Linda's persona

Real vs. Ideal Self

When I read that for the second post of my blog I had to create a persona I immediately thought about “The Sims”.

The Sims is a computer game, that allows you to simulate the daily activities of one or more virtual people ("Sims") in a suburban household near SimCity. The player is encouraged to make choices and engage fully in an interactive environment.

The interesting element is that we can observe a parallelism between the lifecycle of a Sim character and the development of a persona as a target for a company and its products.

Of course there are some differences such as the presence of only three stages in protagonists’ growth: infant, child, and adult. While babies grow up into children, children and adults never age. That means that children and adults remain in their life stage indefinitely. Translated in marketers’ language, it would be like saying that the final stage, lifetime achievement and retirement, is not followed by a cyclical return to the first stage because different persona efforts culminate and restart in different ways.

In my opinion the Sims was so popular because people could project their ideal-self on the virtual character.

In the same way if I had to describe myself, I would distinguish between:

• my real self;

• my ideal self;

• me as the others feel me;

• my looking-glass self (me as I’d like to be felt);

My already complex persona, is becoming more and more difficult to be analyzed…

The question is: which is the side that most interests marketers while they design a product for a specific target?

Before hazarding an answer, I want to present my real self as valuable for marketers.

Age: 20

Gender: Female

Geographic location: USA (probably I should write Europe because of my background that can influence my purchasing decision in a different way compared to an American coetaneous)

Race/Ethnicity: European

Family structure: 4 people

Profession: Business student

Description: career-minded, stylish, fashion-conscious female who likes sports, traveling and hanging out with friends. Outgoing and fun-loving but also very practical, organized and hands-on.

I enjoy shopping, music and outdoors activities, such as swimming, skating, bicycling, jogging and I like health food. Technology is not the main interest and I don’t like to stay at home to read or watch television, except for cooking programs.

Not very skilled at computer and videogames.

Interested in cultural events, popular festivals and art expositions.

I like home accessories, furniture and gardening but my main passion is fashion clothes.

Home life: No pets, Do-it-yourself, home furnishing

Day schedule: 7.00: Breakfast (always the same)
                        8.00: Class or prep
                        1.00: Lunch
                        Afternoon: Class or prep
                                         Gym three times a week
                                         Meeting friends
                                         Household and shopping...
                        8.00: Dinner
                        Evening: Hanging out with friends, cinema, disco...
                        (as you can see I tend to organize my day accurately)
Manias: taking always the same way to go to university on exam days
              believing that some clothes are lucky
              entering many shops before buying something (also a pair of jeans!)
             

Fortunately my real self ties in with my ideal self, then I would be probably more interesting to consider the ideal self as my image in the future.

I’d like to meet “Felipe”(I mean the Cohorts character!), an educated, fitness-minded, work-oriented, technological inclined young man, who enjoys designer clothing(then shopping!), cars and high-tech gadgets. With him I could share the passion for outdoors activities. He could be the influencer of my purchasing decisions in the technology or electronics field.

Then some years later I foresee to be “Brett and Tracery”, a young, dual-income, educated couples, who enjoy careers, home lives, foreign travel, cooking…

In the meanwhile I’ll be the savvy career woman “Elizabeth”: affluent, working woman with sophisticated tastes, very active lifestyle and good investing habits.
In the future I’ll be coherent with my current interests in sport, art, communication, hanging out with friends, traveling and home furnishing. What I don’t share with Elizabeth is her avid book reading activity and the mail order purchase because I prefer to choose product after having seen and touched them, especially if they are expensive.

After the creation of Linda’s persona I try to answer to the previous question:

which is the side that most interests marketers while they design a product for a specific target?

I believe that our “real self” reflects our background, upbringing and the principal characteristics of our personality, therefore it strongly influences our purchasing decisions, above all in case of impulse buys or for everyday functional products.

The “ideal self” and the looking-glass self are the result of a throuthful, rational process, then it’s less decisive in impulse buying, but it can be more relevant in other situations, like for clothes or technology items, which are considered comparison standards for highly expressive social products…

Summarizing I think that it’s essential for marketers to recognize and understand both of them, it just depend on the item at issue.

What about you?