1161: What Are Valuegraphics and Why Do They Matter? - a podcast by Neil C. Hughes

David Allison recently wrote that Millennials continue to be blamed for ruining everything from the diamond industry to homeownership, and, in response, joke that Baby Boomers destroyed the planet and can't work smartphones. Except it's not a joke. These statements do nothing but push us further apart.

In the closure of his recent article, he advised that we all have to stop using demographics labels to paint each other with broad brushes. The inconvenient truth is that although we try to pigeonhole people, the reality is that age, gender, income, marital status, education, number of kids—none of it indicates any similarity. We're all the same age now. Some of us just haven't figured that out yet.

David Allison is the Founder of The Valuegraphics Database, the world's first global dataset that can change the behavior of any target audience 8X more effectively than ever before. He is a best-selling author, internationally acclaimed speaker, and the leading advocate of values-thinking as the new best practice for organizational decision-making.

In retrospect, the path to his work today seems like a straight line. Working on campaigns for some of the biggest brands in the world, building an award-winning marketing creative firm, and writing three influential books on communications strategy left him questioning a fundamental concept of marketing.

In a post-demographic era when age, gender, income, and education no longer restrict how we choose to live, he wondered, why are we still using demographics to predict and influence how target audiences behave? He sold his firm in 2015 and worked with a team of university researchers to launch, collect, and analyze a half-million surveys about why groups of people behave the way they do.

The data was immediately clear on two points. First, demographics were a shockingly ineffective way to understand how groups behaved. More importantly, leveraging shared values turned out to be the most powerful way to trigger behavior. Now, for the first time, there was accessible, customizable, empirical data that proved what we value determines what we do.

Further data analysis revealed that we waste 90% of our time and money trying to engage target audiences using demographics. What could we do with 90% of our financial and human resources redeployed elsewhere? What if we only did things that people cared about? Wouldn't the world be better off if everything was based on the values we share?

Since then, David has been focused on defining a new post-demographic era where values-thinking influences everything we do. His background consulting, writing, speaking, and creating simple stories from complex ideas has helped amplify the global shift away from outdated demographic ideas.

I learn more about his mission is to change the way we look at the world. His latest book, We Are All the Same Age Now: Valuegraphics and the End of Demographic Stereotypes was the number-one global marketing best-seller within 48 hours of its release. Kirkus Reviews called it "A genuinely original contribution to marketing literature," and INC Magazine named it one of the top ten leadership books of the year.

David talks about building an award-winning marketing creative firm and writing three influential books on communications strategy, which left him questioning a fundamental concept of marketing.

 

Further episodes of The Tech Talks Daily Podcast

Further podcasts by Neil C. Hughes

Website of Neil C. Hughes