Your Customer Avatar Is Wrong (But Don’t Worry, So Is Everyone Else’s)

Summary

Brain Driven Brands: Episode Summary

Title: Your Customer Avatar Is Wrong (But Don’t Worry, So Is Everyone Else’s)
Host: Sarah Levinger
Release Date: January 14, 2025

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Introduction

In the latest episode of Brain Driven Brands, host Sarah Levinger dives deep into the intricacies of customer avatar creation and its common pitfalls. Co-host Nate Legos joins her in a candid discussion about the inaccuracies prevalent in how brands perceive their target audiences. Recorded in 2025, this episode marks a significant milestone as the hosts approach their 50th episode, blending humor with insightful marketing strategies.

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The Problem with Traditional Customer Avatars

Understanding the Misconception
Sarah and Nate kick off the conversation by acknowledging a widespread issue: most brands have flawed customer avatars. Sarah emphasizes, “99 of the brands that I've worked with get this wrong” (02:38), highlighting that these inaccuracies stem from relying heavily on subjective perceptions rather than concrete data.

Founder’s Bias and Stagnant Avatars
They discuss how customer avatars are often rooted in the founder’s original vision and experiences, which may no longer align with the evolving customer base. Nate adds, “A lot of times, you have somebody at the top who had the problem that they solved by building their business. But the problem was they've changed” (11:26), underscoring the disconnect that can occur over time.

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Building Accurate and Dynamic Customer Avatars

A Five-Point System
Sarah introduces a comprehensive five-point framework for constructing more accurate customer avatars:

1. Identity: Understanding the core characteristics and values of the customer.
2. Emotion: Identifying the specific emotional triggers that drive purchasing decisions.
3. Generation: Segmenting customers based on generational behaviors and preferences.
4. Seasonal Purchasing Behavior: Mapping buying patterns to specific times of the year.
5. Cultural Movements: Recognizing broader cultural trends that influence customer behavior.

Case Study: Original Grain
Using Original Grain as an example, Nate shares how their initial customer avatar focused on demographic data, such as “women ranging in age from 30 to 60” (06:26). However, through post-purchase surveys and reviews, they discovered that these women were primarily purchasing watches as gifts for important men in their lives. This revelation led to a deeper understanding of the customers' emotional motivations, such as “showing validation and appreciation” (05:09).

Dynamic Avatars with Tether Insights
Sarah introduces Tether Insights, a tool designed to create fluid customer avatars that evolve with changing customer behaviors. She explains, “If your customer avatar isn't fluid, it isn't morphing with the customers as they're changing in their own lives” (12:18). This approach ensures that marketing strategies remain relevant and effective over time.

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Practical Applications and Strategies

Seasonal and Cultural Alignment
The hosts delve into the importance of aligning marketing campaigns with seasonal events and cultural movements. Nate discusses how Original Grain has traditionally targeted major holidays like Valentine’s Day and Father’s Day but aims to expand to more nuanced occasions such as promotions at work or personal milestones like engagements and marriages (17:05).

Sarah elaborates on integrating generational purchasing data, stating, “We can draft a 52 week plan for OG that says during the 15th week of the year, run this emotion in this way to increase sales” (16:08). This strategic planning allows for more targeted and timely marketing efforts.

Examples of Successful Avatar Adaptation
An illustrative example is provided with Pedialyte, originally a beverage for children, which successfully repositioned itself as a hangover cure. Sarah explains, “They saw when they did their word cloud analysis, Pedialyte and Hangover were like two of the biggest ones that were coming out. So they decided to tap into this” (19:37). This pivot showcases the importance of adapting customer avatars based on real-time data and behavior analysis.

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Insights and Takeaways

Continuous Research and Adaptation
Sarah and Nate stress the necessity of ongoing research to keep customer avatars aligned with current customer states. Sarah notes, “Every customer avatar on the planet was built Station seven years ago by the founder who usually was the customer” (10:36), highlighting the risk of outdated avatars.

