When it comes to successful marketing, I have a singular simple rule. Whoever understands the customer best wins. And that starts with understanding the persona. So I recently did an experiment, I wanted to take a look at grocery shoppers and understand them a little bit more about what brings them into a particular store. So I went to our local Trader Joe's, and I stood in the center of the store and I did my slow panoramic turn to look at various shoppers and see what I could notice and immediately of all the people there I zeroed into a couple of people that jumped out at me that I thought I could understand I saw the urban socialite, I saw a young mother with a small child in tow, and I saw an older gentleman who was wearing a sports coat who had little patches on the elbows and I thought of him as the professor.

And as I looked at each of these people, And I watch their behavior of how they went about their shopping business and how they conducted themselves. I thought, you know what, I've got enough information. I think I understand them well enough to put together a hypothesis of what their persona would be for each of those three, three folks. I thought, you know, personas are not rocket science. How hard could this be to jot down a few notes about their interaction, their experience and and call it a day? But then I thought, you know what, I'm going to continue my experiment.

There's actually a Whole Foods Market not far from Trader Joe's and I thought I would go do the same experiment there. So I walked into the whole foods into the center of the store, and I did my slow 360 degree view so I could observe some shoppers at work. And immediately, I noticed some things that seemed familiar and at first, I wasn't exactly sure I was zeroing in on a particular individual You know she fit the social urbanite example that I've noticed in Trader Joe's. And then I realized, oh my gosh, it's the same woman. My first thought was, did the persona I think of it Trader Joe's was that wrong? Was I somehow off target?

Because after all, if I got her right, and Trader Joe's, why would she be shopping at Whole Foods? And I thought, you know what I really need to ask her. And so I thought, well, I'll just go up and ask her some questions and in my episode, diplomatic, gentle voice not wanting to appear to be some sort of crazy stalker. I walked up to her and I said, Excuse me, ma'am, if you don't mind. I've got a few questions. I'm doing some market research on grocery shopping behavior.

And I happen to noticed earlier that you were over at Trader Joe's I see you're now over at Whole Foods, and I'm curious what brought you into either store. She was very kind. And she offered her reasoning, which I found incredibly insightful. And I thanked her for her time. And as I was turning, I literally bumped into a young mother with her small two year old child. And it was the same young mother I had seen earlier at Trader Joe's.

And so I took a step back, and she laughed at me because she had recognized me and I laughed at her. And we shared a few jokes. And then I asked her the same question. And she was very kind. And she told me her story and reasoning about what now brought her into the Whole Foods Market. And again, my mind is thinking, What's my initial assessment of the Trader Joe's persona wrong?

Had I missed something? And I'm pondering this as I'm now leaving Whole Foods and of course, who should I run into of all the shoppers that are there was that my friend, the professor, again, the older gentleman with the patches on his elbows. And I asked him and he told me his story. So now I had three data points that had been expanded because I was able to compare and contrast a Trader Joe's experience with a Whole Foods experience. And so my first question myself was, are they the same persona is the persona of the urban shopper attending Trader Joe's the same as the urban shopper attending Whole Foods. And these gave me some careful pause.

And now let me take a step back here. Let's look at it this way. We're all grocery shoppers, there's an entire universe of grocery shoppers. And we can argue that there is a subset of people that will drive or entice them to go into a Trader Joe's there's some compelling characteristics of Trader Joe's shoppers. And the same would be true when we think of Whole Foods that there is also kind of a segment of people more attuned to shopping at Whole Foods. If we were to look at each store in isolation of each other, it would be very clear for us to create a Trader Joe's persona that lives in a universe all by itself, and a whole foods shopper who lives in a universe all by itself.

But here's the thing. We don't live in a perfect world. We live in a world where many of us shop at competing brands. And yet, does that change our persona? Yes, and no. So there are some elements that our grocery shoppers of Trader Joe's and Whole Foods definitely share.

But there's a distinction. There's some element that is unique, that encourages a certain type of behavior. And that's there's a certain uniqueness akin to the Trader Joe's experience, there's a certain uniqueness for a whole foods experience. And we as marketers are compelled to understand and to dig deeper to understand what those nuances are that effect That persona. And before we can jump into what should our positioning be, before we dive into what our messaging should be, we need to understand what motivates the target shoppers, and that needs to become crystallized and clear in the personas that we create.