Demographics Suck and Are From Some Other Era
Most companies rely heavily on the use of demographics. We take our target audiences and/or our current customers, and we break them into groups based on similar genders, ages, ethnicities, and other markers. We assume that people who share some of these qualities can be addressed, marketed to, or advertised to similarly.
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We have assumptions about people’s lives.
If I say a 50-year-old woman, you’ll picture someone. She might have some gray hair. She might be a little overweight. A little wrinkly. She’s probably a mom. Maybe even a grandmother.
If I say a 21-year-old Black man, you picture someone else. We can narrow down this audience with other details often found in personas or segments. He has a certain type of car. He makes a certain amount of money. He has or doesn’t have children.
If I tell you the 50-year-old woman makes $40,000 a year, now we think of her differently. We make assumptions about where she shops, what she buys, and which brands she prefers.
Asking you to imagine these people reminds us of how we work from assumptions and stereotypes unless and until we have better evidence and data about people and their behaviors. We assume what a woman of a certain age will purchase, do, or could be convinced to purchase or do. We imagine what a young man spends his money on and why.
We make a lot of assumptions about people once we start talking about demographics.
This is why I call demographics “lazy buckets.” I’m no expert on the history of advertising, but I imagine that once upon a time, businesses of all types (especially in America and Western Europe) were mostly selling to white men. These were the people who made and controlled the money. So we had to convince them our product or service was something they might need.
People probably started noticing some differences among white men. Some of them have children, and their children might need things. OK, now we can advertise to them based on being a parent.
Then we noticed that some of them have more money than others. We may want to think about their income or socioeconomic status. We’ll promote the bargain product or something with fewer features to the white guys with less money. We’ll market or advertise something more luxurious, elite, or complete to the white guy with more money.
It was easy to put people in buckets when we mostly cared about white guys. There used to be more conformity; the more “different” you were, the more you were seen as unwell, inconsequential, or an outsider. I’ve seen enough 1950s short films via Mystery Science Theater 3000 to know that just before my own lifetime, it was extremely important to all dress the same way, follow a strict behavioral code, speak and write certain ways, and not stand out.
We eventually started marketing to women, mostly based on their current or future housewife role.
We wanted to sell them things so they would feel prettier, smell nicer, be a better mother, or be able to win or keep that man. You should cook and clean all day, but have soft hands, perfect hair, and something delicious for your hard-working husband. Be awake and energetic when he gets home so that you can listen to him talk about his day.
It was one-dimensional. But if we consider today’s demographics, even though we might have added dimensions like which brands people like and what kind of car they drive, we are still putting people into buckets that boil them down into stereotypes.
Advertising and marketing
We oversimplify humans. We assume things like people who make a similar amount of money, or have a certain number of children, or drive a certain type of car probably want, need, or do the same things. 50-year-old women living in a certain area and making $X/year mostly want, need, and do the same things.
It was easy to do this when we mostly cared about white guys who liked to conform. It’s a new world, but Marketers still do this. We can tell by the ads we see, even when they are supposedly targeted. I get lots of ads that are:
- Pink and “feminine.”
- About “my children” (though I purposefully didn’t have children).
- Giving clear messages that I don’t look good, don’t smell good, and am not doing the right thing about my menstruation or my menopause.
- Everything in my life would be fixed by just a few minutes each day of chair yoga, face yoga, or wall Pilates.
- For makeup (I hate makeup and rarely wear it).
- For fashion (have you ever seen me? I’m the least fashionable person out there. I mostly wear men’s concert t-shirts and men’s hiking pants.).
- For home decor (despite me doing no home decoration, having no sense of style, and leaving this all to my husband).
We can tell that all of the above ads target me by gender and a little by age. Is that all I am? In my “Customers Know You Suck” book, Craig Sullivan said in chapter 5:
Facebook’s and Google’s business strategy is based on you doing something suboptimal with your marketing efforts. If companies increased their level of efficiency with online ads, Facebook’s and Google’s profit margins would drop.
I’m definitely not the person advertisers think they are selling to.
- I’m a woman who purposefully had no children.
