Book Review — Selling Weed to the Police by James Ogunjimi
This morning, I finished James Ogunjimi’s Selling Weed to The Police — Understanding target audience for your business, where to find them and what to say to them. James is a public relations executive at Ndiyo Media. The book was published in 2020.
Today is a Friday and I should have finished this book long before now (having announced picking it up on Sunday) but the small length of the book made me procrastinate. It is a 104-page book with a font size 14. I decided I was putting it off for too long having read about 20 pages in two days, Monday and Wednesday, so I decided I would spend the early hours of today reading it. In less than 2 hours, I was done. It has to be most petite-sized book I have read for as long as I remember. Is that a good or a bad thing? I don’t know.
In Selling Weed to the police, the author promises to show us how to understand and define the exact audience for our businesses, where to find them, how to get them to listen to us and buy from us no matter what industry we are in, what service we provide and what our brans is about.
The odds are that upon seeing the title of the book, you jumped to the conclusion that the book is about teaching you how to sell to very difficult audiences. The title seems akin to selling ice to the Eskimos. If that’s what you thought, then you could not be far from what the book is about.
In fact, the book discourages selling to an audience who are least likely to buy from you. Why will you want to sell a Lamborghini to someone who struggles to keep his bicycle in shape or a 500-million-naira home to a secondary school student? The author says these are ridiculous and unproductive use of your time when there are audiences who are willing and able to buy your products.
In that wise, the book was a bit confusing to me as I started because it is teaching the exact opposite of what the title says.
But even as it teaches going to the right audience, the 8-chapter book cautions that understanding target audience is not a hurried-up act. The book emphasizes that while the audience is there for the taking, it still takes knowing who they are and then understanding them as humans to be able to know where to find them and what to say to them.
Chapter 2 is the longest chapter in the book, by far and it dwells on brand archetypes. Unfortunately, while I expected the author to provide a definition of what a brand archetype is, the reader is left to either look the definition up online or infer it as they go along in the chapter. In all, there are 12 brand archetypes; the 12 ways of presenting a brand as a persona making it recognizable and relatable to the right audiences.
While I loved some of the contemporary examples used to explain some of the archetypes, for instance it is interesting to see that Durex falls under the Jester archetype (whose social media handles I’m curious to follow closely because of the description), I struggled to relate a contemporary example for the Explorer archetype.
It felt odd that the explanations of the brand archetypes didn’t follow the numbering. While the Explorer is numbered 11, it was explained 2nd. While the Magician is numbered 3rd, it was explained 6th, on and on. There is a jarring part of mentioning an archetype as The Outlaw and The Rebel and then explaining it as The Rebel and The Outlaw, or mentioning an archetype as The Everyman and explaining it as The Everyman or Regular. The inconsistent naming distracted me.
A few of the archetypes are also difficult to differentiate. For instance, was Colin Kaepernick an example of The Hero archetype or The Rebel? The author puts him as Hero, I was not convinced as I feel he fits The Rebel archetype. Is Apple The Magician or Rebel? The author thinks The Rebel, but I feel it’s The Magician, at least based on the explanations provided. I feel including more explanations and especially more examples may have cleared my doubts. The Lover archetype didn’t even have a concrete example I can hold unto. I have the same complaint for Chapter 4 which discussed Brand Personas — lack of examples. It read quite academic.
I have to say though that some of the examples were quite clear. It is easy to relate with The Everyman archetype with the famous Goodluck Jonathan “I have no shoe” election campaign as an example.
It is also worth it that the reason for picking up the book — knowing more about the kind of audience Freshly Pressed — our daily newsletter keeps the busy professional up to date with the latest news around the world — should target. It became clear that we operate as The Sage archetype.
Understanding your brand archetype is quite important because it will influence your brand building, the kind of content you put out, the kind of marketing you push, the advert forms you create, the brand ambassadors that represent your brand, and events you choose to identify with.
Identifying and understanding your brand archetype should encourage brand consistency which will ultimately lead to brand recognition. When people can remember you, you are on the path to getting them to buy from you.
In the chapter about Pain Points which are the problems your target audience are facing, the ways you can employ to understand these pain points are revealing. I had never heard of KW Explorer. This is one of the reasons for buying books. The information may be online, but you don’t know how to search for what you don’t know even exists. What does this tool do and what other fantastic tool does the book talk about? You may want to pick up the book.
One glaring observation I have is that the book does no offer references. That is surprising. Names like Carl Jung and Gerald Zaltman were dropped and it would have been useful to get references for what is discussed as well as for further reading.
I also had to circle some of the evident typos I noticed. The ones on pages 38, 54 and 89 are particularly embarrassing.
In all, the book is a good introduction for anyone looking to know the kinds of people to target for their businesses. But to really drill down into the topic, a bigger, more comprehensive book would be needed.
But like I always say, if I pick a book and it teaches even one thing that I can use to grow myself or my business, I consider it money well spent. I got that for Freshly Pressed here.
