In the hit TV show, Severance, Lumon employees exist in two completely separate realities. One version exists as their “Innie” work self, who spends their days refining ominous-looking numbers in a fluorescent-lit dystopia. The other, lovingly referred to as their “Outie” self, goes about their life with no memory of what happens at work.
It’s a fascinating (and mildly terrifying) concept. It’s also a pretty accurate metaphor for how most marketers treat personas.
Too often, marketing teams operate under the assumption that they’re selling to “Innies”, or work-focused professionals who exist in a neat little vacuum. They assume these buyers make purchasing decisions based purely on logic, efficiency, and ROI.
But in reality? You’re marketing to unsevered people.
Your audience doesn’t check their personal experiences, fears, and biases at the door when they log into their work email. They bring their entire selves, which includes career ambitions, risk tolerance, industry skepticism, and, yes, the occasional existential spiral about whether they should have gone to law school instead.
If your B2B personas don’t reflect that complexity? Your marketing will be about as effective as Lumon’s team-building exercises, which are deeply unsettling and wildly out of touch. That’s why knowing how to create marketing personas that account for both logic and emotion is crucial for modern marketing.
The “Innie vs. Outie” Problem – Why Many Personas Fall Short
One of the most unsettling things about Severance, aside from the unnervingly polite corporate cult vibes, is that Innies only exist at work. No personal life, no hobbies, no embarrassing middle school memories to haunt them at 2 AM. Just pure, unfiltered productivity.
And yet, this is exactly how many marketing teams build personas.
Marketers love clean, one-dimensional profiles that make people sound like work-obsessed AI assistants.
- CIOs want innovation.
- Developers care about efficiency.
- Compliance officers think about security 24/7.
At least, that’s what the glossy persona slide deck says.
But let’s be real. Nobody is this predictable. A CISO evaluating a security solution isn’t just thinking, “Does this meet my company’s needs?”. They’re also thinking:
- How much of a nightmare will this be to implement?
- If this fails, will I be looking for a new job next quarter?
- Will my boss finally approve my budget, or am I about to enter another 45-minute debate with the CFO?
- Do I really have time to sit through ANOTHER vendor webinar today?
They’re not the only ones weighing in. Today’s enterprise purchases involve multiple stakeholders, each with their own priorities, making the decision-making process even more complex. A CISO may be focused on risk mitigation, but a CFO is looking at cost reduction, while a VP of Product is evaluating speed-to-market.
Buying decisions aren’t just about logic. Career risks, internal politics, and personal biases play a much bigger role in B2B purchasing than most marketers assume. In fact, a study by Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman found that emotions drive about 90 percent of our decisions, while logic accounts for only 10 percent.
If your personas don’t account for emotional drivers, you risk marketing to a decision-maker who only exists on paper and lives in an idealized B2B dreamscape where decisions are made purely on rational analysis.
And that’s not how the real world works.
What this means for marketers:
- Think beyond job titles. Not all CISOs think the same way (try saying that five times fast). One might be risk-averse and need overwhelming proof; another might want to be seen as a trailblazer in their space.
- Factor in external pressures. Are they fighting for budget? Trying to build internal credibility? Making a decision that could impact their career long-term?
- Understand trust levels. Are they an early adopter, or do they need three Gartner reports and a séance before they’ll consider switching vendors?
Personas should capture the reality of human decision-making, not just job titles and pain points, but motivations, fears, and the external pressures that shape buying behavior. Otherwise, you’re selling to someone who only exists in a vacuum, completely disconnected from the real world.
And if we’ve learned anything from Severance, it’s that nothing good happens in a vacuum.
Misaligned Messaging = The Break Room Experience
If you’re unfamiliar, the Break Room in Severance is where Lumon employees are subjected to deeply unsettling, scripted apology rituals without fully understanding what they did wrong. The Break Room experience for Innies is cold, repetitive, and painfully out of sync with their own experience. Coincidentally, this is exactly how bad marketing feels to a misaligned audience.
Ever download a research report only to get aggressively chased by a sales rep within five minutes? Or read a thoughtful blog about IT strategy, only to get retargeted with a hard sell for a free trial you didn’t ask for? That’s the Break Room experience, and it’s often triggered because many brands are still pushing sales far too soon.
B2B International found that B2B buyers typically complete 60 percent of the purchase process before engaging with a supplier or its sales team. Instead of guiding buyers through a journey that feels natural, you’re forcing them through an unnatural interaction that makes them question why they engaged in the first place.
When personas aren’t built with real customer behavior in mind, messaging feels off. It’s either too aggressive, too disconnected, or just plain irrelevant. And when that happens, people actively avoid your brand.
Pro Tip: Understanding the right KPIs for brand awareness can help prevent this disconnect.
Signs your marketing personas are missing the mark:
- Your audience isn’t engaging: They match your persona criteria, but your content isn’t resonating.
- Your messaging doesn’t match their intent: They’re looking for education, and you’re shoving a demo down their throat.
- Your leads are confused: Prospects show up to sales calls with no idea how your product actually fits into their world.