Strategy Over Format
A key takeaway is the distinction between strategy and format in marketing. Sarah asserts, “Format selection is not strategy” (24:34), emphasizing that understanding the customer deeply is more crucial than the medium used to reach them. This philosophy ensures that the messaging remains consistent and authentic, regardless of the platform.

Leveraging Tools for Enhanced Marketing
The introduction of Tether Insights serves as a pivotal point in the discussion, where Sarah outlines the benefits of utilizing advanced tools to gain actionable insights. These tools facilitate the creation of dynamic avatars, enabling brands to tailor their marketing strategies effectively throughout the year.

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Notable Quotes

• Sarah Levinger: “99 of the brands that I've worked with get this wrong” (02:38)
• Nate Legos: “A lot of times, you have somebody at the top who had the problem that they solved by building their business. But the problem was they've changed” (11:26)
• Sarah Levinger: “Format selection is not strategy” (24:34)
• Nate Legos: “I'm always like, I don't know if I should plug this episode” referring humorously to self-sponsorship (12:24)

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Conclusion

This episode of Brain Driven Brands offers a thorough exploration of the challenges and solutions associated with creating accurate customer avatars. By emphasizing data-driven approaches and the necessity for dynamic, evolving avatars, Sarah and Nate provide valuable insights for marketers aiming to enhance their brand strategies. The discussion also highlights the importance of authentic, emotion-driven messaging over mere format experimentation, urging brands to deeply understand and continuously adapt to their customers' evolving needs.

For listeners eager to implement these strategies, exploring tools like Tether Insights is recommended to stay ahead in the competitive e-commerce landscape.

Follow Sarah Levinger:

• Twitter: @sarahlevenger
• Website: TetherInsights.io

Producer: Scotty
Network: Learn and Laugh series on the Quickfire Podcast Network

Transcript

[A]

Wait, you said you were gonna intro. You did that on purpose. I swear to God I did today. And I'm back.

[B]

Welcome back to Brain Driven Brands, co host.

[A]

Hey, the.

[B]

The co hosts are not on the same page today. It's the first time we are recording in 2025.

[A]

Because I'm tired, just exhausted at the.

[B]

End of this week. This week, first week back, felt like such a grind.

[A]

It actually kind of did. Like, I had a hard time getting momentum behind my activities.

[B]

Yeah. Like, I think, like, being in work shape is, like, a real thing, and I'm not in work shape right now.

[A]

Like, you gotta hit up that work gym.

[B]

Yeah. Like, I had all my meetings on Monday, and by 3pm I was like, all right, I'm done with this.

[A]

That's what I kept saying every day. It was just like, no. I kept getting emails, and I was like, ah. Do I have to? Yes, yes, yes, yes. That first week, I think, too, everybody's kind of in the same mode, which is like, we're just recovering psychologically from everything that damage does.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Over the holidays. Yeah.

[B]

But got me through it. And now it's Friday afternoon, and we're all good. We're back.

[A]

We back. We back, people. Okay. We're coming up on 50 episodes here pretty soon, which I totally got around today.

[B]

But now 50 is kind of close to your age. Yeah.

[A]

First of all, I had somebody that I talked to today that was like, oh, my God, Nate's, like, in his early 20s. I was like, no, he is not. He's not early twenties. No. Late twenties.

[B]

28 is mid twenties. 36 is late thirties. We've been over this.

[A]

First of all, makes no. No mathematical sense. And second of all, yes. 100. It's very close to my age of ripe old 36. Today, though, we're gonna hop into our topic finally, because I had a ton of tweets, like, randomly get real excited over the last week, so I had a hard time picking one that we were gonna, like, focus on. But I think we need to focus on this one. Mostly because I. I kind of wanted to roast you a little bit.

[B]

Oh, nice.

[A]

Which I know you love. You just appreciate.

[B]

That's why I'm here.

[A]

Shred every piece of your business. So today I kind of want to roast one particular aspect of your marketing stack.

[B]

Oh, good. What a fun episode.

[A]

Yeah, it's gonna be great. Get excited about it. It actually pertains to something we're talking about later today anyway, so if you're the.

