Your Customer Only Has Six Needs

And Your Brand Only Needs to Choose Two of Them.

There is often the chance to over think what our customers need, want and how to satisfy every single one of them. The reality is stripping it all back you’ll find that your customer doesn't have a hundred needs. They are really and simply only six. We all have them and your brand doesn't need to solve them all. In fact, trying to will only work against you. What I'm about to take you through isn't theory, this is how humans actually function and once you understand it, you'll never look at a brand, yours included, the same way again.

We All Have Six

Before we get to talking about brands, let's talk about people for a moment and that's yourself included.

Every person you've ever met is driven by one or two of six core human needs. Significance. Acceptance. Approval. Intelligence. Pity. Strength. Just so we are clear, these aren't personality types and they're not labels. They're the underlying emotional drivers that shape how people behave, what they say, how they dress, and what they're really looking for when they walk into a room, or a store or when having a conversation.

Here's how they show up in real life and remember they are both strengths and weaknesses at the same time.

Significance is the need to be seen. To matter. To be recognised by others. You know a Significance person because they will normally announce themselves. Maybe an outlandish outfit, a loud entrance, the conversation that always circles back to their achievements, their status or their influence. They're not showing off for the sake of it. They need to know they matter and their deepest fear is being overlooked.

Acceptance is the need to belong. These people often speak in we, us, our. They talk about their team, their group, their community. "We all went out on Thursday nights and we had the best time, because everyone gets along so well." They're not just sharing stories, they're actually telling you where they feel safe. Their deepest fear is being rejected or cast out.

Approval is the need for reassurance. These people normally seek permission before they move forward. They'll tell you about the speech they have to give on Thursday and how they just know it's going to go badly. And what they often need from you isn't advice, but for you to tell them they're going to be great. Their deepest fear is getting it wrong and being judged for it.

Intelligence is the need to be perceived as knowledgeable. You'll hear it in the credentials they drop, maybe the university they attended, the papers they've published or the expertise they reference. They're not being arrogant, they need you to understand that they know things. Their deepest fear is being seen as uninformed or irrelevant.

Pity is the need to be understood. These are the people who want you to hear how hard it's been. The traffic was terrible, the day was relentless, everything went wrong and your instinct might be to fix it and suggest the audiobook for the commute, and offer the solution. But don't. They actually don't want the solution. They are actually wanting you to just recognise their journey. Their deepest fear is that their struggle goes unseen.

Strength is the need to feel powerful and in control. You’ll see it in the posture and the presence. The stories are about leading, deciding, dominating. These people need to feel capable and formidable and their deepest fear is vulnerability.

How many people popped into your head as you read this and which ones are you?

Ok so here's what's important to understand. You have two of these. Right now, as you're reading this, two of those descriptions probably landed differently than the others and that's not coincidence. And your customer? They also have two as well.

The Cost of Getting It Wrong

Take a moment now to think about the last time someone close to you needed something and you delivered the wrong thing entirely.

A classic one for me would be when my partner comes home exhausted. It's been a brutal day. They run through everything that went wrong, the meeting, the commute, the impossible deadline. And you, trying to help, jump straight into fix-it mode. "Have you tried leaving earlier? You could listen to a podcast on the drive. Maybe talk to your manager about the workload."

They don't want that. At all.

What they needed was for you to simply say “ I totally get it and that sounds really hard.”

Firstly just so you know, that's not a communication failure it just a needs mismatch. They needed some Pity, validation of their journey and you went and delivered Intelligence or Strength. The intention was good but the impact was disconnection.

Brands do this every single day.

A customer walks into a store driven by Significance. What they need to feel is seen, special, chosen. And then if the brand responds with efficiency, fast checkout, streamlined experience and frictionless service, everything that signals the brand values speed over the person standing in front of them. That need goes unmet. The customer leaves, and they're not even entirely sure why it didn't feel right. That gap, between what your customer needs and what your brand delivers, is exactly where loyalty dies.

The Brands That Get It Right

The brands people feel something about, not just buy from, but genuinely connect with have figured out their two human needs and normally focus on them. But consciously or not, they've built everything around solving for a specific pair of human needs. And it shows in every touchpoint.

Nike solves for Significance and Strength. Everything Nike does tells you that you matter, that you're capable, that greatness is within reach. "Just Do It" isn't a tagline about running shoes. It's a call to Strength. The athlete stories, the bold campaigns, the product design, all of it reflects back to the customer, “you are significant, and you are powerful.” Nike doesn't try to make you feel like you belong to a cosy group or that you need reassurance. That's not their two.

Apple solves for Intelligence and Acceptance. Apple customers don't just buy a phone, they join something. There's a tribe and a shared identity. And within that tribe, there's an implicit understanding: “we are the smart ones.” The design philosophy, the language, the ecosystem, all of it signals intelligence and belonging simultaneously. You're not just accepted. You're accepted by the right people.

Hermès solves for Significance and Intelligence. This is a brand that makes you feel like you know something others don't. The craft, the history, the scarcity, it's all built around being seen and being discerning. An Hermès customer doesn't need to belong to a crowd. They need to be above it and even more importantly they need others to recognise why.

Lululemon solves for Acceptance and Strength. The community is the product as much as the leggings. Lululemon built a world where you belong, to a movement, a lifestyle, a tribe of people who take their health seriously and within that belonging, there's strength. You're capable. You show up. You're part of something that requires something of you and that combination is very powerful.

Notice what none of these brands are doing. They're not trying to speak to all six. They're not running campaigns that simultaneously try to make you feel intelligent, pitied, approved of, and significant all at once. That would be incoherent and customers would feel it, even if they couldn't name it.

So What Happens When You Try to Solve All Six

When a brand tries to be everything, it becomes nothing.

You've felt it. A brand that's warm and community-driven one moment, then repositions around prestige and exclusivity the next. A retailer that speaks to your intelligence in one campaign and panders to your insecurities in the next. You walk away from the experience slightly unsettled. You can't exactly articulate why but something felt off.

That feeling is cognitive dissonance. The brand sent conflicting emotional signals, it tried to solve for needs that don't naturally sit together, and the result is a customer who can't figure out what the brand actually stands for and more importantly, whether it actually even understands them.

The more needs you chase, the less you are going to solve. It's simple.

Choosing Your Two

So the question  I have for you as a brand owner, a retailer, a business leader, is this - “Which two are you actually solving for and why?”

Not which two you'd like to solve for and not which two sound most aspirational. Which two does your customer walk in the door already carrying? And is everything you're doing, your environment, your messaging, your product, your service, your community, set up to meet those two needs with precision and consistently time and time again?

Because the moment you get that right, everything sharpens and its exactly how trust is really built. I speak about how and why trust is really built all the time. What also happens is your marketing stops trying to speak to everyone and starts speaking directly to the person who was already looking for you. Your retail environment stops being a transaction space and starts being an emotional one. Your brand stops being a logo and starts being a feeling. The benefits in this clarity will impact so many areas in your business both externally and internally.

That's where the competitive advantage lives. Not in doing more. In understanding better.

This is part of the work we do at IGU Global. Getting clarity on which two human needs your brand is, or should be solving for. Because once you know that, everything else follows.

Nick Gray - Founder and CEO 

IGU Global ( I Got You )