Want to break free from the Break Room experience? Demand more from your personas. When your buyer research is data-driven, dynamic, and tailored to real-world decision-making, every interaction feels aligned instead of forced. But relying on old assumptions? That’s how you get stuck in the Lumon way of thinking, marketing in a way that’s just plain wrong.
The Lumon Effect: When Assumptions Replace Data
At Lumon, no one questions the system (well, no one did until the Macrodata Refinement team started connecting the dots). Employees follow the rules, repeat the rituals, and never ask why. The company handbook is gospel, and deviation from the status quo is met with suspicion, if not outright punishment.
Sound familiar? It should, because many marketing teams operate very similarly when it comes to crafting B2B personas.
Personas get built once, often based on a mix of assumptions, sales anecdotes, and industry stereotypes, and then they’re treated as immutable. They sit in Google Docs and PowerPoints, getting dusted off for new campaigns without anyone stopping to ask if they still reflect reality. The world changes. Buyers change. Yet, personas remain frozen in time, detached from the very audience they’re meant to represent.
Think about it: If you built a persona for a DevOps leader in 2019, would it still be accurate today? Probably not. The pandemic redefined how companies think about IT infrastructure, remote work, and security risks. AI has transformed efficiency expectations, hiring strategies, and automation priorities.
The buying committee has expanded, and many technical decisions now involve CFOs, procurement officers, and risk management teams, not just IT leadership. Cognism recently found that the typical buying group for a complex B2B solution involves six to 10 decision-makers.
And yet, many brands still market to the 2019 version of their audience, using messaging that feels outdated or misaligned. The result? A complete disconnect between what buyers actually need and what brands think they need.
Common mistakes that lead to “Severed” personas:
- Relying on guesswork instead of real customer conversations.
- Assuming buyer pain points never change despite shifting industry trends.
- Forgetting that the buying committee is larger and more complex than ever.
Fixing them:
- Talk to real customers. Not just sales teams, but actual buyers.
- Use data, not assumptions. Are search trends, content engagement, and customer feedback telling a different story than your persona docs?
- Make personas dynamic, not static. Your audience is evolving, and your personas should evolve with them.
Otherwise, your marketing is just going through the motions, stuck in Lumon’s outdated system while the rest of the world moves on.
Reintegration: Building Marketing Personas That Work in the Real World
As we get closer and closer to the finale of season 2 of Severance, Lumon’s employees are starting to piece together their full selves, realizing they don’t want to be neatly divided into two separate identities. They’re not just workers blindly refining numbers; they’re real people with memories, relationships, fears, and agency.
Marketers need to embrace the same realization.
For too long, B2B personas have been treated like static, one-dimensional profiles. Sure, it would save time if every CIO thought the same way, every security leader had the same concerns, and every DevOps professional valued “efficiency” above all else.
But just like Helly, Mark, and Irving all react differently to the same environment, your audience isn’t a monolith. A risk-taking, forward-thinking CTO evaluating a software purchase has an entirely different mindset than a conservative, stability-focused CTO making the same decision. If your marketing treats them the same way, you’re missing the mark (pun very much intended).
This is where dynamic, data-driven personas come into play. Personas shouldn’t just be a set of job titles paired with assumed pain points. They need to reflect real behavioral patterns, motivations, and decision-making styles. Learning how to create personas that evolve with your audience ensures that your messaging stays relevant, rather than feeling as outdated as Lumon’s corporate policies.
To build marketing personas that actually work:
- Segment by behavior, not just job title. Is this buyer an early adopter or someone who needs overwhelming proof before making a move?
- Consider personal motivations. Are they fighting for career growth? Are they risk-averse and protecting their budget? Are they looking for ways to get executive buy-in?
- Match messaging to awareness level. Some prospects need education about a problem they barely recognize, others need proof that your solution is the right one, and some just need a reason to trust you.
Start Demanding More from Your Personas
At the heart of this blog (besides me getting to write about my favorite show) is one key truth: You’re marketing to whole people, not Innies.
Your audience does not turn off their personal experiences when they log into their email. They bring their industry skepticism, career goals, and decision-making fears with them. If your personas do not account for the whole of someone, you are speaking to a version of your audience that does not actually exist. And yet, many brands still fail to update their personas regularly, despite the fact that 65 percent of companies who exceed lead and revenue goals have refreshed their buyer personas within the last six months.
On top of that, buying decisions are no longer made in isolation. Buying committees continue to grow, with multiple stakeholders weighing in at every stage. So if your personas are too rigid or one-dimensional, your marketing will not connect with the full range of decision-makers involved in the process.
It is time to move beyond outdated, surface-level personas. Just as the employees of Lumon begin to reclaim their full identities, marketers must demand more from their personas.
Great marketing requires more than just reaching an audience. It requires you to understand who they are, what drives them, and how to engage them at every stage of the buying journey. The brands that win are the ones that speak to real people, not just job functions.
If you are ready to build personas that actually work, let’s talk. Otherwise, we’ll assume your Outie has no idea this conversation is even happening.
