Here’s a famous story from aviation. In the 1950s, the US Air Force designed cockpits around the dimensions of the “average pilot,” calculated from thousands of measurements. The planes kept crashing. When they finally checked, they discovered that out of 4,000 pilots, exactly zero matched the average across all dimensions. The “average pilot” was a myth — a person who didn’t exist. The solution was the adjustable seat.
What Is the Average Customer Fallacy?
Marketers crash their campaigns the same way. In an attempt to appeal to everyone, they craft messaging for a fictional “average customer” — a bland composite that excites no one. The copy becomes generic, the offer becomes vague, and the brand becomes invisible. By trying to speak to all, you speak to none. This is the flip side of the same mistake we covered in Tip #10’s Data-Driven Empathy Gap — you can’t build empathy for a person who doesn’t exist. It’s also why the customers who didn’t convert are so valuable — they’re real, specific people telling you exactly where the generic “average” message failed them.
How to Design for the Extremes, Not the Middle
The cure is to design for the extremes, not the middle.
- Build for a Specific Person: Write your ad as if you’re speaking to one real, named individual with a specific pain. Specificity is magnetic; vagueness repels. This is the same discipline behind turning features into benefits in Tip #12’s Feature Trap — you can’t write a real benefit for a person who doesn’t exist either.
- Embrace Polarization: A message strong enough to make your ideal customer say “this is exactly me” will inevitably make others say “this isn’t for me” — and that’s a feature, not a bug.
- Create the “Adjustable Seat”: Segment your funnels so different audiences self-select into the journey that fits them, instead of forcing everyone down one generic path. This only works if you’re actually collecting first-party data on who these different people are, as we covered in Tip #3 — segmentation is impossible without it.
Why Polarizing Messages Perform Better
Stop chasing the mythical average. Build for real people at the edges, and you’ll capture the middle as a bonus.
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FAQ
Q: Won’t narrowing my message down to one specific person shrink my market?
A: Counterintuitively, no. A message built for a specific person still resonates with anyone who recognizes themselves in it, even if the exact details don’t match. What actually shrinks your market is a vague message nobody feels was written for them.
Q: How specific is too specific when building a customer persona?
A: You want specific enough to write real copy, not specific enough to describe one literal human. “A 34-year-old ops manager drowning in spreadsheets” works. “Jane, who drinks oat milk lattes and drives a 2019 Civic” is probably overkill unless those details actually change your messaging.
Q: What if I have multiple very different customer segments?
A: That’s exactly what the “adjustable seat” idea is for. Build separate landing pages, ad sets, or email sequences for each segment instead of writing one generic message trying to cover all of them at once.
Q: Isn’t polarizing messaging risky for brand reputation?
A: Polarizing on preferences and pain points (who this is/isn’t for) is safe and effective. Polarizing on unrelated hot-button issues just to get attention is a different, much riskier game — that’s not what this tip is describing.
Final Thought
The “average pilot” never existed, and neither does your “average customer.” Every generic campaign you launch is a cockpit built for a ghost. Pick one real person, write for them specifically, and let the adjustable seat — segmented funnels, tailored messaging — do the rest.
Stop Building One Funnel For Everyone
Our audience targeting team builds the “adjustable seat” — segmented paths for every customer type.