Persona playlist – Street scenes

One of the most challenging concepts to share with colleagues is that of personas. It is virtually impossible to think outside of yourself and your biases, and develop products and programs for a specific target market. I have worked with Environics Analytics for a number of years and find that their PRIZM clusters – or personas – are fairly easy to understand and can help you imagine the age, income level, education, social values, hobbies, and other lifestyle qualities of your target audience.

As a musician, I find the types of music people like really help me ‘get into their heads’. I sometimes print photos from the web and post them on my office wall when I am writing copy for marketing materials, but what would really help me is a playlist.

With some help from some friends and colleagues, I am working on a persona playlist. Environics has identified 66 different PRIZM clusters in Canada, and I am working on a list of the top 5 to 10 songs of at least one person in that cluster.

You can look up your own PRIZM cluster here .

For the first week, I have chosen a playlist for the Street Scenes cluster. Street Scenes are younger, upper-middle income singles and families. They make up 1.61% of the population in Canada with an average household income of $121, 368. They have a low cultural diversity and a sample social value is ‘need for escape’. It’s a bit of a mixed bag of high school and university graduates and they have white collar jobs or work in the service sector. You can check out my playlists here  or play them below.

Every few weeks I will upload a new playlist to Spotify. If you have a customer who you sounds like Street Scenes, check out my playlist as you are working on your messaging and choosing your channels. If you would like to share your top 5 songs and cluster with me, please email me and I can add you to my anonymous database. To find out more about Environics Analytics and the PRIZM clusters, you can read some of their case studies here. Rock on!