Cohorts With Teeth
Define a narrow audience deeply enough to make every creative choice relevant
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 98%
Cohorts With Teeth turns audience segmentation into a creative input rather than a presentation slide. Begin with a broad market, then narrow it until the audience description materially changes the adjectives, analogies, tone, intent, slang, cultural references, and platform choices in the content. “Entrepreneurs” is too broad; first-generation Hispanic entrepreneurs aged 18 to 22 whose parents came from Mexico gives the creator usable signals. The same applies inside a product interest: sneaker buyers differ by income, brand taste, and subculture. The test is practical. If two cohorts would receive essentially the same piece, the segmentation still has no teeth. Once the cohort is specific enough, create distinct executions that signal immediate relevance to each group rather than forcing one vanilla message to serve everyone.
Origin
Vaynerchuk contrasts internet-era targeting with television's broad 18-to-35 demographic and with ad agencies that label audiences as vaguely as “health seeking enthusiasts.” He calls the deeper, creatively useful version “cohorts with teeth.”
Core principles
- 01Broad demographic labels produce vanilla creative.
- 02Age alone cannot explain culture, intent, life stage, or taste.
- 03Specific cohorts change the right analogies, tone, language, and references.
- 04One topic can contain many materially different audience cohorts.
- 05Relevance is earned by showing that the message was made for someone.
How to run it
- 1
Name the broad audience
Write the label you currently use, such as entrepreneurs, sneaker fans, or health-seeking consumers. Treat it as a starting point, not a usable brief.
Watch out A broad label invites the safest and most forgettable version of the message.
- 2
Add life-stage precision
Specify age, life stage, experience level, or the immediate situation that shapes what the person cares about. An 18-year-old and a 32-year-old in the same category are not the same audience.
Pro tip Use life stage when age alone does not explain the difference.
- 3
Layer culture and context
Add geography, community, identity, tastes, and cultural context only where they change relevance. The goal is not demographic decoration but useful creative direction.
Pro tip Name the references and language the cohort would instantly recognize.
Watch out Do not reduce a group to stereotypes; ground choices in real audience knowledge.
- 4
Translate the cohort into creative choices
Change the analogies, tone, intent, slang, visuals, and examples to fit the cohort. Make the segmentation visible in the actual post or ad.
Pro tip If the brief changes but the creative does not, the cohort still lacks teeth.
- 5
Split materially different cohorts
Produce separate pieces when two groups need different relevance cues. Use the internet's distribution capability instead of forcing one television-style execution across the whole market.
Pro tip One macro belief can support many cohort-specific expressions without inventing new beliefs.
Watch out Do not make up claims merely to sound different to each audience.
In the wild
Vaynerchuk narrows “entrepreneurs” to first-generation Hispanic entrepreneurs aged 18 to 22 whose immigrant parents came from Mexico. That description changes the available analogies, music references, places, language, and cultural context, making the content recognizably intended for that audience rather than entrepreneurs in general.
→ The creative gains specific relevance cues instead of defaulting to generic entrepreneurial language.
A broad beer brief for “health seeking enthusiasts” might produce one generic commercial about yoga. Vaynerchuk contrasts young yoga moms in Kansas City with professional mothers in New York City having their first child at 40 and interested in yoga. The product category may be the same, but the lives and the resulting social creative are not.
→ Each group receives a distinct execution built around its own context instead of one broad television-style ad.
Common mistakes
Stopping at a broad demographic
Labels such as 18-to-35 or health-seeking consumers do not tell a creator which language, analogy, or cultural cue to use.
Segmenting without changing the creative
A cohort is only useful when it changes the execution. Otherwise the segmentation is decorative research.
Making one message serve every cohort
The internet supports many targeted executions. Reusing one vanilla piece gives up the relevance advantage.
Is it for you?
Best for
Marketers and creators who know their general market but struggle to make individual pieces feel personally relevant.
Not ideal for
Messages that genuinely must communicate one universal fact identically to everyone, such as a mandatory legal notice.
From the transcript
“do you know who you're making this video for because everyone's going to vanilla”
“it's called relevance everyone if you're not relevant to someone”
“consumer segmentations but they have one they're like we're going to sell this beer to uh Health seeking enthusiasts they make”
From the episode
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