Sheila Callaham drew on my book The Death of Demographics for a Forbes piece in January 2024 called "Making Marketing Better: How Values Are Disrupting Demographics." Around the world, people agree with each other about 8% of the time. Put them in the same demographic group and that only rises to about 10.5%, so people who look alike on paper disagree almost 90% of the time. I also told her that demographics still have a job to do, because you need to know who your audience is before you can find out what they value.
She went through some of the regional findings too. In the United States, the top three values are Belonging, Family and Relationships. In the Middle East, the value of Morality sits at or near number two, separate from Religion & Spirituality, and that doesn't happen anywhere else in the world. The value of Possessions doesn't make the Middle East top ten at all, which could be the most important thing to know if you're selling possessions there. The piece also covers Genesys, which used our research to learn that its contact center employees around the world shared the value of Personal Responsibility, and then gave those employees more room to make their own decisions.
You can read the original at Forbes.
My new book walks you through all kinds of ways to identify (and use) your values, and it's available for pre-order now. It's called The Values Map, and I would be very grateful if you pre-ordered a copy. My publisher would love it too. ❤️
Everything gets easier when you know What Matters Most.
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