You Ask, I Answer: What is Identity Marketing?

In this episode, Hannah asks, what is identity marketing? So identity marketing, it's got a few different definitions, but in the context that I'm using it, uh, it is the leveraging of consumers' identities for marketing purposes. Uh it is brands creating identities that c that customers adopt that they fuse into their no into their existing identities. This is not a new idea. Uh, we've had it for decades, if not centuries, right?

Um, but with the advent of the internet and social media, it's it's become much, much more prominent, uh, especially in in social media. For example, we've always had public brands where uh we take that brand and we bond it to our personal identity. We identify ourselves. We are say we are this kind of person with that brand. For example, I live in Boston.

A lot of people in Boston are Red Sox fans, and that is part of their identity as a person. They they uh view themselves as being a Red Sox fan. It's who they are, which means if you put them in the room with uh with a Yankees fan, uh, you know, there's there can be friendly rivalry or unfriendly rivalry, uh, depending on how um how ardent that those people are about their identities, right? Um you know, people get in fist fights about their favorite baseball team stuff. Uh that's an example of identity marketing.

This corporation has created something that people attach to themselves as part of who they are. Um another example that's really well known, Harley Davidson, right? Harley Davidson, the motorcycle company. Just that name alone, probably, depending on your on where you live, may conjure up this mental image of a certain kind of person with a certain kind of looks, you know, a certain kind of clothing they wear, certain type of vehicle they drive, that different habits. That is identity marketing.

And it's so powerful when it's done right. When you think about it, there are people who get tattoos of their favorite brands, right? The old people who have you know Harley Davidson tattoos on them or uh Boston Bruins tattoos. They would literally take needles and stab them into their body to put this mark of this brand on themselves. That's how fused uh the identity is.

Um that's what it is. What brands are doing uh and have been really trying hard to do over the last really uh decade or two with the eager consent of many customers is work harder than ever to fuse themselves to a person's identity. In theory, this is good marketing. In theory, because it's very hard once something becomes part of your identity to dislodge it, right? The switching cost is very high.

For some things, right, like you know, a pack of gum, uh, this is not something that's gonna bond itself to your identity. And if you don't have that particular brand of gum, you're like, okay, fine, I'll get something else, right? Whereas someone who's a a diehard Harley Davidson fan or a diehard Apple fan, they're not gonna be like, no, just go get a different, you know, just go get a Yamaha or just go get an Android. People like with those people who who are it's so much part of their identity, like, no, I would never, never do that. Ever.

Um and so that's good marketing, right? That's good marketing. It's it's customer retention. If for example, it's something, you know, think about identity. How often do people change religions?

Right? Not often. It is not something that happens a whole lot. Uh, religion is as much a part of someone's identity as a system of belief. There are people who are affiliated culturally with a religion, even if they don't practice the religion itself, right?

Um, people who you know say they're like a lapsed Catholic or uh a terrible Jew or uh an incompetent Buddhist or something along those lines where the religion has become part of their identity. This has gotten really bad in the last really the last 20 years with politics, right? Political parties do this to great effect. Um, so much so that people commit heinous acts of violence in the name of their political identity. And it's so rabid that it's very difficult to dislodge, right?

It's it's almost uh a cult when you talk to somebody who's a fan of this person or that person or this party or that party. It has that same zeal that makes it very difficult to dislodge. Makes it very difficult for someone to change their mind, and it makes it very difficult for um for people to avoid the extremes of any system of belief. The negative consequences of identity marketing is that you can create really bad situations. So there's a couple things that brands have to keep in mind.

One, if you are bonding your brand to someone's identity, if you are saying this is who we are, this is what we stand for, you are inherently going to reject a portion of your audience. But there is the trade-off that a portion of your customers simply will not do business with you anymore. The bigger problem with identity marketing itself is it promotes additional mental and emotional inflexibility in a population of people that globally, globally, not just one country, already has relatively little mental and emotional flexibility. We are, as a planet, uh so incredibly polarized in so many nations around the world, with this mindset that you're you're either with us or you're against us. Uh attitudes for everything under the sun.

Is the earth round, right? Um, should I wear a mask? Um, you know, should I get a vaccine that is life-saving? There we've polarized everything. Um, part of the reason for that is our eager embrace across industries, across industry types of identity marketing.

The more we advocate that somebody adopt our point of view into their identity, the more inflexible we make them. You know, if you think about it, take any polarizing issue at all, like wearing a mask, right, which shouldn't be polarizing, but it is. Um, that has become part of people's identity. Either you you don't do it or you do it. Um, and there is, of course, a tremendous amount of strife that people have with each other about this relatively simple thing.

If you step back, you're like, oh well, you know what it doesn't really impose a huge cost. Uh it seems like a fairly logical thing to do, but because it's become part of our identities, it's become part of the identity of systems of belief, it's polarizing. And so, as a brand, as a as a marketer, you have to figure out whether you're going to use identity marketing as a tactic and as a strategy, and if so, what the consequences of that will be. And you may not get a choice, right? You may not get a choice uh in the matter if your customers already take your product and fuse it to their identity anyway, right?

If you um if you make one of these things, right? This whether or not you want to be doing identity marketing about whether people should wear masks, if you make this thing, you're part of that conversation, whether you want to be or not. And so part of your job as a marketer is to look at the products and services you offer and say, is there a possibility that we could be lumped into a certain point of view that would be harmful to our business? And if so, we probably want to try and have some kind of plan in place to deal with that. But that's what identity marketing is.

It's a very challenging thing. It is, it can be extremely damaging. Um, it can be very harmful to people. Uh, people can and do often do very out-of-character things for them because they've they've transitioned a point of view into a belief, and that belief is something that is very hard to change and very easy to create a defensive reaction if it's ever challenged. So give that some thought.

Uh, but it's a really good question, it's an important question. We are at a point now where what's happening in the world is getting more and more pronounced. You know, natural disasters get bigger, pandemics, new novel diseases, etc. So much so that even if we're not necessarily involved in identity marketing right now, we probably will be at some point. So have plans in place.

Really good question. It's a complicated question. Thanks for asking. If you like this video, go ahead and hit that subscribe button.