From Millennial Moms to Flexitarians: How to Better Understand Your Audience to Forge Deeper Connections

Before we jump into the actual content

of the webinar

I want to introduce us um the agency for

those of you that don’t know us very

we’re the grow agency we’re a branding

packaging and marketing agency

specializing in

cpg particularly we have

30 years of experience in the food and

beverage space

and we’re really passionate about

the art of connecting products with

we are minority owned and female-led

and our philosophy which ties in really

well with what we’re going to talk about

today is that

good branding is really meant to connect

people with products that will enhance

their life

and we see ourselves as the creative

bridge between

you your brand and the consumer so it’s

our job to really understand that

consumer as a whole human

really understand the dimensions of

their psychology and personality

and then good marketing as we all know

is about really illuminating a need

and a solution and making sure that that

solution that communication connects

with the consumer

so what are audience insights audience

insights are a new type of qualitative

they profile personalities within a

given audience

that that those personality traits

really help to

predict consumer behavior how do we

arrive at those

insights we use a combination of

psychological frameworks

artificial intelligence academic

and social data and we’re going to talk

about that in more detail in a minute

and why why are we interested in these

insights how can these insights be used

these are incredibly powerful when used

in your

messaging strategy even product strategy

to some degree and your creative

so we have to talk a little bit about

the methodology before we get into the

insights and i have to say that when i

was introduced to this research i wanted

to get

right into the juicy insights whereas

some of my colleagues

were a little bit more hesitant and they

really wanted to understand the

methodology so i’m going to touch on the

it’s very um it can be kind of complex

so feel free to tune me out if this is

not your jam but

here is the foundation for what we are

about to talk about

so the lexical hypothesis which is a

concept and personality psychology that

basically proposes that

the most relevant personality traits in

a person

are encoded in their language in their

use of language

and that that per that concept

came about in the 1800s and then in

about the 40s

that concept was used to create the big

five personality model

which says that there are five key or

characteristics um components to

a human being’s personality and those

five core components are emotional

extroversion which is sometimes known as

openness conscientiousness and

now these are all measured on a

continuum so

for example with extroversion people

land somewhere on that continuum

somewhere from

extremely extroverted to extremely

introverted or in the middle

and there are also multiple sub

characteristics within

each of these five categories so we’re

going to just touch on all of this so

you have a taste of it

um and then you know that that research

or that

uh this methodology the lexical

hypothesis the big five personality

uh model has been around for a long time

but what’s new

is using artificial intelligence to

apply these

ideas to social data

and by social data what we mean is that

we actually

recruit a group that fits into our our

idea of the target audience and then we

anonymize and scrape

all of those twitter feeds for language

to analyze

so that gives us the personality trait

analysis and then we add to that

personality trait analysis

to round out the profile with insights

demographic insights insights about

media and such through facebook so

facebook has a public data set that

tells you

what people are looking at what kind of

followers what kind of influencers

they’re following rather what the

demographics are and all that kind of

stuff so that’s how we

you know fully shape the profile and

then just to back all of that up there’s

you know academic research has been um

in this area for a long time and there

are really prominent universities like

cambridge and stanford

that are continuing to refine this and

um create research around the efficacy

of this methodology all right

so starting our two audiences this is

where we get into the good stuff so we

wanted to look at

two um broad and really

popular audiences in the cpg cbg scape

if you will

we wanted to look at millennial moms we

define that as women

ages 25 to 40. obviously they have

children and they actually

self-identify as millennial on social

and then our second audience is

now flexitarians are people of any age

but they limit

their meat consumption so they are not

strictly vegetarian

but they do eat primarily a plant-based

based diet they also

eat meat products and as we all know

this is a really growing market

so to understand the insights that we

are about to share you have to know a

little bit about the big five

personality traits

as i said before there are five

categories we measure them on a

those categories are broken down into

multiple sub-characteristics within each

of those categories

and the you know what they represent is

pretty nuanced so we’ll get into

that a little bit we’ll talk about how

you interpret those

insights and how they apply to creative

later in the webinar

but again their emotional range

sometimes known as

neuroticism although that has a negative

um so emotional range is more uh you

middle of the road emotional range

openness extroversion

agreeableness and conscientiousness

so within those we pulled out a couple

