What Your Choice of Quarantini Says About Your Priorities

Gin or vodka? Vodka or gin?

In your COVID-19 quarantine, during those Zoom socials, which spirit went in your martini shaker?

And, what else does that tell us about you, according to The Valuegraphics Database analysis of what people all over the world care about most – and by extension how they will behave.

Gin drinkers, as a group, have a surprising result.

Personal Responsibility, a value that speaks to individual accountability, ranks second, ahead of Relationships and Family, but below Belonging, a value that speaks to inclusion. They place new “Experiences” ahead of “Health/Well-being”, and meeting “Basic Needs” ranks below “Personal Growth” and “Loyalty.” In evaluating what people who prefer gin martinis care about most, we can develop a profile of their priorities: What we value most predicts our behavior. This can be a tool in effectively engaging this target market.

Gin drinkers, on average, place a high value on loyalty, like to make things happen, and keep an eye on their finances. They tend to be traditionalists, believe there is one right way to do everything. Many in this cohort are social adventures, out more nights than they are in and invested in experiences that help them grow as people. They seek out customization and are easily disappointed. They are more likely to be joiners, drinking their traditional martini as a social prop.

By comparison, people who prefer vodka martinis, have a different profile with different priorities. They place a premium on new “Experiences” – keeping it spicy – along with valuing their family, friends and the club of like-minded people. They worry about “Financial Security – perhaps as a goal or as a challenge – and rank “Personal Growth” ahead of their “Health/Well-being”, “Personal Responsibility” and “Basic Needs.” Surprising, given the self-centered focus of most of their profile, vodka drinkers value “Religion” and “Compassion.”

For anyone trying to gain a foothold with this target market, we can surmise that, on average, a vodka drinker likes to mix it up, are driven by money or debt, and experiences that enrich their lives. By knowing what people care about – their values – we know why they behave as they do. As humans, we spend all our waking hours hunting and gathering anything that will feed and protect our values: the things we care about most. This is our life’s work.

Regardless of the demographic boxes you check as a human in society – race, gender, age, income – we learn more from cohorts based on shared values which can predict, with great precision, what people will do next. From a social science perspective, that’s a very different narrative.

If you wanted to speak to, engage or influence gin martini drinkers, for example, highlight anything that will trigger personal growth, personal responsibility and experiences. These values, from a list of 56 accepted by the scientific community, will be the most powerful because what we value determines what we do.

David Allison is founder of The Valuegraphics Database, the first global database that defines the shared values of target audiences, regardless of their demographic profiles. It uses a global database rooted in neuroscience, psychology and sociology and measures 436 shared human values, wants, needs and expectations. It’s accurate to +/- 3.5%, offering a high degree of confidence. www.valuegraphics.com