Much like reading your horoscope and thinking that 680 million people will be experiencing the same thing you’re experiencing just because the moon was in Jupiter’s right front pocket at your birth and believing it, thinking that your team can plan a campaign that ensnares 680 million folks and they will all convert is a little … well … insane.
Now and then I’ll read a daily horoscope. The word comes from the Greek horoskopos, meaning marker of the hour. It’s basically the alignment of the planets at the time of a person’s birth. I know people who believe in this stuff. I once did a show with a woman who started every rehearsal with the claim that either “my horoscope says this is a great day for me,” or, “guys, don’t expect too much from me today, my horoscope was bad this morning.” I also worked with a guy deeply, deeply into the stuff, and he would say things like, “You’re a Pisces, I know it, I just know it.” And if you said no, I’m a Taurus, or worse, I have no idea what my sign is, he’d flip out. He’d question you until you gave him a slip of something to ride on. If he guessed your astrological sign wrong, he’d keep at you until you told him what time you were born or something, and then he’d claim, “I knew it. You’re on the cusp, but you lean heavily into Pisces because your moon is blah, blah, blah”
I have no trouble reading an astrology blurb as recreation; however, I don’t think I’ve ever changed my life or made a choice because of what the blurb in the NY Times is next to the name Virgo. Why? Because, theoretically, each Zodiac sign represents 1/12 of the global population, which means Virgos should make up 8.3% of the population. With the world population, this means there are roughly 680 million Virgos running about this mortal coil at any given time. So, when people ask why I don’t follow my horoscope, or why I don’t believe in Zodiac signs, I usually say, “because 680 million people aren’t all going to meet an interesting stranger in a book shop and fall in love. There’s just no way 680 million people are all going to have a similar life experience together. Unless they had planned it through a travel agent. And even then, a bunch of folks won’t buy the drinks package, so right there, we’re all having a different experience. To me, that makes sense. To others, where the planet Mars was at eight am on August 30th, 1964, defines who I am, what choices I’ll make, and how my life will progress. And not just my life, the life of every single Virgo on planet Earth.
If this were the case, why don’t people in different time zones call each other up? There should be a hotline for every Zodiac sign. East Coast Virgos could call West Coast Virgos and say, don’t pick up the tuna sandwich you find on your walk to work today. Or, that woman in the cubicle at the back of the office — yes, your fears are right; she is trying to kill you. And then every single Virgo all over the world would confront the woman in the cubicle in the back of the office and accuse her of attempted murder. So we could keep each other safe all the time. London-based Virgos calling Texas Virgos, calling Virgin Island Virgos, and explaining what the day will be like. If Virgos are all going to have an interesting encounter today that will change your life, we need to get on the horn and tell each other about it. Right?
Wrong. There is simply no way that 680 million people are going to have a unified experience. First off, if we did have that singular experience across the globe, there would be a Netflix movie about it streaming regularly. Then there would be news stories; 60 Minutes might carry the story. It would be news: “Breaking news this hour, every single Virgo on the planet has met the love of their life, and they are all planning a small destination wedding in Jim Cathcart’s backyard in Poughkeepsie, New York.” That’s just not going to happen. And if it did, Jim needs to start a GoFundMe account for food and drink for this wedding. Don’t worry, Jim, you’re not a real person, just someone I conjured up for this blog.
But the basic premise that ALL VIRGOS are going to be “lucky in love” that day is silly. It just cannot happen, and that is why I don’t put any stock in horoscopes in the paper or in the little tubes they sell at gas stations; they are just not possible. And that’s science.
The Masses
Vox Populi, Vox Dei. The voice of the people is the voice of God. That was all well and good when the English scholar Alcuin in 798 A.D. used it sarcastically to warn Charlemagne against blindly following the masses, arguing that “the people are to be led, not followed.” But the whole thing changed again in the pro-Democratic 18th century when the phrase was flipped to represent majority rule and the rights of the individual. But that didn’t quell the skepticism. In 1863, General William Tecumseh Sherman sent a letter in which he gave the phrase his own twist: “vox populi, vox humbug.” He reported what he saw and heard during the war; the people are fickle, and ever-changing public opinion is just as fickle. The masses being fickle certainly puts the horoscope page in a pickle.
The masses are not always smart. In Rome, the masses were treated like children, and politicians often employed a regime of panem et circenses, bread and circuses, as the poet Juvenal once said. The government kept the masses quiet with free food and entertainment. Then, while the masses were feasting and singing, the few were stabbing each other, emptying the city coffers, and having a bunch of sex. According to Juvenal, the people who once commanded armies and wrote great works questioning their leaders could be easily pacified with a trick as simple as, hey, look over there.
By 404 AD, Roman Emperor Honorius had put an end to Gladiator Combat in public, and though the state was still helping the poor with food, the circus was over. And the masses were fine. A little grumbling, a few folks sitting in cafes, drinking wine and reminiscing with cheese and olives about the good times when the streets flowed with blood, and there was always something to do. But the masses were fine, and they went on with their lives. Until the next “look over there” ruler came along, and then the whole thing changed again.