of the sub characteristics just to

highlight what we’re talking about and

give you an idea

so for example within agreeableness

you have self-focused versus altruistic

contrary versus accommodating and in

extroversion we’re looking at calm

seeking versus excitement seeking

demure versus assertive within the

trait we’re looking at things like

concrete which is like the preference to

deal with

tangible real word real world things as

opposed to

abstract ideas versus philosophical

consistent versus

adventurous so this is a little bit

reductive in terms of

how these insights or how these traits

are actually applied but it gives you an

of how we got to where we’re going

in terms of application there are

many applications this is really

powerful information for any cpg brand

because at least from our point of view

and i’m sure you would agree

that if you aren’t connecting with your

consumer you’re not growing you’re not

so you really need to understand who it

is that

wants and needs your product and what

appeals to them you need to know who

you’re talking to with your messaging

and your creative

having a fantastic product doesn’t uh

it’s not enough you have to really

translate those features into benefits

and make sure that those benefits

reach the audience that will buy the

so this the application is great for

strategy development

creative development obviously media

targeting targeting you’re going to see

you get a lot of rich

information about what kind of media

your audience is consuming

influencer campaigns and then of course

new product development

before we get into the actual audiences

i wanted to talk a little bit about

consumer personas

um i am sure that you are familiar

lots of cpg companies create

consumer personas to humanize and

personalize their idea

of their target market right so it’s

about choosing

the bullseye of your target and really

what they’re saying and doing what

they’re looking at what their interests

how they think what they feel what

they’re listening to

and then also understanding what their

goals are

and what their obstacles to meeting

those goals are and when you do that

you can create a really robust consumer

that helps you and and teams frankly

and activate um with a very specific

goal in mind you really know who you’re

talking to

so all of the information that we are

going to present in terms of the

personality insights

creates this very credible very robust

consumer persona

a lot of times consumer personas are

built on guesswork or on demographics

and this gives you a psychographic

glimpse inside

of the psychology of how your consumers

think as a group

so here we go into the audiences

i’m going to talk a little bit about the

research and then kelly

who i actually don’t think i introduced

kelly’s here with me

um um is going to talk about how we

these insights to the creative so our

first audience up is the flexitarian

obviously they care about their diet

they’re focused on plant-based but they

consume animal products

so the one thing that’s interesting

about this audience is everything that

they are interested in

seems to be related to food and health

and wellness

they’re the media they consume the

things they’re influenced by

don’t seem to be um very diverse

uh so they’re really interested in

cooking brands and food related media

all that kind of stuff

they’re open-minded they’re seeking new

things um

but they also have some cautiousness and

and we’ll show you

how that is relevant to your marketing

and then they are calm philosophical and

comfortable challenging the status quo

they really want to bring about change

they’re committed they are not afraid to

stand up for themselves

they skew female 75 of them are female

25 to 35 and they are very active on

mobile which actually both audiences are

very active on mobile which is an

interesting thing particularly when you

get into optimizing

your website or your um your

on mobile for mobile okay

so this is my favorite part personally

so we took all of the

information that we gathered about the

influencers and the media

and we actually wanted to use it to

better understand

what kind of human we’re talking to what

are they interested in what are they

looking at

i’m going to share some videos from or a

video and a website

from this influencer lineup hopefully

the technology will support me

let’s see

yeah it does celery juice

can kill it’s interesting right

what does it kill it kills the pathogens

of viruses

hhv6 hhv7

epstein-barr hpv

sediment virus herpes simplex

8 1 2 hh v8

hhp 10 through 16. people walk around

with all these different bugs

they have them in them these bugs

different varieties of shingles viruses

the different varieties of epstein bar

it gives you the fatigue and all the

different vertigo tingles and numbness

aches and pains

celery juice kills and it kills for you

it’s killing okay so i had no idea i

will definitely be going out for

celery juice later this afternoon i

don’t know about you guys

um so that is the type of thing the dr

josh axe videos they’re very similar

that is the type of thing that this

consumer is looking at

this also goes to a little bit into

another uh

or similar an extreme down that road i

want to show you the sage goddess

so this is a website that your consumer

is very interested in and if you poke

into the shop

uh drop down these are the things that

are happening on this website

healing crystals smudging and incense

ritual sets you actually have the option

to shop by intention

um gemstones of course magical candles

and such

so it really gives you an amazing

uh peek into the interest and the

