David Allison, Author “The Death of Demographics” — David Allison is the creator of the Valuegraphics database, and as of recording this interview, he is closing in on his one-millionth in-depth survey making his dataset ironclad. Allison is the first person in history to have built a tool allowing us to precisely communicate and position our message in a way others are neurologically wired to hear and understand.
In an age of big data, Allison wants marketers and business leaders to stop obsessing over age, gender, and income brackets—and start asking a more profound question: what do people actually care about?
“Demographics are still our friend,” Allison says. “But the problem is, we’ve been asking our friend to do too much work.” That insight forms the central thesis of his new book, The Death of Demographics, which draws from a global data set built through interviews with nearly a million people across 180 countries. At its core is Valuegraphics, a human values-based system that Allison believes can revolutionize how organizations connect with their audiences.
The Limits of Labels and Demographics
Allison, a former real estate marketer, recalls the moment he realized something was deeply wrong with the way businesses identify their customers. “We would profile these folks, and inevitably these Bob and Sally profiles would come up,” he says, referring to a fictional affluent couple used in targeting high-end condos. “But the people in the room—there’s maybe 10% of them who were Bob and Sally. Everybody else was all kinds of other people.”
The dissonance between demographic targeting and actual customer behavior led Allison to build Valuegraphics, a research initiative aimed at identifying the 56 core human values that drive decision-making. These range from ambition and personal growth to family, environmentalism, and social standing. “Those folks who are similar from that perspective [demographics] could be incredibly different in terms of who they are,” Allison explains. “What they’re going to pay attention to, how you need to influence them, inspire them, motivate them… we’ve got to get past that surface level.”
Demographics, Psychographics, and Now Valuegraphics
While most marketers are familiar with psychographics—interests, beliefs, purchase behavior—Allison argues these still fall short. “Psychographics is everything that’s not demographics,” he says. “It’s all historical. It’s all interesting stuff, but it’s about the past.” The question businesses should be asking, he says, is what people are going to do next. “You want to look out the front of the car, not in the rearview mirror.”
Behavioral science backs him up. “What we value determines everything we do,” Allison asserts. “Not some things. Not sometimes. Every single thing a human brain decides is filtered through our values.” That neurological truth, he says, is housed in a part of the brain called the insula, where values act as a GPS system. “If that’s the case, and you hold something up in front of somebody and say, ‘Here’s something that you value,’ humans are going to go, ‘Whoa, hey, I need more of that.’”
Go here for a deeper dive on demographics vs valuegraphics.
Why Big Data Can Pose A Bigger Problem
Allison is skeptical of the industry’s obsession with big data. “We now have data on our customers and how often they burp,” he jokes. “I swear we do.” The problem isn’t the lack of information, but the paralysis it creates. “We’ve collected all this stuff, but no one knows what to do with it.”
Instead, he calls for organizations to rebalance their stool of audience insight—one leg for demographics, one for psychographics, and one for valuegraphics. Without that last leg, the stool simply topples.
He’s especially wary of applying AI to value-based research. “What we’re trying to do is bring our shared humanity—our values—back into the boardrooms of the nation and the world,” he says. “We wanted to make sure we weren’t becoming the thing we’re fighting against: the dehumanization of business.”
The Case for a Chief Values Officer
Allison goes further than most behavioral strategists, advocating for the creation of a new role in the C-suite: Chief Values Officer. “The thing they’re not considering is that all these decisions they’re making are about people. People are all about their values.” This isn’t just a marketing issue, he insists. “All functions inside an organization should have to do with the values that are shared by all the people an organization touches.”
He sees this as especially vital in an era of increasing polarization. “This world right now is falling to pieces,” Allison says. “We’re so divisive and divided on so many issues. And yet, through all of it… there’s one common thread. It’s all about people, and people are all about their values.”
Return on Values
The business case for Valuegraphics is more than philosophical. Allison has coined the term “Return on Values” to describe the economic upside of aligning with customer values. Across all product categories, he claims companies can expect an average of 12% in added revenue by making even small changes that resonate with shared values.
“Oreo cookies made $4 billion last year,” he notes. “We found for everyday repeat purchase items, people will pay 8% more if it aligns with their values. That’s $320 million. All Oreo has to do is change their packaging a bit, add a few value-centric messages.”
The Customer Whisperer Syndrome
Yet even with empirical proof, not all organizations are ready for change. One roadblock Allison often encounters is what he calls “the customer whisperer”—the tenured executive who believes they know their customer better than any dataset can. “What they’re really saying is that their values around social standing are being threatened,” he says. “We just back away, because there’s nothing we can do to change how people react to the world around their values.”
Still, he recognizes that widespread adoption won’t happen overnight. “Should I have spent all this time inventing a slightly better version of something people already knew about?” he muses. “Maybe. But then I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night.”
Building a Legacy, Not a Brand
Allison’s long-term vision is less about short-term wins and more about systemic change. “We’ve built the first-ever database for the planet of what we all care about,” he says. “But what happens when I’m not here anymore?”
He’s currently in discussions with global institutions to ensure the Valuegraphics database outlives him and becomes a public good. “This is a unifying force in a time where the world really, really needs it,” he says. “I’m thinking about legacy here.”
Allison knows he may not live to see the full impact of his work. “I won’t,” he says flatly. But that hasn’t stopped him from pushing for a future where businesses finally start seeing people not as data points—but as humans, defined not by what they are, but by who they are.
Why is it important to create a values database?
Demographics tell us what people are but not who they are. “But those folks who are similar from that perspective can be incredibly different in terms of who they are, what they are going to pay attention to, how you need to influence them, how you need to engage them, inspire them, motivate them, and what they’re looking for from you and from everything in their life.” says Allison. “Assuming people who are demographically similar are actually similar on the inside where it counts; that’s where we have been going wrong.”
Much of failed startups, wars, and broken relationships stem from bad communication resulting from misalignment and misunderstanding of others’ values. Allison believes the valuegraphics database is a great tool for marketers, allowing them to tap into new markets in a way not possible historically, but he also believes this can change the world. Currently, most marketers succeed through what Allison calls “accidental impact.”
Traditionally, we’ve relied on poor demographic data to understand groups. But demographic groups rarely agree on anything. What groups do agree? Groups identified by values.
What we value determines what we do.
Check out David Allison’s newest book
The Death of Demographics is available right now. If you want to understand your customer’s values and communicate to them like never before, this book is a must-read for 2023.
