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Demographics and Marketing in a Multi-cultural Society
10/27/2010 3:40:23 PM
I received a call from a pollster the other night. They asked all kinds of questions about my background and my voting tendencies. At the end of the conversation, the lady on the other end of the phone thanked me for my responses, but said they had enough of my particular demographic for their study. Demographics are used in marketing all the time. Their benefit is never more evident than in an election cycle. Different people groupings are polled for likely tendencies. You can slice it up by gender, religion, ethnic background, race, age, socio-economic status, union/non-union… you name it, there is a demographic study for nearly every people grouping under the sun.

Are you using demographics in your business? The first place you should consider using a demographic study is with your own customers compared with your sales staff. I had a former boss who would often say, "You attract what you are.” There is a lot of truth to this. It has been a few decades since I last sat in a sociology class, but I do remember that people tend to hang out with others who are like them. If your customers are 50+ Caucasian men, my suspicion is you have a salesperson who is a 50+ Caucasian man (or a 20 something female salesperson who keeps the attention of the 50+ men… another topic for another time.)

However, there are other areas where you should be using demographics in your marketing efforts. By the time most people reach the age of 20-25, their values have been set for life. Some experts would argue that this happens much earlier. All I know is that what is important for the rest of our lives is set by age 25. We call the age of 20-25 the coming of age period of life. Unless something major happens to us, we have made up our mind on our base values. We know what we like and what we don’t like. When you are marketing to a group of people from the same age demographic, we can typically determine how to advertise to them by determining what was important in their coming of age period of life. Who they idolize as a hero and who they disdain as a villain is determined in this time period. So if you were going to advertise to a person who is an American who is 70-75 years old and you wanted them to have good feelings, you could show them video clips of Marlon Brando, John F. Kennedy and Elvis Presley. What do the three of them have in common? They were all heroes if you were coming of age in 1960. If you wanted to reach a group from the age of 45-50, show them a clip of Steve Martin, Ronald Reagan and Michael Jackson. They were all heroes if you were coming of age in 1985. You can be most effective in catching the attention of an age demographic if you advertise to their coming of age period.

You may be thinking that we live in a much more open and accepting society that has laid the old groupings aside. In our complex, multi-cultural world, you may think that demographics are archaic. They are not. If anything, they are more relevant today than ever before. I was speaking with a friend the other day. His company is owned by a Swiss corporation that has holdings worldwide. He often is dealing with colleagues who are European or Indian. He told me a story of a co-worker from India who wanted to fit into the American scene. He hit a few bars in a very seedy side of town wearing a silk disco shirt and too much Aqua Velva. My friend tried to explain that he was fishing in the wrong pond if he was looking for a good time. "I do not understand,” was his reply. Of course not, because what is deemed socially acceptable to my friend (45 year old American male) and his coworker (29 year old Indian male) are a product of both of their coming of age periods – in different age periods and in different continents. With companies competing globally, it is imperative that you understand what is important or not important to your audience. If you can understand this, you will know how to effectively target your marketing efforts.
 

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