Every brand has a brand manual and inside every brand manual is a consumer portrait. These are fictional biographies of a company's typical consumer and they're written exclusively for their employees and marketing partners, not the public.
Fortunately, Wattpad's investigative news team was able to obtain some of these consumer portraits. What follows is the best of the worst, the consumer portraits the brands don't want you to see.
Consumer Portrait: Call of Duty
Jared, a 27-year-old, works part-time as a stock boy at Best Buy. He used to work the floor, but was pulled off after calling an elderly woman a "noob" for not running Linux on her computer.
Jared lives in his man cave, a gamer's paradise his mom knows is off-limits. There, he's got everything he needs: weed, Red Bull, and his sick flatscreen and Xbox 360 where he pwns noobs in Call of Duty.
Jared doesn't 'eat'; he slurps. Mostly cup-a-soups. Sometimes microwaveable burritos. 7/11 is his grocery store and the only thing more dangerous than his patented kill shots is his out-of-control blood sodium level.
Consumer Portrait: Lacoste
Suzanne is a 41-year-old woman of wealth and leisure. Others may scoff at her 'privilege,' but she came by her wealth honestly - through a trust fund set up by her late grandfather Klaus, a Mercedes executive in Nazi Germany.
Suzanne has impeccable taste - in clothes, in jewelry, and in multimillion-dollar luxury yachts. She won't hesitate to spend money on something beautiful, and she thinks sales are "disgusting."
Suzanne doesn't have a "man"; she has lovers. Many lovers. Many lovers from whom she keeps many secrets, like her deep love for Old Hollywood, her childhood fear of spiders, and her recent diagnosis of an antibiotic-resistant strain of chlamydia.
Consumer Portrait: Beau's All Natural Brewing Company
Leonard is a 33-year-old graphic designer at one of Toronto's premiere boutique ad agencies. He's not just another discerning consumer; he's the discerning consumer, a man whose exquisite taste is what defines him.
Leonard styles his moustache with old-fashioned wax product, infused with artisanal honey from Mennonite-raised bees. He hates technology, but spends all day working on a state-of-the-art iMac and is never without his iPhone 6S which he keeps in a classically-inspired wooden case hand-whittled by an Italian craftsman. He only listens to vinyl because he values what's over authentic over what's convenient, and because he wants to hear something real.
Leonard has never eaten at McDonald's. He's never even eaten a french fry. He hates iced tea, but he loves Kombucha. He gets furious when people mispronounce Pho. He buys farmer's market mushrooms, but only if they've been foraged by an Eastern European woman. He bakes his own Kale chips.
