I came across this (need's Facebook login) album with 49 such photos about breaking stereotypes. I was one of the people that help make this album go viral by sharing it. I really liked the concept. Turns out its a campaign by a match-making site (you can see the site address on each photo).

From the site:

The world is a funny place. We live to be distinctive and strive to fit in at the same time, adding fuel to the fire of collective stereotypes while moving forward. But we at Truly Madly aren’t okay with the status quo.We like to see every individual through a different lens instead of bucketing them in categories. We like meeting fun people in this funny world and figuring out what makes them stand out.
We like going against the rules.We like breaking stereotypes.

I'm a big proponent of building products that make a connect at a personal level. This is against traditional marketing. This is against the traditional way of acquiring a sizable market share.

Traditional marketing is built on the premise that products are built for certain target audiences (a.k.a stereotypes) like engineering students, females aged 25-35, etc. The assumption is that a good majority of them behave the same way and hence are likely to buy the product that compliments that behaviour.

I call this traditional marketing for a reason. The world is moving away from this approach. The trend is shifting towards individual profiling as opposed to demographic profiling. The trend is shifting away from stereotypes.

Everyone is connected to the Internet today, so it is getting easier by the day to aggregate all actions of an individual and build products that fit into that picture.

Products now have the chance to make a personal connect. Soon, they will be forced to.