[B]

If you. If you are listening to this. And your name is Ryan and you're the owner of Original Grain. You can skip this episode. I'll fix it. Don't worry about it.

[A]

Just don't do it.

[B]

Just.

[A]

You don't need to go through our credit, though. Every brand, like 99 of the brands that I've worked with get this wrong. So. So it's not. It's not just you today. I want to talk about customer avatars in particular, which, again, you and I have done quite a lot of work on. So it's not like you're not doing it all the way correctly. Most of what you do is fanfreetastic. What I want to talk about today, though, is like, customer avatar generation in particular. We already have kind of yours, for the most part, figured out just because we did a lot of work earlier. And what was that? 2022? Something like that.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

However, customer avatars in particular, I think, are done completely incorrectly. And you guys are just about to go into, like, a giant branding phase in the business and push deeper into, like, let's expand out. Let's, like, make the brand an entity in itself. And to do that, I think you have to know where your customers are and how to actually build a customer avatar that will suit the next, like, five, ten years. Does that sound okay to you?

[B]

Let's do it.

[A]

Mr. Cool Nate with your sunglasses. Okay, to start with, here's what I want to know. What does your customer avatar look like? What's on it? What's in it? Where do you keep it? Like, all the secrets?

[B]

I mean, it's in my head. First of all.

[A]

That's why I'm roasting you.

[B]

No, we've got different aspects of it written down in different places. It probably should be its own. Doc, at this point, are you asking about my customer avatar or the watch wearer avatar?

[A]

Ooh. Describe the difference.

[B]

Our customers are women who buy watches for the men in their lives.

[A]

Hey.

[B]

And then the people who wear the watches are dudes that look like me.

[A]

Yep. And that's something we did a lot of work on. A couple years.

[B]

Yeah. So customer avatar, is that what you're asking for? You want the women?

[A]

Yep. I wonder.

[B]

She is a woman middle aged, Sarah's age looking for. Looking for a gift for a guy who she appreciates and values, who might be hard to shop for, who works really hard and sacrifice for the family and never buys anything for himself. And she's looking for something that she can show him how much she appreciates them.

[A]

Okay. I think this is pretty Spot on, obviously, because you and I have worked together before. My, my next question is, how do you know that about.

[B]

You told me.

[A]

Cheating. Cheating. 100. Okay. And this is something I've been thinking about for a while is like the customer avatar in particular is usually one kept inside the CMO's head or the creative strategist head or, or like the mind of the media buyer. Like every, every marketer on the planet, I think, has this idea of the person they want to go after. The strangest part is we are generating massive amounts of marketing campaigns and branding campaigns. All these different things that we can use to reach said person, reach said avatar based entirely off of our perception of who this person might possibly be. So often you'll see things that are very demographically tied. So if I work with brands, they come in with customer avatar on a piece of paper, usually a word doc that's somewhere between seven and ten pages long or possibly somebody put it into like a really pretty like slide deck.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

It's like, here's our customer, four different types. Here's like a cool picture of like something they might like. And when I asked them, where did you get this information on your customer avatar? They're like, well, this came from the founder. The founder had this information.

[B]

So even before we worked with you, we, we like actually pulled all of our demographic data.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

So we knew it was women.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Ranging in age from 30 to 60, which when I first got here was a bit of a surprise to me because we only sell men's watches. And I was like, why are 7% of our customers women? That's super interesting. And then through some post purchase surveys, through reviews, it was very clear, like, okay, cool. They are gifters. They are buying it for their husbands and dads and brothers and sons. And then that's when you came in, actually analyzed all of our reviews rather than me like skimming 20 of them and being like, cool, I get it now. But you kind of helped solidify that for us. But yeah, it's super common and like we fall into it too sometimes. I know. We're gonna talk to you and Tether Insights this afternoon about that. Cause like so much of our brand positioning, and most brands positioning comes from the founder or the marketer's vision and like, what they want. And it's like, all right, that's fine. But like, if you're wrong, it's gonna be an uphill battle the whole way you're trying to do it.

[A]

Yes. Yep.

