Category: Personality

Maybe a better question: Where are concentrations of happy people?

Our research indicates several factors contribute to what makes a happy city. We started our research by looking at what others judge as happy places. A few popular magazines list top x most happy cities, but the results are all over the place. Nothing is consistent in the selection of cities. We are working on a definition of happiness and finding out where in the US is truly happy.

It’s not bike trails or money.

It’s not the nice weather either.

What looks to be causal is use of free time and availability of places to use our free time.

There is a high causal relationship to past-focused time orientation, social process with friends, differentiation, analytical thinking, and biological and perceptual process.

What does not connect well is cognitive process, such as insight, tentativeness, and insight. How odd. Our research is not done. We are still removing subjective data.

The below chart indicating places where happiness is in high concentration.

Above is a sample of places considered happy cities. The density of human activities is inconsistent and so are the personality traits. Overall, the data could be reasonably correct (vs miserable places) but the inconsistency across 450+ activities (densities). Below is a sample of activity density.

Boulder, Co is often voted one of the happiest places in the US. It’s not the place but state of mind.

They tend to be emotional, stressed and yet find ways to be positive. That is what the data suggest.

I looked at home purchases over five years in the US and appended a calculated personality trait to home ownership by house size. I find this to be challenging research, connecting house size to personality traits. Houses seem different than buying a product to get a job done yet home is a significant part of our daily life. In the US, we tend to buy what we can afford, stressing ourselves to the limits of reason.

Anyone who can afford a 4,000 sqft home has money to spare. It also means they likely have a spare room or two for things to do or keep a distance from who knows what. Their traits indicate the need to solve jobs to be done with added household space. 4,000 sqft is significant, even when house prices are relatively low.

Looking broadly at American homeownership in the 4,000 sqft range, we see a high biological process, related to food. Food becomes a means to solve things beyond hunger.

They are humane and helpful as opposed to suspicious and adversarial towards others.

They have a sense for biological process, understanding others behaviors, they sense well.

They have a high level of sensitivity to physical (via sound, sight, touch, or smell) and emotional stimuli, easily overwhelmed by too much information. Perhaps, larger spaces in the house give the flexibility to adjust.

They listen to upbeat songs and watch documentaries about celebrities. They are for the most part mindful of their peers, helpful to others, especially in need. They are warm, neighborly, and thoughtful. They have a hopeful perspective of human instinct and coexist well with others.

When looking at small house size (1,000 sqft) and very large, (10,000 sqft), we see dramatic differences in traits. I welcome anyone interested in traits and housing to take a look at the file and insights we uncovered. The trait research is University-based work.

From: Branding in the Digital Age: You’re Spending Your Money in All the Wrong Places by David C. Edelman

When making purchasing decisions, consumers go on a “consumer decision journey” comprised of four stages: consider a selection of brands; evaluate by seeking input from peers, reviewers, and others; buy; and enjoy, advocate, bond. This journey replaces the famous funnel metaphor.

David’s excellent work helped me find my footing. My research indicates the customer decision journey varies, based on personality traits. Some personalities will have a much quicker cycle when aligned with the product/marketing message fit. Conversion rates of 10x to 20x vs. the least performing traits have been observed and duplicated many times.

Some personality traits will not advocate at all. It’s not in them to do so.

Evaluation stage can vary significantly based upon traits such as risk avoidance which can slow down decisions.

My research indicates people are very different and marketers make two fundamental decisions when reaching out to mass audiences.

1. They overreach their audiences by 9/10s
2. They blend too many different messages into an ‘averaged’ message

Both of the above activities set up noise in the system that can be challenging.

FORD ownership is a club. Late models in one midwest State indicate consistent traits with some variation between models. What does this mean? If you want to sell more of these, get to know the Ford customer traits.

In summary, Ford owners are active, enthusiastic, always on the move. Ready for challenges and accept responsibility. They like to be in groups. They have a sense of orientation, they can connect relations between objects and people. There is a tendency to show more honesty, personal and disclosing behavior. They are authentic, emotional, open-minded, ready for a new experience.

You can see broad differences in ownership of a Ford Focus vs Mustang. Focus owners are more interested in health. University research, in summary, suggests a Focus owner is more sensitive to worries, competitive and ambitious, with a tendency to ignore symptoms of stress.

Mustang owners have a keen sense of time, place and motion — I would hope so.

Summary of all models:

1. Relativity // Motion // motion
2. Relativity // Relative to area
3. Personal Concerns // Leisure
4. Summary Variable // Authentic
5. Biological Processes // Body

FORD EXPLORER IOWA

1. Relativity // Motion
2. Personal Concerns // Leisure
3. Biological Processes // Body
4. Relativity // Relative to area
5. Summary Variable // Authentic

FORD FOCUS IOWA

1. Biological Processes // Health/illness
2. Relativity // Motion
3. Relativity // Relative to area
4. Social Words // Friends
5. Summary Variable // Authentic

FORD MUSTANG

1. Relativity // Motion
2. Relativity // Relative to area
3. Summary Variable // Authentic
4. Personal Concerns // Leisure
5. Relativity // Time

Personality Analytics is not just prediction and measurement.

Ever notice, when you meet somebody, within a few minutes, you can start to figure out who they are, what makes them tick? If you spend enough time with them, you become well versed at what they want to do. Is this just good guessing or are you forming theories about this person?

That’s the idea behind using personality analytics for creative and designing based on a 1:1, total addressable market.

So how does personality analytics drive the business?

