Even though you are likely a marketing type -- and using that brain to read this post -- take a second and put on your consumer hat. How do you feel about being defined as any particular market: Boomer, single mom, soccer Dad? Do you feel misunderstood by the marketing campaigns that cross your path?


In the years I've spent analyzing the good and bad of marketing, one thing holds true: pretty much every market segment is misunderstood and there has, without a doubt, been a study done on it. If you lined up the usual market segment suspects of men/women, Boomer/Gen Y, or mom/single dad, for example, wouldn't all of them do/say/feel the following:
- resent generalization (There is no such thing as reaching "all women everywhere," nor are the Gen Y-ers in your market all alike.)
- feel like they are underrepresented (With marketing to Gen Y all the rage, are marketers really maintaining a balance with Boomers?)
- find ad campaigns irrelevant (Most campaigns are irrelevant to a LOT of people, like it or not.)
Now, this is my cynical stance. I admit.
In an age where the political media finds a scandal-less day boring and the business media seem to feed on polarization or obvious one-hit wonder promotions or ads (which a lot of Sunday's Super Bowl efforts will certainly be considered), it is also only the amazingly "misunderstood" consumers in any shape or size that seem to make the biggest news.
Yet, aren't there also many, many examples of perhaps smaller, less sexy brands with ad campaigns and consumer research that hit the nail on the head? Yes.
Consider the Sunsilk haircare brand (lots of women hated their 2007 blondes vs. brunettes campaign, but the very very specific market they were targeting clearly "gets" the humor). And, what of some of the recent microbrewery efforts (one of my favorites, because of its Team Wonderbike cause, is New Belgium Brewery)? That brewery would have completely misunderstood their customers if they'd only focused on the profile for the obvious, broader beer-drinking segments of Gen X-ers or men. Instead, they dug deeper than the usual consumer profile and get to the heart of the matter - a very specific list of common interests.
What triggered my post today was an Advertising Age article about new research on Boomers (and how misunderstood they are). The game I played in my head was to replace the word "Boomer" in every finding with "women" or "single dads" and so on. Whichever one I picked seemed to work.
Now - this is not to say that such research doesn't have value, by any means. I just wanted to point out that, media coverage aside, marketers may need less help with the broad general statements we've heard many times, and more help dialing in to their very unique customer bases.
Research that shows that the Gen Y or African American consumer is misunderstood, for example, may make news or be worth discussing, but it actually "misunderstands" the finer point. Each of us is responsible for knowing a lot more about our customers.