of this target audience there

are each of these are linked to content

and of course at the end of the webinar

you will get a copy of this so you can

do even more research

so now that we’re looking at media and

it’s it’s fascinating the flexitarians

all of the media

is all food and wellness related

predominantly i shouldn’t say all but

it’s almost

all food and wellness related and right

here you have a cheat sheet for exactly

where to reach your audience

and then you know the brands are

obviously like healthy food brands and

supplement brands

and then the shopping channels are food

oriented and they’re you know thrive

amazon handmade is interesting that

makes sense for this type of consumer

the actual personality traits that are

highlighted so as we said all of the

personality traits are scored on a

so we pulled out what are the most

relevant and interesting insights so i’m

going to explain the actual trait to you

now and then kelly

in the next few slides is going to talk

about how to connect

those traits to your creative

so this uh audience is high in openness

which means that they are they’re open

they have a lot of different interests

they’re curious about other people

they’re curious about the world

they’re always looking for new things to

do new experiences new information etc

high cautiousness means that they think

through all of their decisions very

carefully and they’re

more risk-averse which does have a

particular application in terms of

marketing a cpg brand and we’ll talk

about that

they are high authority challenging

which means that they

challenge authority and traditional

values they do not go along to get along

they are

out to affect change and they are

willing to stand up for it

and then low excitement seeking means

that they prefer

activities and messages that are on the

commerce side that are on the safer side

so they’re not looking for a big high

sensation graphics

in their um creative in their experience

of a brand

kelly why don’t you talk a little bit

about how we tied these insights to this

invented brand yes indeed

um so as danielle mentioned i’m going to

talk about

um the insights that we’ve pulled from

these personality traits that we

highlighted and how that works

in a creative execution we’ll start just

with packaging

um as she mentioned this is a brand that

we created

just as an example to show how the

insights could be used

so the first insight is high openness

this consumer

cares more about features than

aesthetics and that’s

really important to note so we have in

the creative execution

listed out ingredients right on the pdp

all the different claims um are really

organized the digestible

and that that type of information

gathering that really appeals to this

consumer with a high openness

and they also really know food so

they’re eager for really detailed

um and i think the key in using this

insight is

you know still you don’t want a very

cluttered package

because you know that the detail isn’t

there you want to really be able to

and understand that detailed information

and the next insight is high

cautiousness so this consumer

also craves information so this is very

consistent kind of the theme of these

are are information right detailed

so um because they’re highly cautious

they need reassurance

and information helps instill a sense of

trust in the brand

um the next one is high authority

challenging and openness so that

consumer loves new novel innovative

products so

clearly highlighting that newness

is really beneficial in this area

the next one is low excitement seeking

information it’s more important than

so complex designs really appeal to this

and i want to note again because we know

in packaging design that the simpler the

in terms of impact and shop ability

so it takes some finesse to really use

these types of insights while on a

packaging design

complex doesn’t necessarily mean busy

and shouldn’t mean confusing you don’t

want those details and that information

to become convoluted and hard to

digest the purpose of giving all this

information is so that the consumer can

understand your product better right

you can skip to the next one

it’s a zoom challenge there you go

uh okay so now we’ll show you how we

link the insights to

other types of creative executions um

there’s a theme to these insights as

well it’s kind of it’s kind of risk

right so low susceptibility to stress

um you want to focus on a health message

um not an indulgence message even if

your product is indulgent

and this should be information driven

this consumer does not like risk so to

de-risk a first-time buy with a coupon

is a really good tactic

um this is also a highly co cautious

consumer again about perceived risk so

coupons are great um and and same with

the low excitement seeking so

this consumer wants to trust the product

before they purchase it

good things you can do to decrease the

perceived risk

is consumer testimonials which we have

on here

influencer endorsements and again

and just to recap the do’s and don’ts so

do emphasize features

precise detailed information ingredients

do highlight the newness or the

unconventional attributes

innovative all that type of stuff

do appeal to their cautious nature with

an endorsement from an influencer

and provide a low-risk opportunity for

product trial like a coupon or a

don’t create high sensation creative

brand with a ton of personality

that lacks substance right so you need

to have that substance and that

um kind of weight to your brand

um be don’t be afraid to be different

unconventional or even subversive with

your content and tone

okay so millennial moms you know what

