What the juggernaut ACOTAR series tells us about knowing your customer
That is, whether you're into fantasy books or corporate marketing.
I was in Kmart when it happened. I mean, it’s where all the best things do happen. That $4 candle. That $8 cushion. That plush throw rug. None of which you need, but all of which you really, really need. You’re either a Kmart fanatic of you’re not, OK.
Anyway, this time, something marketing-ish stopped me in my tracks.
An adult colouring book on the shelf.
An A Court of Thorns and Roses colouring book, to be specific. Yes, that ACOTAR. The global fantasy juggernaut by Sarah J Maas. Of fairy culture, fantasy, folklore, romance, the whole lot. [And stay with me. You don’t have to be into fantasy books to learn a lesson about B2B, corporate and professional services marketing here.]
My first thought was ‘I f*cking love this idea’. Note: not an ACOTAR fan, but I’m familiar enough with the juggernaut that it is, to know that this was very, very smart marketing. And man oh man, ACOTAR author Sarah J Maas (or, her team) have that target market nailed. They know how to turn their customers from one-time buyers into brand advocates into repeat customers.
Colouring books are hardly a groundbreaking format. Adult colouring books are new, but also, not groundbreaking.
What stood out to me was: when you truly, deeply understand your customer, their pain points, aspirations, needs and generally the consumer psychology that drives them.. what to build and then build next for your target market becomes.. kind of obvious.
ACOTAR is simply selling an extended brand experience. Here it’s continued immersion in a universe.
If you've somehow avoided it, ACOTAR is a fantasy series with a fanbase that lives inside the books, not just reads them.
These readers cast the characters in their heads. They create TikToks about it. They debate plotlines with the kind of fevered conviction usually reserved for politics or sport. True fandom.
So what does a colouring book actually do?
It extends the world. It gives fans another way to be inside a story they already love. Slower, more tactile, more deliberate than a scroll or a chapter. It deepens emotional connection and turns passive consumption into active participation.
This is psychologically aligned product (also applicable for service) development.
It turns customers into repeat customers into brand advocates.
And that's the bit that should interest corporate marketers.
Knowing your audience is everything, your entire commercial strategy.
In B2B and corporate marketing, people can reduce audience knowledge to a slide in a strategy deck. Age bracket. Job title. Location. A few pain points. Done and dusted. Slide 4 of 22, let's move on.
Real customer insight is behavioural and emotional. It asks harder questions. For example,
What does our audience do with their downtime?
How do they like to consume information?
Do they want speed or depth? Authority or relatability? Data or narrative?
Do they want high stimulation or calm reassurance?
ACOTAR's audience skews heavily Millennial and Gen Z. Highly online, deeply invested in fandom culture, comfortable blurring the line between content and community.
The colouring book taps into the rise of cosy culture, nostalgia cycles, the appetite for offline rituals in an online world and a desire to linger inside beloved IP, the ACOTAR series and it’s characters and vivid world-building. Every single one of those choices was deliberate.
Before anyone says, "Sure, but we're a financial services firm, not a fantasy author." Stay with me. Whether you’re the marketing team for a fantasy novel series or an ASX listed company, there are lessons here for you.
So, let’s start with, the above four target customer questions and others, like
What does our audience need to feel before they say yes to us? Confidence? Certainty? Peer validation? The emotional driver behind B2B decisions is almost always underestimated.
Where do they go when something in our industry makes them anxious or uncertain? Do they google it? Ask their network? Read a report?
What does success to them actually look like, and what keeps them up at night trying to get there? Job title tells you nothing. This tells you more.
How much internal selling do they have to do before they can even say yes to us? In B2B and professional services, your buyer often has a board, a CFO or a leadership team to convince. Understanding that changes what you produce for them. For professional services, it could be anticipating conversations that might be happening in the home.
What do they wish someone in our industry would just say plainly? Most corporate categories are plagued by jargon and unecessary BS.
Answer, and then extend your equivalent universe. What else could you provide or do as a brand to benefit your customers to show them that you really know them? What paid or value-add asset, download, tool, information, content, product or service could you provide?
