Buyer Personas Began with Buyers. It Was Always About People.

How twenty-five years of Buyer Personas led me to Audience Personas, Community Personas, and the emerging discipline of Human Understanding.

Twenty-five years ago, I introduced the concept of Buyer Personas because I believed organizations needed a better way to understand the people they served.

At the time, marketing was becoming increasingly driven by technology, automation, and data. We knew more than ever about customers, yet I often felt we understood them less. We could measure behavior, but we struggled to understand motivation. We could describe demographics, but we couldn’t always explain why people made the decisions they did.

Buyer Personas emerged from a simple belief: before organizations can build better products, create better marketing, or develop better customer experiences, they must first understand the people they hope to serve.

Over the years, that idea grew far beyond anything I could have imagined. Buyer Personas became part of the language of marketing, sales, customer experience, and product development. I’ve had the privilege of working with organizations around the world, speaking with thousands of buyers, and watching a simple idea help them become more human-centered in how they think and act.

Looking back now, I’ve come to realize something I didn’t fully appreciate in those early years.

Buyer Personas was never really about buyers.

It was about people.

That realization has led me to think differently about what I now believe is one of the most important organizational competencies of the future: Human Understanding.

By Human Understanding, I don’t mean understanding humanity in the philosophical sense. I mean an organization’s ability to deeply understand the people it serves—and to use that understanding to make better decisions, build stronger relationships, and create greater value.

In recent years, many people who have followed my work have noticed that I’ve become deeply involved in the arts. As Executive Director of JazzBuffalo and ArtsBuffalo, Artistic Director of the Lewiston Jazz Festival, and founder of Jazz at Kleinhans, my days now look very different than they did twenty years ago.

On the surface, it may seem like an unexpected change.

To me, it feels like a natural continuation of the same journey.

Whether someone is evaluating enterprise software, launching a new product, deciding to attend a jazz concert, subscribing to a concert season, or choosing to spend an afternoon in downtown Buffalo, the questions remain remarkably similar.

What matters to them?

What are they hoping to experience?

What inspires them to participate?

What makes them feel that they belong?

The context has changed.

The people have not.

That realization has led me to think differently about the future of human-centered strategy.

During the last few years, I’ve wondered why organizations invest so much effort in understanding customers and buyers, yet often spend far less time understanding audiences. Arts organizations, festivals, downtown districts, and communities all hope to attract and engage people. Today, businesses are asking many of the same questions as they shift from simply acquiring customers to cultivating engaged audiences and communities. Yet too often, organizations still rely on assumptions instead of insight.

For over two decades, I’ve been exploring and refining what I call Audience Personas—a way of understanding not simply who attends, but why people choose to participate, what experiences they value, and what creates lasting relationships. Although the concept first began taking shape in my thinking as early as 2002, I believe its relevance has never been greater than it is today.

More recently, another question has emerged.

Can communities themselves be understood through the people who shape them?

That question has led me to begin thinking about Community Personas—the shared motivations, aspirations, and identities that shape how people gather, connect, and build places where they want to belong.

I don’t see these as replacing Buyer Personas.

I see them as extending the same philosophy into new domains because each begins with the same premise: understanding people.

After all, whether we’re talking about buyers, audiences, or communities, we’re still trying to answer the same fundamental question.

The more I’ve studied buyers, audiences, and communities, the more I’ve come to believe they’re all asking the same thing:

Do you understand me?

That question feels even more relevant today than it did twenty-five years ago.

Artificial intelligence can analyze patterns. Data can identify trends. Technology can automate countless tasks.

But none of those things can replace genuine human understanding.

The organizations that thrive in the years ahead won’t simply know more about people.

They will understand them more deeply.

Organizations everywhere are investing in Artificial Intelligence. I believe they must invest just as intentionally in Human Understanding.

AI can help us process information.

Human Understanding helps us understand people.

I believe Human Understanding will become as essential to organizations in the age of Artificial Intelligence as strategic planning became during the last century.

Not simply marketing.

Not simply the arts.

But the broader ideas that connect them.

How understanding people helps build better organizations.

How it builds stronger audiences.

How it strengthens communities.

And how it creates places where people genuinely want to gather.

Looking back, I realize Buyer Personas was never the final destination.

It was the first chapter in a much larger journey.

A journey that has led me from understanding buyers…

…to understanding audiences…

…to understanding communities…

…and ultimately to exploring what I believe may become one of the defining organizational competencies of the AI era: Human Understanding.

That’s the conversation I hope to continue here.

Because whether we’re talking about business, the arts, nonprofits, or the future of our communities, I believe the organizations that matter most will be those that understand people the best.

Everything else begins there.

And perhaps the most important question we can still ask is the simplest:

Do you understand me?