Welcome back to The Sharp Cut — where Marc and Vassilis take scissors to marketing’s biggest comfort blankets. This episode’s target: personas. Not “burn them all”… but the idea that personas are a valid operating system for audience strategy. Marc and V argue that personas don’t fail because they’re fictional — they fail because they pretend markets are stable, targetable, and neatly categorized, when real buying behaviour is context-driven, messy, and dynamic. They unpack why personas became popular (stakeholder comfort, platform narratives, proxy metrics), then bring in evidence — including an Adobe test where the “expected” persona audience underperformed an unexpected segment by 50%. The conclusion is blunt: personas are a story, not a strategy — and if you confuse the two, you’ll underreach, overfit, and misallocate budget. The alternative? Shift from identity to category entry points, need-states, broad reach, and experimentation — and use personas only as a creative communication layer after the real strategy is built. Key takeaways Personas aren’t dead — but they’re not a foundation. They can help internal alignment, but they shouldn’t drive budget.Context beats identity. People don’t buy because they “are” a persona; they buy due to situations, triggers, and barriers.Personas encourage exclusion. That’s dangerous when growth requires reaching more category buyers (especially light and ultra-light buyers).Markets are more similar than persona decks imply. The Ehrenberg-Bass “law of brand user profiles” suggests rival brand buyers often look alike; growth is about penetration, not “unicorn” profiles.Testing beats theorizing. The Adobe example shows how persona-led targeting can blind you to better-performing audiences.Privacy + platform automation should push you away from persona obsession. Your edge becomes positioning, reach, creative quality, and measurement — not “knowing Sarah.”Replace persona-led planning with: category entry points, need-states, barriers/motivations, creative territories, broad reach by default, and guardrail measurement. Chapters / Timestamps 00:00 — Welcome to The Sharp Cut: “Personas, we have a problem.” Why this topic matters right now. 01:10 — The “Underwear Crisis”: when a persona sounds smart but makes no decisions Why polished personas often collapse at decision time. 02:20 — The core myth: “If we can describe them, we can target them.” The promise of precision and why it’s so seductive. 04:25 — Persona theatre: why decks reward stories over strategy Checkbox segmentation, stakeholder comfort, and agency incentives. 05:00 — Evidence check: Adobe says the persona era is over The “inside-out” problem and why context drives outcomes. 06:10 — The 50% conversion wake-up call: testing beyond the persona How “sport lovers” beat the “correct” persona audience. 07:15 — Why personas persist: org design, proxy metrics, platform narratives, psychology Control feels good — even when it’s false. 09:10 — The marketing science critique: brand buyers aren’t that different Penetration, light buyers, and why “special customers” are overrated. 10:30 — Category entry points: what people actually buy for Identity vs situations, triggers, and motivations. 12:05 — “But B2B...
