If you have been in marketing for any amount of time, you know how omniprescent demographics are. The first question most marketing teams will focus on is "what’s our target demographic?" Demographics are what media is bought by and what media properties define themselves by. Ask any online community about their core audience, and they will typically respond with a demographic like "teen girls 12-18" or "young men 18-25." TV shows and movies do the same. Brands take this information, match it with their research or intuitive belief in who their audience is, and decide what promotions to run and what ads to buy. The problem with this system is that it asks the wrong question. The question we should be asking is "what does our audience care about?" There are a number of reasons why we need to think outside the demographic:
- Creates a common interest. The classic problem with demographics is that you usually end up with more than one that is the target. Usually, this means a brand will use language like their primary and secondary demographic. But how do you link them together? If they were already bonded by a common interest, it makes it much easier to determine how to reach them.
- Focuses on real relevance. The other issue with demographics is that they assume because someone is of a certain gender or age, that they will care about a message. I know demographics get much more sophisticated than that, but they are still based on an assumption that may be flawed. Focusing on what your audience cares about instead allows you to think more strategically about what messages would be relevant for them.
- Avoids wastage based on assumptions. Perhaps the greatest benefit of this approach is that it helps you to avoid wasting much of your marketing dollars on trying to reach people who are in your demographic but may not necessarily care about your products or be in the market for them.
As a real example of this, imagine you are promoting a campaign where a brand is trying to raise money for breast cancer, the old demographic mold of thinking would be to target women 29-44. Contrast that approach to one that focuses instead on everyone who has a personal belief in the issue and is vocal about it. This could include women 29-44, but is just as likely to include a 15 year old boy who’s mother is dealing with the disease. The implication is obvious. In terms of buying media, the shift required is creating more contextual marketing messages that touch on points and topics that a particular audience is likely to care about. The whole point is that targeting by customer passion rather than demographics can make your marketing messages more relevant. And at the end of the day that’s what we all want.
Demographics are a numbers game and is part of a top down way of thinking. It’s just counting. Looking at your existing customers and taking an average. And to some extent, the wishes of your demographics. This is something common in publishing. Were your target audience isn’t exactly your real audience — and so your brand becomes aspirational for those outside of your target. Of course, this is fine if you want to create a world of exclusivity, not okay if you want to engage your multifaceted customer base.
The importance of new tools is really important here.
In the last several years, of course, anthropological thinking has chipped away at that approach in academia — and now it’s making its way into marketing and product design. As someone with a minor interest in cultural anthropology (my undergraduate major) this doesn’t surprise me.
Assuming something isn’t safe. We have to focus on things that are most relevant to avoid unnecessary things to happen.
So true. We don’t have to waste time and money on customers we assumed to be interested in our product. Instead, we should focus on those people who proved to be real customers.
Rohit –
Besides the social media fun I do for my agency I also am responsible for building all the attitudinal targets. We have a saying, attitudes (or passions as your describe them here) are a stronger bond than than birthdays.
Once we identify attitudes we can than find relevant touch points in both creative and media.
The problem is in traditional media buying. While we would love to buy TV off an attitudinal target…we are forced into buying 25-34 to much waste (though program choice is choose off relevance).
In interactive and social media world…attitudinal targeting is starting to have some interesting effects.
Media buying, like consumer insights, depends on our ability to define a critical point of emotional connection that links a particular group and then lever it. If all you have is an age range, rather than a behavior or a deeply seated belief or attitude, you don’t really have a point of leverage.
It’s like believing that Brad Pitt and I have a lot in common, just because we are both males in the 35 to 44 year old age break. Excellent post. Always a pleasure to read.
Good post thanks!