David Allison > Quotes

“There’s no end to what we can learn about our shared human values and the role they can play in making the world a better place.”
― David Allison, The Death of Demographics: Valuegraphic Marketing for a Values-Driven World

“The longer we keep using these outdated demographic labels, the longer we perpetuate the demographic stereotypes fueling racism, sexism, ageism, homophobia, and the like.”
― David Allison, The Death of Demographics: Valuegraphic Marketing for a Values-Driven World

“[Demographics] are the dewey decimal system of humanity; a great way to organize people into groups based on similar outward characteristics, but in no way an indication of what those people are all about.”
― David Allison, The Death of Demographics: Valuegraphic Marketing for a Values-Driven World

“Valuegraphics are not the answer; they are the questions we must ask.”
― David Allison, The Death of Demographics: Valuegraphic Marketing for a Values-Driven World

“No matter how much data we collect on a target audience, the decision about what to do about it is left to guesswork and intuition.”
― David Allison, The Death of Demographics: Valuegraphic Marketing for a Values-Driven World

“Our brain uses demographics to make snap decisions and to cut down the amount of time we have to think about something. Simply put, it saves us time and energy—it’s a heuristic shortcut. The problem is, that shortcut can be extremely limiting, both for how we understand the world and how we react to it. It’s based on stereotypes.”
― David Allison, The Death of Demographics: Valuegraphic Marketing for a Values-Driven World

“Marketers will learn how to connect the dots between products/services/brands and what their target audience wants. We shouldn’t waste precious resources talking about what we think is important...we should talk to our customers about what they think is important.”
― David Allison, The Death of Demographics: Valuegraphic Marketing for a Values-Driven World

“Demographics are the Dewey Decimal System of humanity: a great way to organize people into groups based on similar outward-facing characteristics but not an indication of what those people are all about on the inside.”
― David Allison, The Death of Demographics: Valuegraphic Marketing for a Values-Driven World

“The only way to see into the hearts and minds of human beings—and peer into the future of what they will do next—is to identify their core human values because our values drive everything we do. Everything.”
― David Allison, The Death of Demographics: Valuegraphic Marketing for a Values-Driven World

“In our quest to create the Valuegraphics Database, we discovered the outrageous inaccuracies of demographic profiling. Turns out, people who share a demographic label are incredibly different from each other and don’t share the same values at all.”
― David Allison, The Death of Demographics: Valuegraphic Marketing for a Values-Driven World

“To progress as a world, we needed to discard
our systemic reliance on demographic stereotypes.”
― David Allison, The Death of Demographics: Valuegraphic Marketing for a Values-Driven World