Digital Psychographics Example

Let's say, for example, that your client is GameStop and you've been assigned to write the creative brief for the new video game Transformers: War for Cybertron. After looking up the game's website and reading a few blogs about the upcoming game, you learn that Activision, the publisher, is targeting the hardcore fan of the traditional Transformers franchise. These fans look down on the new blockbuster Michael Bay films and instead harken back to what they consider the pure, unadulterated classic brand of Transformers.

For the creative briefing, you decide to look for a few of these hardcore fans of the classic Transformers franchise. eBay is usually a good starting place for finding consumers who are passionate about a particular brand, product, or franchise, so you that's where you begin the search for the hardcore classic Transformers fan.

After searching for transformers collectibles, you find the seller "Specimen-17." His profile notes that he has been selling adult toys for nearly 10 years on eBay, and that he is huge Transformers fan himself. Some profiles give more information about the seller than others, but this is just the starting point. You can then Google the seller's name and see what comes up.

Another seller that came up was "Gemma5875." eBay tells you that the seller is from the United states, and that she has been selling on the site for almost five years. The profile picture is of a Transformer, and most of the items that she is selling are Transformers collectibles. Googling the username leads to the Photobucket site where the seller uploads more photos of her hobby. It also links to the blogging site Transformerland.com, where the seller blogs about the latest Transformer news.

All you need is to find one person who represents the target you are trying to reach. Then, try to find that same person on other sites, and cross-reference their information to get a feel for their lifestyle, interests, purchasing (or selling) habits, and perhaps even their attitude towards your client's brand.

Listed below are some of the sites we recommend for this type of research:

eBay, Flickr, Photobucket, YouTube, Facebook, Pipl, Twitter, Foursquare, Blogger, and various social shopping websites.

Good luck and happy searching!