[B]

And that's something that like we want to narrow in on right now. Like, we have a budget to invest in brand building this year, and we think we know the direction we want to go with it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And it is based on some customer data, both quantitative and qualitative data. But, like, beyond that, we're kind of guessing the scary spot to be when we're looking at, you know, a big budget to start investing in all this content and brand activations.

[A]

Well, I don't think it's bad. Like, for anybody listening. It's not a. Like a poor reflection of you as a marketer or as a brand builder. This. Nobody, nobody has this information. Like, it's very difficult, I think, for anybody to know where to get it.

[B]

And I'll say it's a bigger problem if you don't have that vision in your head of who this is for. That's like, you don't even have a business if you don't have that vision. So, like, you should have it. But I think we need to research it and make sure it's rooted in some. Some tangible thing rather than our brains.

[A]

Yes. Okay. So I don't think I ever shared with you, like, my thought process behind how I actually got the data right. Of who this woman was that was purchasing for her husband. How we actually figured out that she was incredibly nostalgic and. And that she really wanted to display, like, show appreciation and not just affection. I don't think I ever broke down how I actually got.

[B]

Okay, you're holding out on us.

[A]

Well, I wasn't holding out, per se. My problem was that when we actually went and did a bunch of NLP work with your reviews, at the time, I didn't know I was doing this. The problem, like, I had a framework in my head, and this is something interesting they talk about all the time, that if you have a process in your head for finding out any sort of thing or doing some sort of, like, activity behavior, it's. Your brain is a computer. Right. So it's going through the steps every single time, even if you don't know what the steps are. So it took me four straight years to actually sit down and think about, how does Sarah actually figure out what customer avatars want in particular and how to build an avatar so that it's accurate, so that it works and makes you millions of dollars, like it did for OG So I finally posted about this, I don't know, yesterday, a couple days ago, because I sat down and thought about, okay, what am I actually looking for when I'm looking through customer avatars? And I have like five different points and most of them you already know because we already did work on. There's a couple of them that I'm currently building so that we can have customer avatars that aren't static. And I think this is pretty important because customers change. They're freaking human. Every customer avatar on the planet was built Station seven years ago by the founder who usually was the customer. Right. A lot of times you have somebody at the top who had the problem that they solved by building their business. But the problem was they've changed. The founder morphed so they're no longer the customer they think they know.

[B]

That's such a big piece of it.

[A]

Yeah, it's a problem. It's a big problem.

[B]

One thing I'll interject here and then I'll let you get back to the main point and the valid point of this podcast. But like, I have so often seen, and I shouldn't say so often, I've seen it a couple of times, but when I've seen it, it's been bad. Where the founder gets out of touch quick.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And like where it's usually tied to finances. Where, like the founder gets rich and have completely lost touch with what offers and what messaging and positioning are going to resonate with who they were at the start of their business and who they want the customer avatar to be. Like.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

I've had, I've. I can't share all the examples.

[A]

Though.

[B]

I have not seen it at og. Like, I think we are full. Like we talk all the time about how like $300 is a lot of money for a lot of people.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

For most people to spend on watching. Like, even for us, you know, American household income is 60 grand a year. Not to flex too hard. I make more than that. But like I don't buy myself $300 accessories.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Like, it's not something I do often. So like we try to keep it super top of mind. But I think being aware of your biases and your personal evolution and growth, like, matters a ton. Because who you were when you started the business, when you felt the pain that your business solves, might not be who you are today. And that could be securing your vision.

[A]

Yes, yes, yes, yes. So this is something subtle plug here for Tether Insights. Sponsored by Tether Insights.

[B]

Yeah. Does your, the agency that you own sponsor us yet? Because I haven't seen a check.

[A]

Every time. Every time. I'm always like, I don't know if I should plug this episode.

[B]

Sponsored by Lagos Enterprises.

