Reflection – Persona tool

Challenge  I develop strategic approach in communications for a wide range of brands in Central America.  One of these brands is a teenager driven cookie company that needs to find a new way to  participate in the conversations of their audience. it is well known that teenagers do not like  Ads, because they are intended to sell them things that the audience do not need. So how can  we talk with people who are not willing to?    Selection  From my point of view, the most relevant question of the Design Thinking approach is the first  one: What is? Setting up this question is the key to get inspiring answers.  In my personal experience, getting deeper in that questions it is the way to reach the goal of  the project, and it is also the hardest question to solve.  Using the persona tool helps us to identify the gains, the pains, and the relevant topics in the  life of teenagers. That’s the first step to start any conversation: meet the person you want to  talk with.    Application  We quickly started a social listening, a desk research, and a social poll using IG and FB social  networks. Those sources gave us a bank of data useful for the construction of a persona target.  The brand managers and the strategic team worked together to obtain the key findings.   We defined specific sections that compose the persona chart, we focused on pains, gains,  topics that the audience respect and reject, people who inspired their behaviors and goals that  the teenager wanted to reach. As a result, we built two different persona charts: “Miguel Rojas”  a teenager driven by the social and ecologic topics, someone who wants to change the world  starting from the society. And “Ana Gonzalez” a teenager driven by the technology and the  communications, someone who wants to change the world starting from the tech.    Insight  Now the teenager driven cookie company had a message to share with their  audience rather  than just selling them cookies. In the near future; the brand should change the ads into content  for their social channels and we would be able to start a strategic approach based on people  instead of based on consumers.    Approach  We learned that a brand could not start a conversation with teenagers without a key message.  That is the starting point for the strategy, that is the What is?