millennial moms are they’re moms and

they’re millennials

obviously they actually self-refer as

millennial moms on social media

they are very creative they’re into

into diy they’re really ambitious and

enterprising and they’re also

value driven now they have a sense of

and they consume really humorous content

i’m going to show you some

it blew my mind a little bit maybe you

guys are already looking at this content

um they really like brands that

obviously cater their kids

that are solution oriented and they’re

really um

compelled by social causes by mission

driven brands

the demographics here are obvious they

are also very

active on mobile 69 that’s so that’s

something to note

so you have a lineup here of 10

influencers these are the 10 top

in this group six of these 10 are

um so they’re looking for a comedic

they’re looking for some humor in their

life um i’m going to play

a video by tiffany jenkins called why

i’m a confusing wife

that is hilarious

i’m seriously so fat i can’t even look

at myself in the mirror anymore

i’m over it babe stop you’re beautiful

i’m going to the store do you need

yeah can you give me a snickers bar

oh i just feel like i need to live a

little i just sit at the house with the

kids all the time i’m bored out of my

i need friends i need to do something

with my life

babe uh since the kids are gonna be at

grandma’s tomorrow night sheila and dan

want to know if we want to go

play putt-putt oh no no

okay why no i listen

i hate small talk okay and there’s going

to be lots of awkward silences

and i have to brush my hair i just kind

of want to hang out here

no i’m not trying to be a jerk it’s just

that i i do

everything like it would not kill you to

wash a dish

you know what i’m saying it’s we’re a

the dish towel that you’re using is for

only so if you could not wash the dishes

with that i would really appreciate it

are you serious i just feel like

you’re not really paying attention to me

anymore sometimes i

feel invisible peekaboo

can i help you i was just coming to

check on you see how you’re doing why

can’t i

okay so i don’t know about you guys but

i find that

uh comedian hilarious i can see

why that resonates with um millennial

and now this other one is really it

really doesn’t get more millennial than

this so this

woman whoops apologies uh

she makes music sorry makeup tutorials

while talking about the history of

serial killers so you just gotta watch

that’s when it said that he discovered

that he was gay

during this time so she shows people

have some parents

they’re doing makeup while talking about

and they were going to try counseling

marriage counseling to try and save

their marriage because

you know they wasn’t looking to so

it really does give you unique insight

into the personality of this uh

consumer group they’re also looking at

the penny hoarder which is

you know all about savings and um sort

of money hacks

scary mommy which is uh entertainment

and contact

content rather specifically for

millennial moms

inked apparently into tattooing um

and all of these 10 influencers have

content linked so you can easily

look through this and research more on

your own

so with millennial moms the media they

are consuming is a little bit more

diverse so they’re looking at workout

they’re looking at crafty stuff diy

artsy stuff jewelry there

are two subscription uh platforms in

here for lingerie and for cosmetics

and then some food stuff um and the

brands are as you might expect

kid related and they’re shopping at um

you know tj maxx and ulta

old navy target ikea that sort of thing

so the personality traits that are

common to moms are different than the

ones that are common to flexitarians

and so the way you would want to market

is different

they are high on emotionality so

emotionality is also sometimes known as

neuroticism if you think of high

emotionality versus low emotionality

neuroticism versus emotional stability

this means that

they feel things deeply they have a lot

of feelings fears passions

all of that kind of stuff they tend to

be sensitive

they are high on agreeableness which

yeah means warm and friendly

it also means that they’re very

interested in people

and they’re happy to help and

they have a lot of empathy they are high

in uncompromising

um so they think it’s wrong to take

advantage of others to get ahead

they are very aligned with this idea

they’re very into justice and integrity

they tend to be somewhat rigid with

their ideas

this applies when managing social media

for a brand that targets millennial moms

you really want to be responsive

um with their feedback and their

comments etc

and then high achievement striving is

setting goals being ambitious

they’re very persistent and diligent in

whatever they’re trying to

achieve now how these personality traits

to creative kelly will talk about

well so i’m gonna talk through a brand

that actually

exists that we helped um create

and uh we thought it was a great example

a brand that’s effectively targeting the

millennial mom

so this is wonderlab doozy pots one of

our favorites

so um the first insight i’m gonna talk

about is high emotionality

uh so this is all about going big

this consumer responds to emotionally

driven communication and visuals

um you know this the the doozy

image is really high impact it’s

colorful it’s provocative it establishes

a feeling tone and it has messaging to

match so that all kind of goes

uh with the high emotionality um

and then we have high agreeableness this

consumer wants her brands to have values

beyond profits

um so it’s super important to

communicate any social mission right up