The seeeeerious biz equivalent of a colouring book
To get your B2B, corporate and professional services (our favourites at Brandshake) juices flowing
You’re a… funds management brand with a sophisticated investor audience
Perhaps it's a beautifully designed quarterly deep-dive that becomes desk-worthy rather than delete-worthy. A private podcast feed for wholesale clients. An interactive investment scenario tool that lets prospects explore outcomes rather than just read about them.
You’re a… professional services firm
Perhaps it's a tactical workbook that helps clients implement your framework themselves. A gated benchmarking tool. An executive roundtable series that makes your clients feel like insiders.
You’re an… accounting or business advisory firm
Perhaps it's a year-end financial health checklist that clients actually save and share with their partners. A short-form video series that demystifies tax strategy for time-poor business owners. A quarterly "what this means for your business" email that translates economic news into plain language action points.
You’re a… B2B SaaS or tech brand
Perhaps it's an onboarding playbook so polished it becomes a reference document clients return to for months. A benchmarking report that lets prospects see how their current setup compares to industry best practice. A private community or Slack group where power users share workflows and your team shows up as the expert in the room.
Whatever you ‘do’ as a brand…
When you understand how your audience likes to engage (again, see the list of now 8 handy target customer prompts above), the next step in turning someone from a one-time customer to a repeat, loyal brand advocate, becomes more obvious.
ACOTAR fans want more ways to live in the fantasty universe.
For B2B, corporate and professional services brands, your clients want more ways to feel confident, informed and ahead of the curve. Work out what that next offering, paid or as a value-add, looks like for your brand.
Different genre. Saaaaaame psychology.
Why customer retention deserves as much attention as acquisition
What’s cheaper? Retaining and getting repeat business from existing customers or acquiring new ones? Yah, we thought so!
We want to show our customers that we know them so well, we’re the best at solving their problems and answering their needs, that they keep using our services over our competitors’.
We talk a lot about attention, awareness and virality in marketing. The brands that win long term are the ones that build loyalty and stickiness. External conditions change - customer and marketing budgets tighten, competition intensifies, performance marketing costs climb (as is occuring, like, now). During those times, it’s your ‘brand’, brand strategy and knowledge of your target customer - all of that foundational work to know them really well and the marketing ecosystem that you’ve built for them - that will do the heavy lifting and keep them choosing ‘you’.
The unglamorous work customer insight actually requires
Most brands claim to be customer-centric. Far fewer do the unglam, time-consuming work it actually requires.
Real customer insight means properly interviewing clients, mining your sales team for patterns, understanding objections in granular detail, analysing behavioural data rather than vanity metrics and staying across the cultural shifts influencing how your audience consumes and processes information. Sure, huge market research budgets help, but they are absolutely not required. No-siree.
It also means accepting that your 2026 audience may behave quite differently to your 2022 audience. Markets shift. Contexts change. What felt relevant 18 months ago might be landing flat right now and you might not even know it yet.
Sarah J Maas's team watched fandom culture evolve. They noticed the TikTok edits, the aesthetic moodboards, the obsession with visual character references. The colouring book is (probably) a response to manual and repeated observed behaviour, not a brainstorm in a boardroom.
Strategy built on real customer observation leads to better outcomes than strategy built on assumptions. Sometimes, the gap between those two approaches is usually where brands stagnate.
Fantasy books or financial services. The principle is the same.
The brands that scale sustainably, consistency know their audience so well that everything they produce feels like a natural extension.
They anticipate demand. They create assets that feel inevitable, like a natural next step for an audience that already trusts them. They produce content because it's right for their audience, not because "everyone's doing LinkedIn carousels" or "we should be on short-form video."
When your next campaign, product or content format makes your audience think, of course they did that, you've done your job.
That's what the ACOTAR colouring book represents. Deep customer understanding turned into a commercially smart, emotionally resonant extension of something people already love.
Whether you're building fantasy worlds or corporate brands, the underlying strategy is identical.
Know your customer. Very, very well. Then build accordingly.
Need help getting to know your audience properly and building a content strategy around what you find? That's exactly what we do at Brandshake. Let's chat.