- I’m a dog mom.
- I nearly always shop in men’s departments, even for shoes.
- Outside of very special occasions, I don’t wear makeup.
- I have two 500cc motorcycles.
- I have a camper.
- I have a shitty non-Toyota I can’t wait to replace, probably with a Toyota. :)
- Most of the YouTubers I watch go on cruises, discuss music theory, or are intelligent comedians poking fun at movies and TV.
- I’m happy with my hair care, skin care, deodorant, etc. You won’t convince me that I need to smell like something else.
In the past few years, I can think of one ad I saw that I actually thought was relevant. Hurtigruten figured out that I like cruises, and suggested an interesting voyage I’d never heard of. Now, I hope to save up to cruise with them (or their competitor) all along the Norwegian coast.
Every other ad? Every day? On Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc? Garbage. Doesn’t feel like it’s for me. Companies wasting money, and in some cases, insulting me.
Psychographics relate to people’s opinions, interests, and lifestyles.
At least that brings some humanity in and doesn’t bucket people by demographics like salary, skin color, or gender. But we can still get psychographics wrong, depending on how we collect the data.
What is my “lifestyle”? Facebook thinks it knows my “interests,” but the last time I looked at its list many years ago, it was nonsensical. It had products, services, people, and countries I had no interest in. This is reflected in the irrelevant Instagram ads I get.
What are my “opinions”? Companies don’t really know. They guess what they are by showing me stuff, seeing what I do or don’t do, and making assumptions based on content + action/inaction. However, themes inside of content are complex, and reasons for action or inaction are also complex.
We can get closer to understanding people by using qualitative research (especially observational) to understand their behavior, tasks, and knowledge.
A family member once described me as, “Debbie is the type of person who will research a purchase for months, the item costs $7, and after months, she will decide to not buy it.”
That’s my behavior: careful shopping and decision-making. Put me in a bucket with other careful shoppers. Fine-tune your website, UX, etc. for someone who wants more information before deciding.
Hurtigruten’s website didn’t explain what options might be for people who don’t eat fish, nor did it explain how the ship is in a port for 15 minutes, but I can go on a 4-hour excursion from that port. I had to email them to learn these; the website wasn’t fine-tuned for careful shoppers who want more details up front.
Other companies as examples.
I’m not saying that the following companies don’t use demographics or psychographics. I’m saying that I can see how they are (also) working from target audience behaviors, tasks, and knowledge.
- Virgin Voyages is an adults-only cruise line. This doesn’t mean that you have no children; this isn’t demographically about you. This is about the task of going on a kid-free cruise vacation. Or the behavior you plan to exhibit on a ship known for raunchy-named ice cream parlors and skimpy costumes worn by entertainers. Their destinations match likely behaviors (more party ports), and they designed the ship without children in mind.
- IKEA shouldn’t care what your demographics are. You could be rich or not, in the city or the country, any ethnicity, any language, any favorite car brand, etc. Your task is to get decent furniture for a small space. You have enough knowledge to build the furniture yourself.
- Whole Foods is an expensive supermarket that wants you to believe that they have curated the best and highest quality healthy foods. If your task is to buy healthier products (due to disease, health issues, or lifestyle choices), Whole Foods might be a match. Compare this to going to a regular market and shopping from a small selection of organic and/or non-GMO products, plus needing the knowledge of what to look for on labels. Whole Foods tries to remove the knowledge required to shop there since everything is curated. You don’t have to do as much label reading since you already know that the food there (supposedly) meets very high standards. (I prefer to shop at Sprouts over Whole Foods. #NotSponsored)
Thinking of customers — and sorting them — by behavior, tasks, and knowledge would require deeper research.
We’d have to do more than survey them or dump them in focus groups. We’d have to go beyond assumptions about people because of age, skin color, immigration, or being part of another group.
We’d need to observe them and speak to them to better understand their behaviors, tasks, and knowledge, and how these create opportunities and problems for our company to solve.
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- cxcc.to/ckys — “Customers Know You Suck,” my recent book on improving customer adoption, satisfaction, and retention
