In a recent Yonder US event, Beyond the Blur – Imagining Deeper Audience Connections, speaker, brand mythologist and frequent Yonder collaborator Ben Doepke discussed how personas can limit, rather than enhance, customer understanding.  

In marketing and insights, we like to think we understand people. We build personas, map behaviors and categorize mindsets, striving to build evidence and capture something real. But here’s the uncomfortable truth: we are in danger of reflecting our own assumptions back at ourselves.  

The danger is that businesses flatten people into one-dimensional caricatures – easy to categorize, easier to ignore. It’s time for brands to break the cycle and rethink what it really takes to see people for who they are. 

Problematizing personas

Personas are designed to make consumer understanding easier. But in simplifying the people they’re trying to represent, there is always a risk of missing the nuances that drive real human decisions. Think about how we treat personas in our work. We name them, give them characteristics such as hobbies and income. We might even identify with aspects of them ourselves. But to what extent do these characters really help us to identify what customers need or want? Can personas tell us what makes the heart leap, or skip a beat?  

Personas that aren’t contextually grounded can sometimes represent who brands expect people to be, not who they actually are. They can be built on assumptions or surface-level data rather than deep understanding of how these profiles translate into that way people behave in different situations. Because people are not static. They shift across different contexts, moods and roles, making personas inadequate and lacking in humanity if they are not formulated and applied situationally. AI-generated personas even accelerate the problem, as AI struggles to grasp the emotional depth and contradictions that define human nature.  

Whether from static personas or AI generated shadows, brands risk missing key insights about how people truly think, feel and behave – the things that actually open up the opportunities to connect with them more meaningfully. It is incumbent on us as humans to delve into our humanity so that we’re better positioned to serve humanity. Shifting to situational personas that reflect a way of being, rather than a fixed personality, can help address this need. 

What it can really mean to know someone

People feel truly known when interactions are free from transactional motives. Genuine understanding isn’t about recognizing job titles or demographic markers, it’s about noticing the emotional and psychological dimensions that drive behavior, and their contextually dependent complexities. 

This means paying attention not just to what people say and do, but also to what they leave unsaid. It means looking beyond behaviors and preferences to uncover motivations, anxieties and aspirations, even when these are poorly – or not at all – understood by people themselves. The best brands don’t just categorize people as customers or consumers, they seek to understand them as multi-dimensional human beings. 

People are walking contradictions  

One of the biggest mistakes brands can make is assuming that people are consistent. A real human being won’t live out all of the assumptions we have about their designated personality type – that they have one mode, one identity and act in one single manner. People are messy. They’re inconsistent. They’re full of contradictions and idiosyncrasies.  

People don different masks – akin to how actors used masks in the theaters of Ancient Greece – to embody the different, sometimes wildly divergent, aspects of their personality. A person who is outgoing in their career may be deeply introverted in their personal life. Someone who values spontaneity may also crave structure and control. A consumer who loves luxury experiences may also enjoy budget-conscious purchases. The lesson for brands? Don’t focus on a single, fixed consumer identity. Instead, recognize the different “masks” people wear and create experiences that resonate with their evolving needs, emotions and motivations, and use these to form situational concepts of customers behaviors and outcomes. 

Rethinking customer understanding

The future belongs to brands that embrace complexity, contradiction and fluidity in human behavior. Instead of seeking to define consumers by static labels, brands should strive to deeply understand them as dynamic, evolving individuals. 

By embracing human complexity, brands can build more meaningful connections, create more relevant experiences and, ultimately, drive greater impact. The question isn’t who your customers are, it’s how they see themselves, and how your brand can meet them in that ever-changing space. 

How to dig deeper into the human psyche

The way to understand real people and their real contradictions is to engage in deep human understanding, observing their real-time actions, reactions and decisions. Taking shortcuts and making generalized assumptions can run the risk of creating research that does nothing more than corroborate long-held assumptions or bias, instead of uncovering new and resonant discoveries about how – and why – people behave, think and feel the way they do.

• Spend time with real people to uncover new insights and the tensions that reside within them. 

• Validate what you learn using qualitative and quantitative methods. 

• Explore how these behaviors manifest outside of your direct category or “usage occasion”. 

• And tell a story that helps bring these people into more relief and dimension, versus “strategy by numbers” that flattens them into a rigid identity. 

Ready to start your journey? Get in touch with us today: hello@yonderconsulting.com