[A]

Literally sponsored By Sarah. I sponsor my own stuff. Anyways, Tether insides. This is the reason why I'm digging deep into customer avatars this year. Because one, it's very difficult to get that information and two, if your customer avatar isn't fluid, it isn't morphing with the customers as they're changing in their own lives. You're going to constantly be going like you're going to be shooting arrows at moving targets. You're just going to be shooting arrows out there as the target's flipping upside down and moving all over the place. Assuming that you're going to hit it because of the data that you gathered seven years ago and because of again marketer bias. So tether insights trying real hard to solve for the marketer bias issue because I can just assume what customer Nate wants, but I don't know customer Nate like when he's by himself. So I don't have access to the data that I need to be able to like draft good marketing, especially if you're changing, which you are all the time. So anyways, back to my point. So five, sorry, different. I use like a five point system basically for you guys like three years ago. And again my business is constantly updating and changing as well, like to just to keep up with what actually needs to happen. So for you guys, we were going after basically identity, emotion and generation. So that first three like pillars, basically when you're building customer avatars is to identify identity first. Which we did for your ladies. Right? We, we kind of identified who they were. Really family oriented women, really supportive of their husbands, incredibly kind of like blue collar, hard working, good work ethic type women. Right. So they're really invested in their families. That's their identity. Secondary to that was emotion. What do they actually want to solve emotionally by purchasing a watch? So it's got to be whatever the emotion is, got to be very specific to your product and your brand. So if we know that these women identify as incredibly family oriented, hard working, blue collar women or not even it doesn't have to be blue collar. Just like anybody who values work ethic, the emotion that they might feel is wanting to appreciate or show some sort of affection towards the person in their life. That means most of them husbands, boyfriends, partners, whoever it is, right? So that's the emotion that they're actually trying to solve with buying a watch which is showing validation, appreciation, secondary emotion to that is showing that they're awesome and that they pick good gifts. So we, we solved that for you guys. We have the identity we have the emotion and then generation. I think you guys already had it because you understood the demographic of women who are purchasing from you. We could probably dig deeper into that because if they really truly are Gen X women, there's a very specific type of behavior that comes out consumption wise from that particular generation because they're usually incredibly independent women. Right. Like I'm going to freaking tackle the woman world and the only people that matter to me is my family. Like this family freaking first. Right. Friends second. And then my community third. These women are like very serious about these type of things. The fourth and the fifth ones are the ones that I'm currently solving. So I have like all kinds of stuff that I'm drafting that's going to be pretty exciting for this. But I want to see if we can map shopify seasonal behavior to the actual identity and the emotions and the generation that we figured out for you guys. So that we can basically draft a 52 week plan for OG that says during the 15th week of the year, run this emotion in this way to increase sales. So yeah, so that's what I'm trying.

[B]

To build based on just generational buying data.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Of like shop a lot in this month or whatever.

[A]

Yes. And I found a tool actually that's going to help a lot with this. So I can look back anywhere from like 2 to 10 years worth of purchasing. Yeah, it's freaking nut. This tool is insane. So look back for the past couple years, basically ever since COVID And I can basically. I keep saying basically. Basically, basically. Basically I can segment the audiences down by generation, by product, by industry, by all kinds of crazy stuff, by emotion. And we can tell during this period of the year this is what they were talking about. So if we see a lot of women in the watch industry talking specifically about, I don't know, maybe men getting a promotion at work during spring more than summer or fall, we can tailor our marketing towards that specific time period of the year. So we can talk about. Show him, right. That his work is worth it. That's an interesting message to test. Show him his work is worth it. That you value what he values.

[B]

We've talked about when a little bit. If you guys haven't listen to the episode, I don't know what it's titled. It's something about like when, not who. And you should know when you are selling to people.

[C]

And like the episode, this is producer Scotty. The episode is named actually don't think about who, think about when. From November 5, 2024, we know how Powerful.

[B]

When is just based on, like, natural seasonality. Father's Day, Christmas, wedding season. We try to hit on a bit, but that's it. We, like. We are currently limited to going any deeper than what everyone's calendar says, which is, well, Valentine's Day, Father's Day, Christmas. That's kind of all you big holidays. Yeah, yeah. Like, watch. Especially when it is something that's bought most often to commemorate something.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

Promotion at work, getting engaged, getting married, becoming a dad. Becoming a dad.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Like, there's so much stuff like that that goes on in men's lives that they want to commemorate, and a watch is a great thing for that. But again, right now, I'm only marketing to the Hallmark holidays and really can't get into all those other things.

