you'll tell me is people who dye their hair pink or blue are more likely to be liberal. I have been curious about this particular recent feature. Does brightly colored/neon hair indicate the person is part of some particular group? My exposure to this trend has been primarily with people on the internet, specifically Twitter and it seems to be predominantly women, and predominantly associated with being ou…
The hair style is both a signal to others and a modest act of rebellion against societal norms. Modest because similar hairstyles have been around for decades in older countercultures.