Personas from the marketing perspective, courtesy .@HollyBuchanan

During the last PMV webinar that I attended, I was inspired to tweet the following:

all models are wrong; some are useful.

Basically, you're faced with a real-world situation which your limited brain (and my very limited brain) cannot completely comprehend, so you create an approximation that you can understand and hope that it's accurate enough to help you. And if your approximation is really approximate, then you either give up in despair, or forge ahead anyway with the extremely imperfect model.

I could tell you when to proceed and when to give up, but I'd have to build a model of your behavior and then I'd be in a circular loop.

Which brings us to the NEXT PMV seminar:

About the Webinar: Ryma's September 2th webinar will be presented by Holly Buchanan. Not all consumers think alike. They have different values, motivations, priorities and decision making processes. Personas represent different types of consumers. Instead of trying to figure out how you meet the needs of thousands, you have a workable number of personas to use as framework for customer insight, product development and marketing. You'll learn what personas are, how they help you develop better products and marketing, and how you can develop your own personas. You'll see real life examples of how powerful personas can be.

Unfortunately, it looks like I'll miss this one due to another commitment - I have to see a guy with a dolphin. But you may want to tune in. Here's information on the presenter:

Holly Buchanan is the co-author of The Soccer Mom Myth - Today's Female Consumer, Who She Really Is, Why She Really Buys. Holly's specialty is marketing to women and marketing to women online. She's worked with clients including Genworth Financial, HP, Waterford, GE Healthcare.

She runs her own marketing to women consultancy helping companies and individuals communicate more persuasively with their female customers.

Holly Buchanan is a popular speaker, blogger and author. In addition to The Soccer Mom Myth, she has her own blog - http://marketingtowomenonline.typepad.com, and is a guest columnist at www.reachingwomendaily.com Follow her on Twitter - @HollyBuchanan