Pretty sure I first saw The Truth in Advertising in 2001. Or some clips of it at least. They went viral via email, way before ‘going viral’ was a thing. Everyone had experienced similar meetings or professional conversations, so it resonated and stuck with me ever since. I’ve sought it down many times since then, when the memory was nudged, or a particular meeting felt comically familiar, but this recent memory reoccurrence came from a different source.
This time it’s off the back of two more months teaching broad UX practices at Kingston and Epsom. I’ve focused more heavily this year on the user first approach, which I’ve pushed under the requirement for students to empathise with their target audiences, and to write personas for them. The more I’ve pushed it, the more I’ve found myself describing and theorising about the hidden motives or feelings that influence the way that someone might act. I’ve explained that ‘A Student’ isn’t a persona. One could be nervous, another could be excited. One could be lazy and unengaged, another could be eager and over achieving.
‘You have to dig into the personalities, the motives, and the drives of an individual to properly understand them for insightful purposes’ I’ve said (heavily paraphrasing myself here!). And when students have, they’ve invariably ended up with properly delightful solutions. Some of which I’m hoping to share on here another time.
Anyway, all this deep diving into nuanced motives nudged The Truth of Advertising once again. It’s dated more since I last watched, but still it’s an enjoyable short, and insightful for forcing the idea that target audiences contain broad collections or personalities.
Documenteering 