The truth and lies your agency is telling about your future customer

The truth is many of our creative agencies don’t understand the future customer and are on autopilot, with unconscious bias threaded through their creative work. Brands are risking long-term damage by trusting agencies blindly. Campaign activity, furthermore, is at the forefront of society and, done poorly, perpetuates flawed concepts through our culture. Worse still, marketers are not taking responsibility for it.

A look at the creative work in the media is all the proof we need that something is up with our industry’s understanding of our customers. It is hard to imagine in a day and age with so much customer research that much of the work would still end up perpetuating lies about our customer, therefore representing missed strategic opportunities and limited brand performance. Having been on the client side and in many agencies, I can see the machine at both ends. Many cut and paste past data and insights into briefs without questioning if they remain relevant. Many are also using outdated customer profiles that were created with unconscious bias behind them in the first place. Past data does not necessarily mean correct data today.

There are of course some brands and their agencies doing a great job, but many creatives