[A]

So this is what I want to do. I want Tether Insights to become the place that tracks this for every industry, every market, every product. Basically, our team will basically just track everything you need to know about this particular customer based on these five pillars. Right. So we went through the first four. Identity, Emotion, Generation, Seasonal Purchasing Behavior. And then Cultural Movements is the last one, which you guys have kind of already tapped on a little bit because you've talked about in previous episodes that you're looking towards partnering with, like, football teams and, you know, country singers and, like, all kinds of other people in the actual environment that these people already operate in. It would be interesting to see what other cultural movements they're attached to that we don't know they're attached to. Yeah, that piece of it I'm, like, really excited to look into because they're. I mean, these women could be solidly into, like. I don't know, they could be yogis, and we just don't know that they're yogis. I don't think they'd be yogis, but there's stuff like that that pops out all the time that you didn't know. For instance, Sir. Sir. Educate yourself. Yoga people. Yoga. They call themselves yogis. You've never heard that term?

[B]

No.

[A]

Hi, everyone.

[B]

Welcome to Basics with me, Vicki here I am.

[A]

Yogi. Okay. Wow. You're not the devil. Yogis.

[B]

Okay. I don't like that.

[A]

Here's a good example, though. So Pedialyte. You know the company, the brand Pedialyte?

[B]

Yeah. The hangover cure.

[A]

Yes. Okay, so I didn't know that they did this Pedialyte as a mom. Pedialyte is like Gatorade for babies.

[B]

Right.

[A]

You only give it to your kids when they have the flu and they haven't drank anything in like 48 hours and they're probably gonna die. So you have to get something. Right.

[B]

I have a different case for it.

[A]

Okay. Do you know how Pedialyte became the Hangover brand? Nope. They did research just like this into identity emotion generation, seasonal person, disease, behavior, culture movements.

[C]

I'm sorry, producer Scotty here, what did she say?

[B]

Into identity emotion generation, season, culture movements.

[A]

And did basically word clouds that were coming out of all of the social media, like talk, like channels. Right. So they were basically social listening. They were going over and getting all this data on what are people talking about. And they saw when they did their word cloud analysis, Pedialyte and Hangover were like two of the biggest ones that were coming out. So they decided to like tap into this. They wanted to see is there a market for people who use Petalite for hangovers? And that's how they got like Pedialyte Hangover pops. They're like popsicle.

[B]

That's such a perfect example of like the founder's vision for that company is not what it's used for today. And I don't know the split of how many people use it for hangovers or babies. But like everybody I know who drinks a lot.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Uses it for that.

[A]

I had no idea.

[B]

And it's such a. You really like, had never heard of that?

[A]

No, I don't drink a lot for one and like two. If I do drink, it's like one glass and I'm like, woo, little tipsy and then I go to sleep. Customer avatars, man. Yeah, you have to because it changes. That's what I want to do for you guys. Do you like, build one?

[B]

Do you know it's going to be an interesting transition. Like, yeah. If and when we ever have kids, when I start buying it for that, it's going to be like, oh, I have a new thing to buy this for now.

[A]

As a customer type, though, the interesting part is because you had an affinity to it in your college days, you'll probably buy it for your kids, right?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

There's plenty of other things that you could buy for your kids that kind of do the same thing. But you'll go for Pedialyte because you have ltv. Now that's another episode that we could probably do is LTV could be split by decades.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

Which is intense. If you think about it, some customers might be customers literally for life, but they only buy during specific periods of their lifetime. That's another episode. Anyways, so what I'm trying to say is customer avatars. I really want to build, like, a system so that it'll basically just plug and play insights for you. So every month, basically every two weeks is what I'm trying to do. Every two weeks, we will deliver, like, a huge report of all the insights and then just basically actionable steps so you'll get access to all the things that we're actually seeing. If you really want to look at the reports and, like, dig into it, because it's fascinating. But on the side, it'll be like, here is the, like, top 300 words that are going to resonate most with this audience this month. Here is the phrases that we think you should use. Here's the emails we think you should run. Here's the. Here's the offers we think you should probably plan. And here's the silos. Here's one for Boomers. Here's one for Gen X. Here's one for Millennial. That's. That's what a customer avatar should be able to do.

