The first step in any culture change strategy is knowing who we are talking to and who we should be reaching. Audience segmentation is a strategic tool that provides insight into who is with us and who we can reach and persuade.
Segmentation sometimes tempts us to customize a narrative for each audience. But that results in storytelling that is confusing, inauthentic, and inefficient. The true power of segmentation is coalition building. Gender justice has just one narrative, and it is the story platform. We should only be telling stories about the future we want—and plan—to live in. To ensure that our stories reach our audiences, however, we need to know not just what we want to say but who our audiences are and what stories they tell themselves.
The Story at Scale audience profiles—created from a survey of more than 6,000 people and enriched with cultural and qualitative research—are not about demographics, ideology, or indeed about political issues or gender justice; they are about how our audiences experience gender in their everyday lives.
“The sense of being out of place was always there. . . I feel like if I’m in a safe place, it’s like a super-privileged-unique-probably-won’t-last-very-long kind of moment. I’ve thought about this a lot. . . about a safe place—what does it look like? I’ve sort of come to the conclusion that I need to create a different kind of safe space.”
—Movement Leader
Influencers and brands that resonate
“It’s our job to make sure that we balance the equality within our society. And it really doesn’t make me feel powerful, it makes me feel dutiful. It’s weird, to be a person who doesn’t necessarily deserve something, but has it anyway. It makes me feel I have a duty to balance it out.”
—Research Participant
Influencers and brands that resonate
“We [women] are the ones that can bear children and that is something a man could never do. People underestimate women. We handle a lot because that’s what we have to do. A man could nurture but it’s innate in us. My children have their father but they always seem to come to Mommy for some reason. It’s that innate ability women have.”
—Research Participant
Influencers and brands that resonate
“It doesn’t mean we’re not equal, it means we’re different. A man should be doing something. . . if you’re not doing anything you are not aiding the community. If you are sitting around all day, that is not a man. Women can be productive, too, but one of the most productive things a woman can do is be a good wife and a good mother.”
—Research Participant
Influencers and brands that resonate
“I’m really old fashioned and I really should have been born before my time even, But I think our world has gotten so chaotic. It makes me sad that I see in my grandchildren’s future maybe a world where women have to be a breadwinner. I kind of like my world of how it was for me.”
—Research Participant
Influencers and brands that resonate
“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female he created them.”
—Genesis 1:27
Influencers and brands that resonate