One size does not fit all
I've been talking to marketers lately about social networking, mobile phones and all the latest it-programs that people are supposedly going nuts for, and the result is that I feel rather out of the loop, and really, I couldn't care less. By most of the demographic definitions marketers use to define target markets (I'm Gen Y, urban, single, middle class, etc.), I should be obsessing on MySpace, shooting instant messages rather than emails to friends, and be sharing photo/videos through my cell phone/MySpace page, etc. But I'm not.
I email and wait for people to get back to me. I use my cell phone to make calls and only send the occasional text message. I've visited MySpace and other social sites to see what they are about, but don't see the point.
When I brought this up in a conversation with a big proponent of mobile's development possibilities and asked why what he was offering held no interest to me (and most of my circle of friends and co-workers in the same demographic arena), his answer surprised me. He said--and he put it nicely, perhaps to comfort that little part of me that still cries out for an alternate, artistic, go-live-on-a-mountain lifestyle--'you work in an office, you're a suit.' And that despite my core demographic characteristics I was still considered out of the expected market as it stands today. Of course, I read his comment to mean 'out of touch', but I can live with that. But can marketers rely on simple demographic research that lumps me, and all my friends and co-workers, into a group that includes the in-crowd and call it representative, and use it to plan for the future? Perhaps we need more personas (whoa! Now there's a word a suit would use!) that delineate (uh-oh, another one!) me and mine from the rest.
