We often find in our work that brands may think they understand who their users are, when in reality they only understand what they are. 

User insights like lifestyle, attitude and personal taste used to be enough five years ago when aspirational branding captured the attention of a hot economy getting high on D2C, but today that approach will only get you to a baseline. 

If you want to get to a strategic high ground today, you need to first dig for greater substance. 

Over the past few years, we've shifted our approach to User Worldviews, and in today's article, our Concept Bureau Culture and Market Researcher Hali Ipaye shares how this approach works and just how much more powerful it can be in building your brand.

To understand who someone is, you have to come to know their understanding of reality.

As Hali tells us, "Worldviews are intricate tapestries woven from the fibers of our conscious and subconscious minds. They are the stories and myths we tell ourselves and feel deep within us to be true — whether they actually are or not."

Worldviews are the models that make people human. They help us predict how people will feel and act, and they almost never change.

There are so many fascinating ways to uncover worldviews. One of my personal favorites is psychologist Jer Clifton's "primal world beliefs" which looks at three axes that are fundamental in understanding how people move within the world and their own lives:

1. Belief the world is a safe place versus a more dangerous place

2. Belief the world is enticing versus dull

3. Belief the world is alive rather than mechanistic

Another one of my favorites that is core to our work at Concept Bureau is "sources of denial": finding where people lie to themselves so that we can find the glue they use to hold conflicting beliefs together. 

Both of these approaches, as well as the others that Hali discusses, show us the ways individuals shape their perceptions of reality. 

User Worldviews, when correctly understood, naturally spell out the behaviors and beliefs that sit on top of them. 

They should be your first starting point in coming to know who your users are and how to serve them.

You Only Live Once

Here's what we've been consuming.

Don’t try to be interesting. DO interesting (Do Book Company): "It’s not about making yourself interesting. It’s about making the world interesting. And that means developing skills and habits around ideas, creativity and communication. It’s a tiny superpower. It gives you a lift. And it’s a tiny spice. It makes everything tastier... We’re not talking about the effort required to self-build a house or start keeping bees. It’s more akin to starting a small, gentle hobby."

Speculative Fiction Writes the Future (Every): "We need stories to contextualize important questions without easy answers. People think in stories. Stories ground ideas in human experience and mint new metaphors that reveal how the world is changing—imagine trying to discuss state surveillance without 1984 or living in a simulation without The Matrix. As these stories ripple through our culture, the imaginary futures they portray influence the world we build for ourselves."

Americans Are Still Spending Like There’s No Tomorrow (Wall Street Journal): "A tough housing market has more consumers writing off something they’d historically save for, while the pandemic showed the instability of any long-term plans related to health, work or day-to-day life. So, they are spending on once-in-a-lifetime experiences because they worry they may not be able to do them later. “It’s not a regret-filled, spur-of-the-moment decision,” says Michael Liersch, who oversees a team of advisers as head of advice at Wells Fargo. “It’s the opposite of that, where I would regret not having done it.”"

Fighting The Astro-Turfing Of Culture, The Gravity Well Of Banality, And The Stifling Grip Of Pre-Packaged Thinking (Martin Weigel): "Strategy may well be our greatest defense against banality, our best chance for escaping the containers of the past, and our surest means of slipping from stifling grip of computational culture. For the simple reason that it is concerned about people, and looks to the future. But to realize its potential, strategy needs to be reorientated and reimagined."

Why MRIs and Migraine Drugs Are Taking Over Your Social Media Feed (Wall Street Journal): "Botox and fillers once made up the bulk of influencers’ pharmaceutical and health-related sponsorship deals, but now they include campaigns related to migraines, ADHD, Type 1 diabetes and insomnia. Ryan Detert, the chief executive and founder of Influential, a decade-old influencer-marketing firm, said pharmaceutical-related deals have gone from a negligible part of its business pre-pandemic to “tens of millions dollars” this year."

Eyes On The Prize

Quick hits of insight in socially acceptable places.

• Remove double negatives
   

• Preventative by 2040
   

• Time to product-market fit
   

• Banned Insights

Wild Secrets

Creative inspirations for the other side of your brain.

• Overselling it
   

• Cartier-Bresson of the East
   

• A game for when you don't know how assertive to be
   

• The irregulars
   

• The difference between thump and thump-thump-thump

I shared this recently on LinkedIn and many people felt it. It's a lesson for both people and brands:

Every time I pass this sign in our neighborhood playing field, it makes me think of the many parenting and kids brands we've worked with over the years. What many brands forget is that being a parent isn't so much about raising children as it is about raising the adult.

The only real trick to being a good parent is to constantly be growing up yourself.

In our research over the years, we've found so many examples of this.

- New mothers are more likely to quit their jobs and start new businesses shortly after giving birth.

- New mothers re/discover their sense of style as they begin to develop a sense of style for their children in the early years.

- Early parenthood is where many people seek therapy for the first time, oftentimes to end family patterns that are newly apparent. *Dads feel this way, too, but are more susceptible to suffering alone and need more outreach.

- More and more, instead of fitting into their children's lives, parents find ways to fit children into their lives (think kids at Burning Man, vanlife families).

What I love about this sign is that it speaks to parents from a place of firm empathy. It says, "We know you're acting a little crazy because you care a lot, but you also need to grow up." It's disarming - people feel seen, and also understand that whatever angst they're feeling, it's about them and not their kids.

If you're a brand that deals with people who have children (that will be most of you), it's a good lesson in messaging.

Yours,

Jasmine Bina
Founder & CEO
Concept Bureau, Inc.