The Audience Pro

Audience mapping through decision lenses.

"Targeting is about shaping choice, not describing demographics. The question is not 'who are they?' but 'how do they decide?'"

The Core Insight

The Audience maps audience segments to help identify who to target and what tension to address. It uses four strategic lenses that examine how people make decisions, not just who they are.

Demographics describe audiences. The Audience reveals how to persuade them.

Cascade Mode vs Free Roam

The Audience operates in two modes:

Cascade Mode

When working in the cascade, The Audience receives the real problem and sector messaging convention from The Story. Your audience analysis builds on that foundation.

Navigation in Cascade Mode: The top navigation bar is disabled. Use the breadcrumb bar (Story → Audience → Message → Plan → Frame) to move between tools. Click "Lock & Continue" to save and advance.

Editing upstream: You can return to The Story using breadcrumbs and make changes. You must click "Lock & Continue" again to save those changes, which resets The Audience outputs.

Free Roam

Use The Audience independently without cascade. Good for exploring audience segments or testing hypotheses.

How to access Free Roam:

• From the hub, click The Audience in the top navigation bar
• If already in Cascade Mode, exit first by clicking "Exit Pitch" or the Threader logo (top left)
• In Free Roam, the top navigation stays active

Key differences: Free Roam saves your work to your library with a "Save" button. Data does not cascade to other tools. No Pitch Confidence score appears. Each tool works independently.

Why Decision-Based Targeting

Traditional targeting relies on demographics: age, income, location. These variables are easy to measure but hard to act on. Knowing someone is a "35-44 ABC1 homeowner" tells you nothing about how to persuade them.

The Audience focuses on how people decide: Do they think or feel? Consider carefully or act on habit? Are they loyal or exploratory? Safety-seeking or novelty-seeking?

The Four Lenses

Theoretical Grounding

• Kahneman's System 1/System 2: Dual-process theory informs the Decision Mode lens
• FCB Grid: Category involvement theory shapes the Engagement lens
• Means-End Chain Theory: Functional vs expressive benefits inform Value Orientation
• Prospect Theory: Risk perception underpins the Risk Profile lens

How It Works

Step 1: Define Your Market

Enter your market/industry and region. The Audience generates exactly 8 stakeholder groups: up to 3 from your uploaded research (if available), plus AI-generated segments to complete the set.

Step 2: Select & Customise Segments

Research-Backed vs AI-Generated Segments

The Audience generates two types of segments:

• Client Brief segments (blue badge): Extracted from your uploaded stakeholder research. These appear with a blue "CLIENT BRIEF" badge and represent segments explicitly described in your documents. Typically 2-3 segments maximum from research.
• AI-Generated segments: Created by the AI based on category knowledge and market patterns. These complete the set to give you 8 segments total. Marked with "AI GENERATED" badges.

Research-backed segments contribute to higher Strategic Confidence scores because they're grounded in your data, not AI assumptions. The blue badge indicates the segment name, description, and behavioural characteristics were extracted from your uploaded documents.

Review AI-generated segments and select which to map. You can:

• Edit segments: Click the pencil icon to modify name, description, driver, or tension
• Delete segments: Remove segments that don't fit (minimum 2 required)
• Add custom segments: Create your own based on client or agency knowledge

Custom segments are marked with a yellow badge and preserved when you save.

Step 3: Map & Analyse

Selected segments are plotted on 2×2 grids across four strategic lenses. For each segment the tool identifies:

• Category Relationship: How they approach the brand and category
• Decision Driver: What matters most when choosing
• Tension: The contradiction they live with

Brand Affinity Mapping

Add brands to see which segments they attract. Brands can be added manually or clicked from your competitive set (if available from The Message). Each brand displays as a coloured territory showing its audience footprint. You can add up to 5 brands for comparison. In Territory view, brands appear as dashed circles with gold-coloured labels. The legend at the bottom shows how many segments each brand attracts.

Territory View

Toggle between Pin view and Territory view to visualise brand audience overlap:

• Pin view: Shows exact segment positions as dots
• Territory view: Shows semi-transparent clouds representing each brand's audience footprint

Drag segments to adjust positions; territories recalculate automatically.

Custom Lenses

Create your own lens with custom axes when the four defaults don't capture your strategic question.

Step 4: Select Primary Segment & Generate Tension

Choose one segment as your primary target. The Audience generates an Audience Tension statement that articulates who you are talking to and why they will care.

Strategic Confidence: Every output shows a confidence score (e.g., "80% HIGH") based on AI knowledge, client input quality, and completeness. Hover over the score to see the breakdown. See Quality Indicators for details.

Strategic Trade-Offs: The tool identifies key tensions your strategy embraces (e.g., "Privacy protection versus user experience convenience"). Trade-offs are not presented as problems to solve, but as tensions your strategy intentionally embraces. For example: choosing premium longevity features means accepting you cannot also offer the lowest price point. Every strategic choice involves trade-offs; The Audience makes them explicit.

What This Strategy Excludes: Shows which segments you are deliberately not targeting and why. This clarifies your focus.

Human Sense-Check: Before locking your output, you can flag concerns or observations. These notes are included in exports for team discussion.

Output

The output forces commitment to a single primary segment and articulates why they will care. Export as Word or PDF using the selective export modal. Choose which sections to include: workspace logo (if uploaded), audience tension, primary segment detail, and all segments table.

How It Fits The Cascade

The Audience sits between The Story and The Message:

• Receives: Reframed problem and sector messaging convention from The Story
• Produces: Audience tension that informs positioning and creative strategy
• Feeds into: The Message (who we're targeting shapes where we position)

Advanced Features

Drag-and-Adjust: Drag segment dots to refine positions based on your market expertise. Adjusted segments show a yellow indicator. Insights regenerate automatically after repositioning. Click "Reset Positions" to restore AI defaults.

Pin vs Territory Views: Toggle between pin view (exact positions as dots) and territory view (dashed circles showing brand audience footprints). Territory view makes competitive overlap visible.

Zoom: Use +, -, 1:1 controls to inspect crowded areas or create screenshots.

Document Uploads: Upload stakeholder research (PDF, DOCX, PPTX, plain text, max 10MB per file) to improve segment accuracy. Behavioural and psychographic research works best. Market sizing alone produces weaker results.

Library: All analyses auto-save. Click the Library icon to view, load, or delete saved projects.

Best Practices

• Upload stakeholder research before generating segments for better accuracy
• Use behavioral or psychographic research, not just market sizing data
• Name segments by behaviour or mindset, not demographics
• Focus on the tension that makes them receptive to change
• Use custom segments to incorporate client research or agency expertise
• Map competitor brands to see where audience overlap exists
• Use Territory view to identify white space opportunities
• Drag segments to adjust positions when AI estimates do not match your market knowledge
• Consider how the same person might move across lenses in different contexts
• Use custom lenses when your category has unique decision dynamics

Common Mistakes

• Uploading market sizing data instead of stakeholder research (produces pricing-based segments instead of behavioral segments)
• Targeting "everyone" instead of committing to a primary segment
• Describing segments demographically instead of behaviourally
• Writing generic tensions that could apply to any category
• Ignoring the Strategic Confidence breakdown (tells you where your brief has gaps)
• Not adjusting positions when AI estimates do not match your market knowledge

"The best targeting insight isn't who they are. It's why they'll care."