Using Demographic Marketing Strategies to Teach Audience
Heather Martin

In my writing classes, I often make use of the Values and Lifestyles System (VALS) in our discussions of audience. VALS is a marketing tool that uses psychological principles to segment consumers based on their personality traits. Its fun and useful to examine these categories and employ them in different writing projects. For example, many DU students fit into the EXPERIENCER category of VALS. EXPERIENCERS are consumers motivated by self-expression. They are young, impulsive, and seek out things that are new, flashy, and thrilling. Using VALS, I might ask my students to design a brochure for Habitat for Humanity with EXPERIENCERS as their audience. To create an effective brochure, they will need to pay close attention to the needs of this group. What elements of Habitat for Humanity will appeal to EXPERIENCERS? What language? What images? Once students have designed an effective brochure, we complicate the discussion by examining a second groupBELIEVERS, idealists who value tradition and are loyal to common, established US brands. What would appeal to BELIEVERS? What will the new brochure look like? Could we design a Habitat for Humanity brochure that appeals to both EXPERIENCERS and BELIEVERS at the same time? In working through this process, I find that my students learn how to design and implement rhetorical plans that consider the needs of different readers and audiences.

A Few Uses for VALS

1. Marketing Ideas to Different Audiences
In groups, students selected a product to market and were assigned one of the VALS types as their audience. Together, they worked up an ad campaign for the product. Students were then assigned a different VALS type (usually with a different primary motivation) and repeated the process using the same product. Groups presented the two ads to the class, and we tried to determine which types they addressed in the ads. Groups also discussed the choices they made and why they believed that each ad appealed to the VALS types selected.

2. Different Approaches for Different Audiences
Students were asked to write an editorial with one of the VALS types as their audience. In class, we listed which elements of the debate might concern the different VALS audiences. This helped students choose which elements of the debate to focus on when drafting their editorial.

3. Audience Profiling
Students were asked to research a publication, organization, or group, compose an audience profile (similar to VALS), and discuss what led to their assumptions about the audience.

4. Rhetorical Analysis
Students performed rhetorical analyses of advertisements they chose. Each analysis included a discussion of the VALS type addressed in the advertisement and how the ad appealed to its audience.

Benefits

• Students like it! They enjoy locating their type and engage easily with the different descriptions. I suspect that both their high school and consumer experiences have prepared them amply for this type of framework.

• It provides a concrete set of generalizations about a group of people, about a potential audience that students can latch onto in an assignment or activity designed to emphasize writing for a specific audience.

Drawbacks

• A discussion of how persuasive writing is different than advertising will be necessary.
• Of course, real audiences are not nearly as neat and tidy as those identified in VALS and students should understand this point.

Home