um as we did on the website and

packaging here with

you know strong iconography and really

clear copy

and keep that message consistent

um high uncompromising so she’s a market

so you want to share your brand story

and go really deep with the content

again really focusing on the values

you can go to the next slide

hold please

there we go okay so here are some social

executions that we think utilize these

insights well

uh the one on the bottom right we just

created to kind of

illustrate a point here so it’s not real

the first insight insight is high

achievements driving

so this consumer wants you to show her

how your product

will help her reach her goals so in this

case her goal is to you know treat her

with better for you desserts or slightly

better desserts right

so you want to make it really clear how

your brand fits within her lifestyle

and helps her meet those goals high

she responds to emotionally driven

like that post on the top here where we

talk about the um

the brand’s founder story this type of

message this type of inspirational

messaging will really

resonate with the high emotionality type

of consumer

and then we have high uncompromising so

we want to go broad

and deep with the content so the founder

story the social mission

the product benefits the usage ideas all

of that stuff is really relevant to this

they’re really searching out and seeking

out that type of information

so to recap with this consumer do engage

your audience with content that goes

beyond the product

so go broad and deep engage with the

full human

do talk about your social mission so

social mission

cause-related marketing that really

clicks with this crowd

do go big bold colorful provocative

emotionally driven connect emotionally

authenticity and inspiration are key

with this consumer

um don’t ignore questions comments and

feedback on social channels this

audience is likely to seek out more

and don’t forget to emphasize the

solution or the benefit your product

brings the consumer

features do take a backseat to benefits

with this particular consumer

all right that is pretty much it to sum

it up

it’s um this is so much fun for us we

love these insights because

as creatives we really understand

that this type of insight can give your

marketing endeavor

superpowers um and a study was conducted

that showed

that creative made with these

personality traits in mind

received 40 more clicks and 50 more

over creative that was created without

that was impersonal

and and not catering to these

personality traits

so this kind of robust consumer persona

is really

guaranteed to resonate with your target

audience and to

have results so with that we thank you

very much

for joining us and if you have a

question please

type it into the q a which is

in your toolbar next to the chat

let’s see we have some questions

uh sorry i’m going to read the question

aloud this is a really good question

how much of the traits that are

millennial mom are also millennial

singles high emotionality cause and

mission driven

what’s millennial mom uh what’s

millennial versus mom

that’s a really good question to which i

do not have an answer because i did not

do a research study on millennial i’m

not sure

uh we have derek from our research team

who might want to add to this

i millennial is very very broad and the

idea would be to

actually get more and more specific with

the target

uh rather than to broaden that target

derek do you want to add something

i would just echo what you said which is

millennial is such a big category when

you’re dealing with

such a large group you tend to be

dealing at averages which we like to shy

away from and start to sub segment

groups to get

closer to a personality for that

specific group that we can

we can attribute individual traits to

versus such a large group like

what i will say though is that if you

think about

the idea that a lot of flexitarians and

again i don’t have data on this for this

presentation but a lot of flexitarians

are in fact

also millennials but the personality

for a millennial flexitarian is not high

in emotionality

they might be cause and mission driven

sure but they’re not high in

and they have some distinct differences

so you would want to change your

or your your creative executions a

little bit to

to meet that personality time type

rather so there are some notable

differences and i do

think that it illuminates some

interesting things

thank you for that question let’s see we

have a couple more

yes this deck will be available after

the webinar

um and okay so what basically this

question that i have is about the

deliverable if you were to actually

engage in a personality analysis study

with us

so the deliverable would be and it would

the data the analysis and then our

interpretation of that data

and recommendations in terms of creative

application and marketing

so street uh strategic application both

for the brand for the business drivers

and for the um

the marketing and creative and

another question is where can we learn

more about this type of research

so we’ll be sending this deck out after

the webinar completes

at the back of the deck are a couple of

reference slides so there’s a cheat

sheet to learn

more about the um big five personality

model and the sub characteristics and

more detail and then there’s also a

reference guide so there are

a ton of articles and different things

that you can

use to further explore

are there any other questions

i think we’re actually ahead of schedule

so we will

gift you back a few minutes in for your

busy day

um thanks for joining us we hope to

see you next time the next time we

produce a webinar