But personas aren’t people. They’re shortcuts. And more often than not, they’re a performance—a mask we make so we can pretend we’re connecting.
I love the start of a new play. The first rehearsal, the table read, the new cats, getting the word in your mouth for the first time, all of it is just pure adrenaline. But, for me, the best part is starting to build the character. Over a series of long walks, hours and hours with my journal, and time in front of the mirror developing physical clues as ot hwo this person is that I am going to give birth to and then walk around in this created skin for three hours a night for eight to ten weeks. Creating a character isn’t just about putting on a costume; it’s about finding what makes them tick, why they are around, what they are doing, and most importantly, what they want.
Finding the character’s want moment to moment, scene by scene, is what makes the character a real person and not someone you just put on. You connect, you breathe into them, and you live a completely new life inside of the character you’ve built. The thing is, if you build it right, this isn’t a character in a play, it’s a living, breathing person.
They say, and I believe because I’ve experienced it, that all theaters are haunted. I believe they are haunted by the characters that great actors have created and breathed so much life into that they live on after the show. They are no longer characters on a page; they are people living a life.
That kind of work takes time, dedication, and being in the moment. When I come to a new character, I use some of the same techniques to find the new character as I have in the past, and yet, this one is new and must be real. If you’re putting on a character, the audience will know, and if they know, it will be much harder for them to get into and stay with your story. Being true to a character requires depth and commitment. And if you do it right, when the show closes and it’s just the ghost light on the stage, your character, this person, will be stalking the backstage area, sitting up in the lighting grid, and living where you birthed him. And even if you play that same character again in another theater, you have to start from scratch and build again. But now, you build with years lived under your belt, better understanding of the human condition, etc., etc. It’s never the same, it can’t be, because you, as the actor, are different from he last time you played this character, so you have more to bring to his creation. It’s not a static journey; it constantly evolves.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how that kind of work—building a living, evolving person—is the exact opposite of how we often approach branding. Instead of discovering the character, we invent personas. We name them, list their likes, drop them into slide decks, and call it empathy.
But personas aren’t people. They’re shortcuts. And more often than not, they’re a performance—a mask we make so we can pretend we’re connecting.
But if we want to build brands that feel human, relevant, and alive, then maybe it’s time we stop building characters out of bullet points.
Maybe it’s time we talk to real people instead.
What Personas Got Right (and Why We Used Them)
Before we tear them down completely, let’s be fair: personas weren’t born out of laziness. They were created as a tool to bring clarity in the face of complexity. In theory, personas helped teams step outside their own biases and think about the customer’s perspective. They gave everyone a shared reference point—a kind of fictional anchor to build strategy around.
They also served some very real functions:
- They helped siloed departments stay aligned around “who” they were creating for.
- They brought a touch of empathy into otherwise clinical business discussions.
- They made research digestible, humanized market segments, and helped avoid designing in a vacuum.
At their best, personas tried to remind us that the audience isn’t “everyone”—that behind every click or conversion is a person with motivations, fears, and desires.
But the problem wasn’t the intention. It was the execution.
Over time, what started as a tool for empathy became a barrier to it. Fictional names, vague habits, recycled demographics. Static snapshots of behavior in a world that moves at the speed of culture. Personas started simplifying what we needed to explore. They became assumptions masquerading as insight.
And that’s where the real breakdown begins.
Because people aren’t characters we invent to feel smart in a brand workshop. They’re messy, contradictory, evolving humans—and no amount of mood board magic can make a cardboard cutout into a conversation.
At their best, personas were meant to bring us closer to our audience. But somewhere along the way, they started doing the opposite.
Instead of helping us understand people, they started helping us approximate them. And in that shortcut, something vital was lost.
Let’s look at where—and why—personas fail us now.
Where Personas Break Down
The biggest problem with personas? They freeze people in place.
What begins as a creative exercise quickly becomes canon. A fictional woman named “Eco-Friendly Emily” gets her own slide, a list of lifestyle choices, and a stock photo. She becomes the brand’s stand-in for real people, until every decision is being made based on what she might want.
And she never changes even when the world does.
This is where personas start to fail us:
They oversimplify complexity.
People are not tidy collections of preferences and habits. They’re inconsistent. They make irrational choices. They change their minds. Personas can’t handle that. They’re designed for consistency, not contradiction.
They drift into stereotype.
No one means to do it, but it happens. The yoga mom, the millennial minimalist, the Gen Z digital native—these aren’t insights; they’re tropes. The more we rely on personas to stand in for people, the more we flatten them into clichés.
They block real-time insight.
In a world where brands can listen to customers in real time—through social channels, support tickets, and content engagement—why are we still guessing? Personas are static. Real people are not. And treating customers like they haven't changed in five years is a good way to lose them fast.
They keep us from asking better questions.
Personas often answer questions we should be investigating. What does she value? What frustrates her? What’s she afraid of? When we rely on prewritten answers, we stop listening. We stop exploring. We trade discovery for assumption.
And most of all:
They let us talk about people instead of to them.
Which, for any brand trying to build relevance, is fatal.
So if personas fall short, what do we use instead? What replaces this familiar tool without losing the empathy we were reaching for in the first place?
Let’s look at that next.
Real People Don’t Fit the Slide Deck
Real people are not personas. They’re not bullet points, archetypes, or neatly bundled motivations. They’re messy, emotional, and often inconsistent—and that’s what makes them worth listening to.
In today’s world, audience identity is fluid. People change their minds. They evolve with culture. They opt in, opt out, and speak back. What mattered to them six months ago might not matter tomorrow. A slide deck can’t capture that. And when we try to force human behavior into static models, we miss the real opportunity: to respond in real time.
Because real people don’t care if they match your fictional composite.
