Time and again, I address the topic of persona in my articles. This short article uses two commercials from Kinder Überraschung to show that advertising addresses different personas and that this has a decisive impact on buying behavior.
Since user and buyer persona are often different people, it is crucial for success if we are clear about which persona we are addressing and how. If you are not yet working with personas in product management, use this example and the questions below to check whether you are actually reaching your target person with your communication.
Example 1 - In every 7th egg
Who do you think is addressed by the "In every 7th egg" advertisement? With the cute cartoon character of the egg and the Happy Hippos, the advertising primarily reaches children. The children remember the egg and the Happy Hippos when shopping with their parents, at the latest at the checkout, because the children's surprise is always at the checkout. With the different characters of the Happy Hippos, our human collecting instinct is also activated, so that every time we go shopping, we ask again for a surprise egg.
To find out who is User and who is Buyer Persona, ask the following simple questions:
- Who uses the product and is therefore the user persona?
- Who influences the purchase decision as a subject matter expert and is therefore a buyer persona?
- Who decides economically whether the product is purchased and is therefore the buyer persona?
If we answer the questions we come to the conclusion that the children are the User Persona. The purchase decision is influenced by the children as "subject matter experts" and they are therefore Buyer Persona. The economic Buyer Persona are the parents, as they pay for the product.
Related to the "In every 7th egg commercial", the child, i.e. the User-Buyer Persona is addressed, since the child has an influence on the purchase decision and will play with the Happy Hippos and also gets chocolate.
The economic buyer persona, the parents, decide on the finances and ultimately whether the children's surprise will be purchased.
The direct approach to the user-buyer persona, i.e. the children, worked extremely well. Or do you know any parents who have not often discussed the purchase of a children's surprise with their children at the checkout and usually gave in?
Example 2 - Curiosity Test 2012
The second video shows the new advertising for the children surprise. Who does the advertising address? Or asked by persona, which persona is addressed here?
Since I wanted to analyze this more precisely, I asked my own children, i.e. the user persona.
The children do not understand the content of the advertisement, so they ignore it almost completely.
Why is that?
Well the new advertisement for the children's surprise shows an experiment that adults perform with children, which amuses us adults a bit.
For the children, i.e. the user persona no incentive is created on toys or chocolate. Thus, the advertising and ultimately the product also receives no attention from the actual target group.
From the point of view of the buyer persona, I find this advertising very positive, by the way, because I am briefly entertained by funny children's faces on TV and at the checkout in the supermarket there are, for some time now, also no more discussions about buying children's surprises.
As a product manager, please pay attention in the future to which persona you are developing the product for and how you address the persona.
If you want to learn more about personas or you want to learn how to create different persona profiles for your company, please read our free Product Management books or the other information for product management about personas.
About the author
Frank Lemser is a trainer and founder of proProduktmanagement. He has been a market-driven evangelist since the beginning of the 2000s and since then has also been methodically involved with product management. He has developed the Open Product Management Workflow™, numerous tools for product managers, written and published books free of charge and was involved in the development of the Product Management Dashboard for JIRA. His personal goal is to solve many everyday and work problems for product managers, to professionalize and simplify the work for product managers.
