Target audience? Don't be too narrow-minded with your marketing

When you set up a business, you might be told by wise and wonderful marketing people that you MUST have a target audience. I am by no means saying it’s wrong to do so but in the same breath, it’s not absolutely essential. We certainly have people we don’t target - children, as our products contain caffeine. However, we do stuff outside of manufacturing products that children do like, which they tell their parents about. Take selling caps, for example. Kids love merch and we make pretty rad merch. If their parents like what we do, the chances are their kids (at a certain age point) will be allowed to drink our stuff.

What we determined from an early ‘brand age’ was that we are going ‘on a journey’. If any person, be they young, old, male, female or any other demographic, like what they see, taste, feel and touch, then they should come with us. We are not just talking to Rebecca who is 23 who lives in Putney who has a boyfriend named Nick and they’ve recently bought a lovely sausage dog called Colin. They visit the Odeon cinema for Meerkat Movies, pick up the Guardian at the weekend and swing by Columbia Road in East London to collect some flowers before heading home for a Charlie Bigham’s ready meal. We want to talk to anyone who’ll listen. How do we do it? We don’t pander to trends and styles. We make our own stuff and if you like it, then GREAT.

Take our latest marketing efforts, for example, which have been praised by children, teens, adults and grannies. We made a YouTube video, which is a rap based on what we do at Jimmy’s: make iced coffee and have fun. The video is not targeted at anyone - it’s merely something we wanted to do. I’ve always been a fan of old skool hip-hop and have previously made a mock video of Snoop Dogg’s G’s and Hustlas, which you can find online if you search hard enough. I thought a hip-hop track would be a great tongue-in-cheek way of executing a bit of storytelling. Since launching about a month ago it’s had a healthy 425,000 views, we’ve been featured on BBC South Today and the whole track will be featured on E4 and 4Music for free as they feel a (fairly long) advert like ours will add value to their channel.

If you’ve got a new brand or you’re about to start a new brand, make sure you stay true to who you are, 100%.