In modern day, we need not look any further than the anti-woke movement to show how fickle the masses can be. Look at the people who were so bad, so diabolical, that society “canceled” them. These people were persona non grata, and they would never again be accepted into the fold of society because the masses said no and canceled them. The masses had had enough, and they would take it no more. And then, Louis C.K. got a Grammy nomination and another Netflix comedy special, and the masses snacked on fresh bread and watched.
Who Do You Play To
The Emperors Augustus and Nero are historically most famous for establishing and taking this political strategy of bread and circuses to its absolute peak. But they too learned the masses are fickle. One moment they’re cheering you as you enter a room, and the next, they’re stabbing you twenty-three times as you wander into work one day.
The masses will cheer you, then stab you, then rethink the situation, raise you up and give you your fifteen minutes of fame, then someone will say Hey, look over here and everyone moves on. That’s what the masses do, and that’s why they are the masses.
I once saw a video shot from a farmer’s Ring camera on their door. The video starts with just the porch, a car, and an empty path in front of the camera. After a beat, a few cows move by. Then a few more. Then many more. Finally, the masses of bovine have all passed, and one older, completely over-it cow steps into frame, looks where the cow masses have gone, and gives out a loud bellow of a moo. The cow holds for a second, and then turns and heads back the way she came. After another beat, the rest of the cows come back by the camera, and everything is fine. That is the masses in a nutshell. Movement with some purpose and then back to the start when someone moos loudest.
Vox populi, vox moo.
But if the masses are making a break for it, heading off to individuality and freedom, and one voice can call them back, who is that voice? Who do you play to? And more importantly, for our purposes here at ThoughtLab, who do you market to?
The Masses are a Mess
Much like reading your horoscope and thinking that 680 million people will be experiencing the same thing you’re experiencing just because the moon was in Jupiter’s right front pocket at your birth and believing it, thinking that your team can plan a campaign that ensnares 680 million folks and they will all convert is a little … well … insane.
The masses are fickle, and if you don’t believe me, just take a walk through history. Look at France, Germany, the Romanov dynasty. Fickle in French, German, and Cyrillic. The masses need to be heard, of course, but you cannot trust the masses to be unified or trustworthy. I certainly wouldn’t allow the masses to take my daughter to prom or watch my dog over a long weekend; lord knows what they’d get up to.
But, as fickle as they may be, the masses do have a voice, and that voice is loud. But even if they are speaking in one voice for a few days, it doesn’t mean they want a revolution, and even if they do, they will never agree on what kind of revolution they want. Because they are fickle. And one day, they’ll want bread and circuses, but next week, they may want social security reform and some truth from their leaders. And that’s fine, unless you just opened a new bread and souvenir stand near the center of town. In that case, you trusted the masses and now look what you have. The masses are messy, and trying to herd them is like, well, trying to herd the masses.
Who Do We Target
So if you can’t trust a horoscope to speak to 680 million Virgos, and you can’t trust the masses to want the same thing for longer than a news cycle, why do so many campaigns still get built like a horoscope? One message, one blurb, tossed out to millions of strangers, hoping enough of them nod along and think, yeah, that’s me.
It isn’t you. It’s not really anybody. It’s just vague enough that everybody can squint and see themselves in it, the same way a Virgo squints at “you’ll face a difficult choice today” and thinks, how did they know? But it’s an illusion, the same one I buy into when I look in the mirror before I go out and think to myself, I look like Brad Pitt. And I do. In a heavy downpour, at night, on a dark street, from about 900 yards away, I am a dead ringer for Mr. Pitt in my cheap off-the-rack suit with the stapled cuffs and the price tag still under the armpit. I believe.
The masses were never the audience. The masses are just what’s left after you fail to find the actual person you meant to talk to. That’s when you abandon specificity, your best friend, and fall into the grade school Valentine’s Day rule: every single person gets a valentine. And that doesn’t promote feelings of love; it simply turns the little card with the bear holding a giant heart and the words, I can’t bear it without you, into just a piece of paper. There is no meaning, no connection, and barely an effort. When you distill your message down so that everyone gets it, you’re serving up some pretty weak tea.
So stop trying to be the horoscope. Stop writing to Virgos, or moms, or gamers, or whatever bucket of 680 million people you’ve been handed. Find the one cow that moos. Write to her. Build for her. Because the second you aim at everyone, you end up saying nothing to anyone; you end up a gas station horoscope, technically true for all of us and meaningful to none of us.
A category of one isn’t a smaller ambition. It’s the only honest one. Everything else is just Mars in someone’s back pocket, hoping it lands.
The Takeaway
You cannot market to the masses, because the masses don’t exist, not really. They’re 680 million individual Virgos, each with a different tuna sandwich decision to make today. What exists is the one cow who moos loud enough to turn the herd, and the herd only moves because they’re all quietly hoping someone else already figured out where to go.
So the takeaway isn’t “know your audience.” Everyone says that, and everyone still writes horoscopes. The takeaway is smaller and harder: find the one. The one customer, the one voice, the one person your entire campaign is actually for. Build for her specifically enough that she’d swear you were reading her mail. Everyone else who happens to see themselves in it is a bonus, not the plan.
A category of one isn’t a failure to scale. It’s the only version of the message that was ever going to be true for anybody.
