Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.
Say you’ve got a nailgun. It’s very powerful and accurate. But just because you can use it to shoot a nail into your hand doesn’t mean you should.
Same goes for hyper-segmentation when it comes to advertising. Bob Hoffman says advertising has fallen in love with hyper-segmentation because advertising always falls in love with technology. Bob’s right.
Maybe hyper-segmentation works for direct marketing. But for a real brand, hyper-segmentation is a curse.
You can’t build a brand in private. You build a brand in public. You build a brand by saying big things to a lot of people and then you let probability do its work.
Probability and likelihoods are all we have in every human endeavor. There’s no absolutes. There’s no always.
There’s more probable and less probable. The more famous your brand is and the more people who know your brand, the more likely you are to be to sell a lot of stuff.
Conversely, the fewer people who know your brand and the fewer people who are aware of your brand, the less likely you are to sell a lot of stuff.
Hyper-segmentation limits the appeal of your brand. People buy things based on public perceptions.
That’s what real advertising does. Generate public perception and public value.
It’s the broad appeal of advertising that makes people want to buy.