For years we have been talking about the importance of targeting in marketing, and this is for many obvious reasons that can be summed up in the concept of "The cocktail party effect", which is a principle in behavioral sciences that simply says that with the noise present in our lives today, humans will not show interest unless they feel that the speech is directed specifically at them. Just like a person in a noisy party, they will not pay attention to any information or people talking unless they hear their name specifically mentioned. I have previously discussed in this article that we can unify people into groups based on demographics such as age, gender, occupation, place of residence, etc. Or through psychographics, interests, fears, and desires.

In fact, in the second case, we do not target audiences.

Every time I work on a branding strategy especially for a highly competitive project such as a cafe, gift shop or sweets, I struggle to reach an accurate description of the target audience with the project owners. All of these problems are solved when I change my question. The problem is in the word "audience". The right question is: What is the target mood?

The strategy starts with empathy with the target client. You and I and anyone who visits coffee shops decide where to go not based on our monthly income, the prices are roughly the same, and in fact, we don't mind paying more or less based on the occasion or mood. From here, we can design the experience in the cafe (I hope you know that the cafe here is an embodiment of an idea in a highly competitive field). 

Let's put some examples of cafes and think together.

When we imagine the occasion and mood, we can design the experience perfectly. The experience here refers to everything related to the project from products, prices, customer service, interior design, and overall feeling, product names, prices, employee behavior and actually every detail that may not cross your mind.

All project owners tell me that their quality is high. As if it's a feature. But the idea that the product quality is high is the least we expect. If you don't have high quality, you shouldn't even be in the market. High quality is not a competitive advantage, nor are prices, product or design. The competitive advantage is a result of perfecting the experience, and the experience will not be perfect unless it's customized for one purpose. Remember, the essence of strategy is in defining what we will not do. In abandoning moods in this case in order to master the experience for one mood. And before you worry about not having enough audience, remember, you are most likely in a city with hundreds of thousands or millions of people. All you need is a few hundred customers.