By Helena Pelsmaekers

Lately, I’ve been neglecting my, new hobby, which is making personas from people I see in everyday life. Whenever I catch myself doing nothing on my way home in the tube or whenever I’m irritated by someone’s traits or behavior I begin writing about it.

But my best persona to date has to be the one I made of my boyfriend (and in this context my muse as well) Ruben. He is cynical. About almost everything. And that’s what I love about him. He doesn’t buy into strategic games some brands play on consumers, he’s not easily convinced and he’s definitely not naive. He works in IT, he thinks logical (left brainer over here), has had a pretty normal life without any child trauma’s (he had friends, his parents didn’t get a divorce and he’s not a ginger), he doesn’t like it when people make eating noises, has this OCD thing where he needs to walk past chairs he spots in the room and he is obsessed about electronic music.

But the biggest personality trait he has that makes it interesting to get his opinion is that not much can make him emotional. I’ve known him for 5 years now and I have never seen him cry or even get really emotional. Not even during Hachiko. And it takes a lot in order to get something to genuinely impress him. Thus the perfect Frankenstein to experiment on.*

So whenever I’m thinking about a brief, I try to think in his place. How could I persuade him to buy/use this? I use him to bounce off ideas I’m working on. “What if this particular brand would do this, what would you think? Would this impress you if you see it?” And he’s always pretty straightforward in his feedback. He never says what I want to hear. He says the first things that come to mind. The only downside is, is that cynical people are not the only audience we usually talk to. So this technique can become something that boycots/blocks my creativity.

But as was said by Patrick Collister in his masterclass on Tuesday, is that we sometimes forget that we’re talking to people who are in general not creative beings (not in a patronizing way) and do not always get what we’re talking about right away. My boyfriend usually needs to ask what the hell I’m talking about, because I always think that I’m saying the obvious. Yeah we want to let pigeons shit on people by eating our product. That speaks for itself right?

*not even sure that’s used correctly but it sure feels sophisticated.