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

1. Personas aren’t dead — but they’re not a foundation. They can help internal alignment, but they shouldn’t drive budget.
2. Context beats identity. People don’t buy because they “are” a persona; they buy due to situations, triggers, and barriers.
3. Personas encourage exclusion. That’s dangerous when growth requires reaching more category buyers (especially light and ultra-light buyers).
4. 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.
5. Testing beats theorizing. The Adobe example shows how persona-led targeting can blind you to better-performing audiences.
6. Privacy + platform automation should push you away from persona obsession. Your edge becomes positioning, reach, creative quality, and measurement — not “knowing Sarah.”
7. 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 is different…” committees, risk, and why personas still fail

Buying groups, maintenance explosion, and mental availability across the unit.

14:35 — What to do instead: the replacement model

Segmentation vs targeting vs personas (and where each belongs).

17:25 — The practical deck: what to present tomorrow instead of personas

Category → entry points → barriers → creative territories → reach → measurement.

18:55 — Close: Personas can be a costume. Don’t let the costume drive the budget.

Links:

Links:

Forbes Agency Council

https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2021/12/02/why-buyer-personas-are-more-important-than-ever-for-facebook-advertisers/

Adobe Business Blog

https://business.adobe.com/blog/basics/the-customer-persona-is-dead-long-live-the-customer-profile

SEMrush

https://www.semrush.com/blog/market-research-guide/

7 Common Mistakes in Building Marketing Personas

https://rockcontent.com/blog/buyer-personas-mistakes/

How Ex-P&G US Marketer Ditched Cohorts, Personas and Restrictive

MI-3 Australia

https://www.mi-3.com.au/17-04-2023/how-ex-pg-us-marketer-ditched-cohorts-personas-and-restrictive-segmentation-blended-0

Mark Ritson on Segmentation vs Personas

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/marcbinkley_marketsegmentation-targetaudience-personas-activity-7152704726332002305

The Law of Brand User Profiles - Ehrenberg-Bass Institute

https://marketingscience.info/news-and-insights/the-law-of-brand-user-profiles-the-sharpest-nail-in-the-coffin-of-hyper-targeting

The Value of the Bottom 80% - Marketing Science / Ehrenberg-Bass synthesis

https://marketingscience.info/news-and-insights/value-paretos-bottom-80