Preaching to the congregation

Imagine a dating app that asks some standard demographic questions — questions like your age, gender identity, and level of education. And that’s all. You’d be matched with people of your preferred gender, around your age, with the same level of education. Maybe you and your date would even share a mutual acquaintance or alma mater. From the app’s perspective, you’d be a perfect match. But from mine, your chance at love is probably closer to a coin flip. 

In this example, your date is your target audience. Based on the information available, you should make a great couple. But the information that actually guides your decision-making is missing: the values you hold close, the issues you care about, the way you see yourself. This same pattern — identifying potential customers based on surface-level attributes — plays out all the time in branding and advertising. And because a brand’s audience is foundational to how it communicates, it has ripple effects throughout the brand. Ads fall flat, growth comes slowly, and customer relationships feel fragile. 

Now imagine that, instead of opening that unrealistically-bad dating app, you volunteered to help out at an event organized around one of your interests. When you show up, it’s easy to strike up a conversation with your fellow volunteers. You all share this interest, you’re all here to support the community. You’re even open to waking up early on the weekend. Maybe you’ll find love, maybe you’ll just make some new friends. But regardless of the ages, ethnicities, and income levels of the people around you, you all share common ground. You’re all part of the same congregation. 

Congregations help brands identify more meaningful, nuanced, and three-dimensional audiences. These audiences have ripple effects, too. Only this time, the ripples nudge the brand towards more engagement and stronger, lasting customer relationships. 

The audience in your crosshairs

Whether or not you’ve been a part of a branding project, you’re most likely familiar with the idea of a target audience. Like our hypothetical dating app, brands usually define target audiences based on the demographics, interests, and lifestyles of the people they think are most likely to be interested in their product. A simple example might be “budget-conscious renters under 30” or “dog owners over 50 who travel with their pets.” 

There’s nothing inherently wrong with this approach. With the rise in available consumer data, chances are increasingly good that your well-defined target audience will contain the people most likely to purchase from your brand. But even a highly-targeted ad can flop, because identifying your audience doesn’t really help you connect with them. People don’t think of themselves primarily as budget-conscious renters under 30, but plenty of brands see them that way. If your brand does, too, you’re all competing on the same message: you should want this product because it just makes sense.

The congregation in your corner

The word congregation might bring to mind a church service or evening potluck. But regardless of religion, we’re all part of named or unnamed groups that form our identities — groups with shared beliefs, vocabularies, lifestyles, and, most of the time, buying habits. We visit the same stores, buy from the same brands, and use the same services as other people in our congregation. We aren’t motivated to act by our own demographics, or even strictly by the pros and cons of a product. We’re motivated to buy from brands that help us express our identities and to support brands that reinforce our values. 

You might notice that you’re part of a congregation with people who share your hobbies, follow the same teams, or work in the same industry. Whether or not you’ve met before, you share common ground and can easily slip into a conversation about something you care about. These groups reflect the parts of your identity you’ve self-selected. And when you pick up a new hobby or find a new passion, you can step into a new congregation that helps reflect your identity back to the world.

As a brand, your congregation doesn’t just help define who your customers are. It identifies the common ground you share with them — the point of connection that can spark a relationship. When you’re writing for your congregation, you’re no longer saying you should want this because it makes sense on paper. You’re saying we care about the same things — here’s why this might resonate with you.

Sometimes, the why is indistinguishable. People who align with your values still care about price and product features. But instead of casting a wide net and hoping those attributes resonate with the right people, you’re reaching out with intention. You’ve designed your visual identity to appeal to your congregation and defined your voice for this exact conversation. The nuts and bolts of what you’re offering are still important; they’re just more compelling in the right context.

Putting it in practice

Mediocre, in some form, has been doing this work for more than a decade. And we try not to stay the same for too long. When the book For the Culture started making the rounds through our office a couple of years ago, we paid attention. Author Marcus Collins reframes audiences and brand relationships through a cultural lens. He makes the case I’m making here: that consumers are motivated to purchase not because of what a product is, but because of who they are — that consumption is a cultural act, not simply the logical conclusion of a product’s price and usefulness. 

We’d spent years building target audiences, and they usually served our clients well. But there was a disconnect between knowing who we wanted to reach and knowing how we could reach them. Congregations are a way to go beyond the surface — beyond the stereotypes and educated guesses — where demographics stop. 

Over the last year, we’ve turned to congregations to understand who we’re trying to reach. We’re no longer trying to break through to budget-conscious renters under 30. Instead, we’re reaching out to people who believe in flexibility and independence; who would rather save their money for new experiences than spend it on expensive home goods. 

Creating connection

Like life itself, branding and advertising are about building relationships. Done right, our work is never about brainwashing the public into wanting something they don’t need. It’s about connecting with people who share a brand’s interests and values; people who are looking for a way to represent their identity or support a cause they believe in. Congregations set the tone for that work, helping us write (and design and develop) like we do in real life — human to human.