The Death of Demographics: Valuegraphic Marketing for a Values-Driven World

by David Allison

Marketers have always believed demographics and psychographics held the key to influencing consumer behavior. If only we knew enough about someone—their age, gender, purchase history, favorite brands—we could impact what they do. But that isn’t true at all.

Today we know these systems are a terrible way to understand who people are. Nobody acts their age anymore, and tracking past behavior doesn’t tell us what will work now.

Valuegraphics change everything.

By focusing on deep values rather than surface habits or traits, valuegraphics uncover what drives and unites us. Based on decades of behavioral science research, adding valuegraphics to your insights can improve your marketing effectiveness by a factor of eight or more.

Learn how to find the valuegraphics of your target audience and create powerful values-driven strategies that excite and engage them. Discover why demographic profiles are dangerously inaccurate, and walk step-by-step through the process of becoming a values-driven organization.

In a DIY format that’s quick and easy to use, The Death of Demographics will show you what global B2B and B2C brands have already discovered: that the secret to engaging your target audience is to know what they value.

Because what we value determines what we do.

376 pages, Hardcover

Published November 29, 2022

About the author

I launched the Valuegraphics Project in 2015 to create a worldwide map of core human values. Today, global brands and organizations from PayPal to Lululemon use valuegraphics to understand how groups of people make decisions—about anything, anywhere on Earth—and activate their target audiences eight times more powerfully than ever before.

Reviews

[Cass · Rating 4 out of 5]

I won this as a goodreads giveaway. I don't typically read nonfiction books when I am not assigned to do so. However, there were a few things that intrigued me about this book. First, I was a research assistant for years and I love data. That is one of the aspects of this book that I liked the most. There is a lot of data and it is displayed in a very consistent, organized, and clear way. The second thing that intrigued me about this book was the connections I believed I could make to the psychology and economics classes that I teach.

David Allison does an amazing job at explaining these concepts and making it easy for anybody to read. You can also feel his passion for this topic through the pages.

The few things that downgraded it for me:
1. During the part of the book where he discusses how different people of demographic groups are, he did not provide any data on stacking demographics (for example, lower class white gay men with a bachelor's degree). I'm sure there would be more consensus among the group the more you stack these demographics.
2. Some of his examples are drawn out and I lost interest during many of the hypothetical examples because they are simply that, hypothetical.
3. The intriguing real life examples are pushed back into the appendix which I feel most people don't read but I did and found that interesting.

[Terra Fletcher · Rating 5 out of 5]

I haven't torn through a book like this in a while! In fact, I will probably read it again.

As a marketer, I've been interested in how values motivate a person to buy for years. This is the best book I've read on the subject to date.

Here are several highlights:

*the top 5 universal values and how they relate to consumer messaging
*everything that we value is related
*"sometimes the absence of data is data"
*can you make it an experience and a possession?
*"social media channels are, after all, the most sophisticated targeting tools ever created"
*how to use memberships and awards to activate values (and vice versa)
*where demographics work (pg 197)
*we want to stand out. how we stand out should be related to what our customers value most
*"nothing makes a possession more of a possession than layers and layers of story"

[Aiden Lupyrypa · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was okay. David allison was i thought a very good speaker at TREF in 2022 and i wanted to read his book. The book did not elaborate much that cannot be said in a 10 minute dinner conversation. It is a good concept. I felt the book was mostly a promotional tool to try to sell you his software.

[Lori · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fascinating premise but it is at least 50% too long. It’s highly repetitive and the constant attempts at humor fall flat.