[B]

That's so interesting. I can't wait to see this in practice.

[A]

I know.

[B]

Let's see if we can see the performance and, like, see how close it matches up to the data. Basically, like, if. If may is, like promotion time for guys and we're using language for that, does that stop performing in June, July, August?

[A]

It should.

[B]

And then something else. Pick up the slack from there. Like, that's going to be really interesting to, like, have a plan. Because right now, like, as you know, with a lot of the marketing I do, we're kind of winging it. It's fine.

[A]

Okay, but you're not, like, you're an extremely savvy marketer who understands your customer extremely well.

[B]

Yeah, we're shooting from the hip to, like, there's a fine line of we understand what's going on, and we're also just throwing some stuff out there. But, like, this is getting. This is what I think people should be talking about when it comes to, like, creative strategy. Not new visual formats, not hacky hooks on your videos. Like, this creative strategy feels relevant and valuable. And what I like about it is, like, we'll be staying true to us the whole time. We're not hopping on hacking TikTok trends to get attention. We're staying true to who we are. We're just messaging it according to what that person is going through at that specific time.

[A]

Yes. And that way, too, you can use any format you want. And it should.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Statics, gifts. You want to do a founder video, you want to do podcasts, you want to Go out and like just stick pictures on a truck and film the truck. I don't care what you do.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

Because that again, that's not strategy. No, format selection is not strategy, people.

[B]

Nope.

[A]

Format selection is not strategy. Strategy is deeply understanding your customer on a level that's continuously matching their current state as a human.

[B]

Yep. The activation calendar for the year is basically done. We know when it's Valentine's Day, our 12 year anniversary, Father's Day. Yeah, whatever. Labor Day, Christmas, like that's all basically done. But like creative testing. There's not a calendar for that. Like we're leaning into what works all the time and we're not pumping out hundreds of ads. You know, we're doing a few a week and it's going well. But this is going to give us a lot more firepower to like really dial in what we should be talking about, when we should be talking about it.

[A]

Let's go, let's go, let's go, let's go. Where can people find you if they want to follow how amazing it's about.

[B]

To get At Nate Legos on Twitter, actually at Nate Legos everywhere in the Tactical and practical podcast is a good one. I didn't do any episodes this week. The full time job selling watches and I got very busy. But usually two episodes a week. These days I'm copying you by the way, doing two a week as you should.

[A]

It's fun.

[B]

And I think one of them is always going to be a new segment called Currently Crushing where I talk about like ads, emails, landing pages, stuff that's working for me right now. That's something that people ask for all the time. It's like they don't really want to hear a case study about my Q4 right now because it's like, well, you can't run that playbook in Q1. So one episode. So a week is all going to be about like what's working in the last seven days, in the last 30 days.

[A]

I can't wait. I'm going to bookmark all of those because I mean that's the type of stuff that we need more is like what's currently working and if it's built, if it's shameless, but if it's built off of Tanner Insights, then you'll be able to share every single week. Like this week. This is what the data shown, this is what we built from that. And now we're billionaires. If you want to follow Sarah at sarahlevenger, basically everywhere you consume content, check out Tetherinsights IO That's T E, T H, E R. Did I spell that right?

[B]

T8T E T H. Your company.

[A]

You don't know. It's fine. TetherInsights IO we're studying humans, man. You want to come over and get some more insights on what your customers are doing, specifically on their identity, their emotion, their generation, seasonal purchasing behavior, all the things that we talked about on this episode. Go check out tetherinsights. I. Oh, thanks for chatting. This is a good episode.

[C]

The Brain Driven Brands podcast is part of the Learn and Laugh series on the Quickfire Podcast Network.