Running Excels, Social Media and Peggy O’Neil

Running Excels is a great store that has established itself as a strong brand. However, I think that the store and those who run their media and social media accounts could use a little more focus overall. The PR Writing for Social Media exercise was an interesting way to approach how a brand could try to focus their message and really try to be consistent and aim for the target audience.

I especially enjoyed building a persona for my client. Running Excels’ customers are 60% female, which seems to be doing well for the store, so I deciding to stick with women as the intended audience. The primary age group of Running Excels customers is people between the ages of 35 and 44 so I decided to make my ideal target a woman named Peggy O’Neil, who was 40 years old. I had fun creating a person who could really identify with the brand.

 

I decided that Peggy was a married woman with three children because the typical Running Excels customer is very active in her community and the neighborhood the store is in is very family oriented. Their customers would be more likely to be involved in the community if they could relate to it.

Peggy had her Master’s Degree because more education tends to lead to a higher income. While running itself is not an expensive sport, the gear one may need, and the brands Running Excels carries are more expensive, requiring their customers to have some disposable income. To show that her family was comfortably a member of the middle, upper-middle class, which is common for the Beverly-area of Chicago where the store is located, I also decided that Peggy was the owner of a Volkswagen Touareg, a car that costs at least $45,000.

Aside from running, Peggy was very active. She enjoyed baking and cooking, and was also a member of the local Beverly Book Club, showing how committed she was to the community and how much she enjoyed being involved and staying busy.

Peggy consumes a variety of media, from the local paper, The Beverly Review to the worldwide news source The Daily Beast. She stays up to date on current events, and would be aware of news both locally and globally.

Overall, I believe that Peggy O’Neil is the ideal client, and most similar to the majority of customers at Running Excels, making her the perfect description of who the target audience is.