They care if your brand understands their moment.
And the thing is, we can do that now. We’re no longer limited to assumptions or abstractions. We have tools that let us listen to how people speak, what they share, what they react to—not as segments, but as individuals within patterns.
This is where the smartest brands are focusing—not on artificial constructs, but on:
- Behaviors instead of backstories
- Conversations instead of composites
- Tone and timing instead of tags and traits
A person’s age doesn’t tell you how they want to be spoken to. Their job title doesn’t tell you what problem they’re actually trying to solve. And no persona ever captured the nuance of a moment when someone is curious, skeptical, hopeful, or ready.
So if we want to stay relevant, we have to stop trying to define our audience and start engaging them.
Let’s explore how.
The Alternative — Empathic Pattern Recognition
If personas are about defining fictional individuals, pattern recognition is about understanding real people in motion.
It’s not about throwing out structure—it’s about replacing assumption with attention. Instead of imagining what someone might want, it means listening to what they actually do. Empathic pattern recognition is the art of finding shared emotional signals, behavioral cues, and conversational trends—not to stereotype, but to stay in sync.
This approach focuses on:
Listening at scale
Social media comments. Support tickets. Search behavior. Brand interactions. These are real-time signals that show not just what people say, but how they say it. Brands that pay attention here don’t need personas—they have patterns.
Designing for relevance, not resemblance
It doesn’t matter if someone matches a demographic bucket. What matters is that your message lands. When you respond to behaviors, emotions, and context instead of a fictional backstory, your content becomes useful, not just well-targeted.
Living, adaptive brand voice
Brands that ditch personas often find a stronger, more natural voice. They stop talking like a pitch deck and start speaking like a person. Tone becomes flexible. Language evolves. Communication becomes a dialogue, not a delivery.
Co-creation and conversation over projection
Instead of projecting imagined personas onto audiences, leading brands invite people in. They let the audience shape the tone, pace, and personality of the brand by participating in the story, not just receiving it.
This shift doesn’t abandon empathy—it doubles down on it. But instead of pretending we know who people are, we stay curious. We stay tuned in. And we design with humility.
So, who’s doing this well?
Let’s look at a few examples.
Examples of Brands Doing This Well
You don’t need personas to create resonance. You need presence, attention, adaptability, and a willingness to speak like a human. Here are a few brands that are ditching the avatar approach and showing how real connection is built.
Duolingo
Duolingo’s brand voice doesn’t come from a persona doc—it comes from the internet. Their social presence is weird, self-aware, irreverent, and completely in tune with how their audience communicates. No demographic filter could’ve predicted that a giant green owl would become a Gen Z cult figure, but here we are. That’s not persona-building. That’s cultural fluency.
Spotify
Spotify Wrapped is one of the smartest post-persona campaigns in branding. It doesn’t ask who you are. It shows you what you’ve done—what you’ve listened to, how often, in what mood. It celebrates your actual behavior, not your assigned segment. Wrapped doesn’t assume. It reflects. And that’s why it spreads.
Oatly
Oatly’s voice is deliberately strange, charmingly inconsistent, and often completely off-script. Their cartons read like conversations. Their ads break the fourth wall. There’s no “Persona Paula” behind the copy—just a brand that trusts its tone and its audience enough to be unpredictable. That unpredictability is the connection.
Oh—and look at that. We didn’t mention Patagonia.
We’re proud of ourselves. But only a little.
Because while they do this work incredibly well, we also believe brands don’t have to be purpose-driven icons to connect without personas. They just have to be alive in the way they listen and respond.
How to Shift Your Strategy — From Personas to Real People
You don’t need to throw out everything and start from scratch. But if you want your brand to feel human, responsive, and real, it’s time to shift from defining imaginary customers to engaging actual ones.
Here’s how to make the move:
1. Ditch the composite character
You don’t need to invent a fictional person to know how real people behave. Let go of the slides with names like “Lifestyle Lauren” or “Budget-Conscious Ben.” Start listening instead. Real empathy starts with observation, not invention.
2. Use behavior as your baseline
What are people clicking on, skipping, saving, and questioning? Look for patterns in action. Let those insights guide your messaging, tone, and offers. Actions will always tell you more than imagined motivations.
3. Speak like a person, not a positioning doc
Drop the brand voice that sounds like it was edited by a legal team. If your brand were a person, would people want to talk to it? If not, fix that. Real people connect with real tone, not corporate correctness.
4. Design for dialogue
Create space for conversation. Invite feedback. Ask questions. Respond publicly. This isn’t just engagement—it’s information gathering. The more you let your audience shape the interaction, the less you have to assume about them.
5. Iterate like you mean it
Don’t treat your understanding of your audience as final. Treat it as ongoing. What works now might shift next month. Great brands evolve with their audience, not by redefining them, but by remaining responsive to them.
This isn’t the end of audience understanding. It’s the beginning of a better, more fluid version. One that stays in sync with people, not profiles.
Summing Up: Stop Describing People. Start Talking to Them.
Personas were a tool for a different time. They helped us make sense of audiences when data was scarce and feedback was slow. But today, they feel more like placeholders than people—convenient approximations in a world that demands actual connection.
Real brands don’t talk to imagined characters. They talk to people—unpredictable, evolving, emotionally complex people. That’s not messy. That’s the point.
And the brands that thrive now aren’t the ones with the most detailed personas. They’re the ones with the clearest voice, the sharpest ears, and the humility to listen before they speak.
At ThoughtLab, we believe empathy isn’t something you storyboard—it’s something you earn, not by describing your audience, but by being present with them.
That’s how brands stay relevant. Not by writing scripts for imaginary customers. But by showing up in the real world, ready to talk.
