Season 2 Episode 2: Segmenting Audience Mindsets with Andrew McIntyre

Written By Patternmakers

Nothing is ever one size fits all. We often talk about culture audiences simply by age group, but this only takes us so far when it comes to developing meaningful engagement strategies.

My guest today is Andrew McIntyre, co-founder of MHM (Morris Hargreaves McIntyre), one of the world’s biggest and best consultancies specialising in the culture sector. He joins me today to discuss psychographic segments, which reveal how a person’s value system and beliefs shape their engagement patterns and the type of messaging they are receptive to.

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In this episode, Andrew talks about their product ‘Culture Segments’ and how an understanding of culture mindsets can help us navigate these times and connect with audiences more deeply in the future. Andrew goes into detail about 4 of the 8 segments and explains how understanding the different audiences can help organisations tailor their programs and marketing strategies to create real community impact and engagement. 

Andrew discusses how psychographics help to understand deep seated values and cultural beliefs and the role people perceive culture will play in their lives. He shares how this helps organisations to build relationships with people on a heart level and how incorporating this understanding in the foundations of the entire organisation can help shift to an audience focus.

We talk about COVID-19, the online experience for the different segments and what he believes organisations should focus on moving forward. Stay tuned toward the end of the episode for a new segment where I share the most clicked item in our latest newsletter and why people found it so interesting. 

Key points

[2:00]: Andrew’s funded project about sharing audience data among organisations and establishing a data warehouse that enabled cross marketing whilst upholding privacy legislation. It is still thriving now.

[3:45]: How Andrew came to be at the helm of MHM, beginning with a degree in politics and history. Working at a museum, he became obsessed with why people visited the museum which opened numerous doors in the culture sector.

[6:00]: Andrew’s position as head of research in one of the first audience development agencies in the UK and how this eventually merged into MHM.

[7:00]: How the questions we face in the culture sector aren’t easy 

[8:05]: How the way cultural organisations act is fundamentally political because it’s about cultural access and social justice. How the community is a group of highly intelligent, creative and committed people and the impact they can make.  

[10:30]: What Culture Segments is and how it helps to engage different types of audiences on a deeper level.

[12:08]: Segmentation can be inefficient because demographic isn’t a good guide to your cultural engagement.

[13:24]: Psychographics help to understand deep seated values and cultural beliefs and the role people perceive culture will play in their lives. This helps organisations to build relationships with people on a heart level in a practical way.

[14:52]: Most creatives tend to be in the Essence segment, in pursuit of self-actualisation. Culture and Art’s isn’t something they do but who they are. They are high value and high maintenance.

[16:30]: Stimulation segment is all about ideas. They like thinking in big concepts, mixing artforms and breaking rules. It’s about seeking out adventure and bringing others to it.

[17:55]: The Expression segment is made up of people who are community-minded and hardwired to support cultural organisations. 

[19:45]: The Affirmation segment are adults who have decided that culture is good for them and will make their lives better. They are somewhat about self improvement, constantly looking for things to do but need a lot of recommendations and assurance.

[21:50]: There are 8 segments but they don’t lock people into just one because humans are nuanced. 

[22:30]: How Release is usually when you are time poor and that people tend to go there when they have young kids or busy lives. You can change segments. 

[24:31]: How Essence is one group who don’t like to be segmented.

[25:40]: How your segment is based on answers to a survey and how they went about creating the algorithm.

[26:32]: How the Culture Segments insight itself is powerful and organisations can go through their programs to determine the primary and secondary segment for each activity. 

[27:30]: You can use the tool for marketing and also programming to cater to each segment, even with no data.

[31:00]: When you have data of your audiences, you can begin to hone in on Essence and Stimulation because they will tell everyone about the event.  

[32:00]: For large organisations, it’s important to be tailored with email marketing so people don’t get overloaded. Culture Segments don’t market based on behaviour history, but on what they’ll likely want next. 

[34:50]: How during Covid, MHM wanted to know how to support organisations and became interested how people were engaging online, seeing that each segment was behaving in very different ways.

[35:12]: Essence were the number 1 users of digital art but were only tolerating it because they need the real thing. Expression used less than half but were so impressed and pleased with the availability of digital content. 

[37:40]: Affirmation segment is now able to road test everything and loving digital content.

[38:00]: How the tool can be used as a great team building exercise and internal strategic planning session to build awareness of the segments within the organisation.

[40:16]: Audience Atlas is a giant population survey that delves deeply into the audience lives within Victoria. Individual organisations can map out their segment audience for free. 

[42:20]: How during Covid, Andrew had chats with numerous organisations on how to use Culture Segments and is always happy for people to reach out.

[43:50]: How Andrew’s role is largely about organisational change looking through the lens of audience engagement. Covid has created a space where anything is possible and created opportunity for organisations to reimagine themselves in an audience focussed way.

[44:30]: It’s not a marketing objective but a fundamental methodology, designing audience focus within every part of the organisation’s function.

[45:30]: The organisations who have taken the time during Covid to rethink the way they operate will get through it stronger.

[46:57]: Top takeaways.

  1. Different people have different motivations for engaging in cultural experiences and along with demographics, it’s the beliefs and values that dictate which experiences people seek out

  2. If we can be conscious of how that thinking works, we can design marketing campaigns that resonate more deeply 

  3. A knowledge of culture segments is powerful even if you don’t quantify your audience through survey

  4. It’s great for programming, marketing, visitor information and a strategic exercise for the whole team

  5. For organisations with a large database, targeted marketing campaigns that are targeted to segments can provide an alternative to marketing based on past participation

  6. By becoming more attune to audiences’ mindsets and values, we can more quickly satisfy their needs

  7. Audience engagement is usually seen as an objective within the marketing department but it can be a fundamental strategy within an entire organisation.

[57:20]: The most clicked item in our last newsletter.


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Links

Andrew’s thought leadership series ‘Culture in Lockdown’: 

PART 1: We can do digital, can we do strategy? 

PART 2: The 7 Pillars of Audience-focus 

PART 3: Covid Audience Mindsets 

Creative Victoria Audience Atlas

Audience Outlook Monitor Australia - Key Findings March 2021 

The NFT craze, explained in the Los Angeles Times

Supported by Creative Victoria, Theory of Creativity Season 2 is focussed on 'Real Change and Renewal'. Tune in on the first Tuesday of the month as Patternmakers Managing Director Tandi Palmer Williams speaks with experts in audience trends, strategic planning, organisational change and resilience.

CONNECT:

Connect with Tandi Palmer Williams:

Visit the website of research agency Patternmakers: https://www.thepatternmakers.com.au/


Stay in the loop with all the latest research, tools and resources for growing cultural organisations. Subscribe for the monthly Culture Insight & Innovation Updates: http://eepurl.com/gnwrUf

 

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