First and foremost, making better recommendations. Every time I look at my apps that recommend things, I’m astounded that they want me to buy stuff I already own (in 2018!) or give a watered-down and safe suggestion list. It’s not intriguing. Sure, it does work, contributes billions to sales. It just could be so much more. Jeff Bezos says customer delight is a big deal. Why? He gets the bigger picture of understanding people is a pathway to success and helps avoid the pressures of disruption.

Second, why do we make people buy things so many times before we start treating them like the loyal customers they will be? The ability to predict who is loyal can be predicted, in large part based on personality traits. It’s not about tricking people and getting them to buy more things they don’t need; it’s about solving their ‘jobs to be done’.

Third, adapting your sales strategy. Ever been to a store and noticed that the rep always works the conversation, continually angling to form a connection? That’s a great sales rep. It’s a dying art, but it does work. Why can’t websites and apps do a better job than they do today understanding people through machine learning?

It’s possible with today’s technology to adapt the message before a person even buys. CMS and CRM give us this power to delight, not fright.

Forth, Create a look-a-like CRM based on personality traits. You know what works by looking at your CRM but why are so many visitors not buyers? Why can’t you buy a media list of buyers, not visitors? It is now possible to understand the customer at a deep level and find people on a 1:1 basis. It requires a mindset change with leadership and the organization must embrace change. A powerful example is Credit Karma. They changed the way banks acquire customers. Starting as a direct response marketing company, they are worth $4 billion (as of Q32018), based on deep understanding and excellent media execution. They are one of growing number of disruptors challenging and changing how we build organizations.

By matching what people need in life, you better fulfill their needs as they look for products to solve a job to be done.

Matching the needs of a person to their personality traits, you are;

1. Increase conversion rates by matching buyer to the product, based on need and desire. Traits drive why we buy.
2. You understand the preferences of buyer desires — why people buy
3. Better convert people who don’t buy because your marketing language better fits.
4. Develop targeted messaging and personalization across all platforms — you are explaining your product in the eyes of the ideal buyer — not averaging too many diverse customers.
5. Create look-a-like audiences based on desire and personality.

It’s not about solving people’s needs, not selling them more junk. Figure that out and make lots of money.

It’s always the big brands. They build the skills and capabilities needed to drive sustainable growth. It’s not early on that they do this it’s usually much later in their history do they find a need to define people and segment according to something unique.

Netflix has been the leader. They have gone out of their way to create products based on a deep meaning of who people are and predict what they will need. Can you imagine building an entire show and series based on the prediction of a customer?

Regular Hollywood is starting to do that, but it’s leaders like Netflix that are paving the way for many others.

Is your company a market leader or disruptor that is trying to find a deep understanding of who people are? Are you using data from the past to do it for creating predictive models based on nothing from their purchase history or click history?

In the next five years, we will see more disruption proportional to organizations that commit to a deep understanding of people and their ‘jobs to be done.’ The theories are grand but having the technology to execute at an ever faster pace is where this is all going. Buckle up.

How people think is very hard to figure out.

When we communicate one-on-one, we learn a lot about people, who they are and what they will do next. Think about friends and family. You know their next moves. You know what they will like and what they don’t and your ability to predict gets pretty darn good in a short period of time. How many times have you heard “I know him like a brother”.

Some people will claim that they can figure a person out within minutes. How do they do it? What is it that allows us to predict? It has a lot to do with how we interpret language. We can read body language but more likely it is the words we use and in what order that lets us form deep thoughts about a person’s traits. Have you ever called someone an ‘old soul’? Those are hints at traits.

Very often people are judging others by what they say. We are naturally programmed to listen to language and judge people by word usage and patterns.

I found a way to use the power of psycholinguistics and Trait theory for good.

It’s not about selling people the wrong things or trying to trick them into voting for somebody or worst, trick them into spending far too much time within an app; it’s about giving people a choice based on who they are and what they deeply desire.

In our day-to-day lives, jobs arise. Sadly, we have to wade through swamps of misinformed marketing, dull messaging, and noise to try to figure out if the product and services we are pushed to look at will solve our needs. Clayton Christensen calls this ‘shopping’.

In my research, we have to determine that Psycholinguistics and Trait Theory are causal to profits and revenue. We shop and decide much faster if the product matches who we are first.

For example, if we are deeply introverted, we are not likely to ‘hire’ a red convertible on a trip and attend a party to make us happy. Those products may solve a need, but they are almost never hired by certain people even if it is clear they can make us happy. So we would suggest those people need to be more adaptable or challenge themselves.

Our research also suggests there are very few personality types that will hire any given product, profitably. The calculations so far suggest 1 in 5 is the upper bound of who will hire any given product. Most average marketing organizations tend to ‘spray and pray,’ even if they have sophisticated marketing people. The is a dreadful ‘averaging’ of very different people. This results in more downward pressure to profitability find people who will hire your products. The wrong money on the wrong customer takes away time and effort to reach those who will hire our products.

We also found that the differential from best to the worst customer is 10:1. 10x is no small odd yet when we look at net new customers and the actual cost of acquisition, we should do something different.

Given these two metrics, it is no surprise that conversion rates are single digits online.

It is also no surprise that store conversion rates are better because salespeople can adapt and stores can lay out many different ways to solve our jobs to be done.

Why people buy is encoded in our personalities and traits. These are things that are thousands of years old. Who we are is how we form societies and tribes. It’s what makes us live and work together. In an age of many choices to solve our jobs to be done, we need better ways to execute jobs to be done, give better choices and not abuse our customers and their needs.