Following a Europe-wide survey that revealed much about existing and potential customers, Yahoo! wanted to communicate the lifestyles and behaviors of different types of customers to their employees. By creating memorable and true-to-life personas, they hoped to integrate customer needs more closely into all of the company’s working processes.

We created a simple naming system so that employees could identify the customer at different life stages: socialists, settlers, providers and balancers. To make the personas feel real, we developed a theme of “human traces,” illustrating the fact that we are most identified by what we use, leave behind and are interested in—the things you find on bookshelves and desks and in fridges and homes. The internal poster campaign was one of several creative executions and was integral to the launch event, where the top 50 global Yahoo! executives engaged with the project, met the personas and explored their lives through visuals, films and 3-D environments.

It’s human, friendly, engaging. One can really identify and connect with this...yet it is the internet.