Photo: Canva
Do Marketers Have a Disconnect With the Average Joe and Jane?
A survey commissioned by iHeartMedia and Malcolm Gladwell’s Pushkin Industries highlights how a growing disparity between consumer and marketer values can lead to campaigns that focus on trends consumers don’t care about.
The findings, based on surveys in August of 2,206 adults and 200 marketer and agency professionals, found:
- Only 60% of consumers have heard of NFTs (non-fungible tokens) versus all surveyed marketers knowing about them.
- Half of the surveyed consumers have never heard of an Aperol Spritz (the currently trendy Italian wine-based cocktail) versus only 3% of marketers.
- A third of consumers have never heard of “charcuterie,” while all marketers are familiar with it.
- Over half (62%) of consumers have never heard of the HBO hit TV show “Succession” versus less than 5% of marketers.
- Almost one-third of consumers have never heard of pickleball, while all marketers have heard of it.
The findings further found that despite prioritizing similar values — including family, health, and safety — consumers value religion, the military, and freedom of speech much more than marketers do.
“This report illustrates a cultural chasm between what consumers hold dear and the compass by which marketers navigate. It’s high time that marketers acknowledge that chasing the new and shiny isn’t always the path to hearts and minds,” said Gladwell, the author and futurist, in a statement. “There’s nothing more critical to understanding what people want than looking beyond your personal perspective.”
Exploring attitudinal differences, 80% of marketers said their career is a major part of their identity, compared to only 42% of consumers. The top two “cool” activities for consumers were traveling around the U.S. and having barbecues, while traveling to Europe and going to the gym were the top for marketers. In comparison, the top two “cringe” activities for consumers were NFTs and being vegan or vegetarian, while marketers said that making a recipe using cottage cheese and watching NCIS were more cringeworthy — both of which consumers put in the “cool” category.
“Based on these results, we need to challenge ourselves as we build marketing and media plans to be sure we use real consumer data and not just trust our instincts and personal experiences,” said Bob Pittman, chairman and CEO of iHeartMedia. “These personal biases are too detached from the consumers most marketers are trying to engage, and which are often behind major marketing misfires.”
Discussion Questions
Do you agree that marketers often chase the “shiny and new” in campaigns at the expense of reflecting the values and priorities of real consumers? How can marketers reduce these apparent tendencies?
Poll
Loading …BrainTrust
Lucille DeHart
Principal, MKT Marketing Services/Columbus Consulting
Joel Rubinson
President, Rubinson Partners, Inc.
Good marketers should have an intimate understanding of their consumers. Even if they are not part of the demographic they’re targeting, they should be researching and listening to their audience to ensure messages are relevant. Unfortunately, this doesn’t always happen, and marketers sometimes integrate their own biases and assumptions into campaigns. This is especially prevalent where there is a geographical disconnect with marketers in New York or Los Angeles designing campaigns aimed at people living in rural and suburban areas of middle America. A prime example was Bud Light where the priorities of those undertaking the marketing was completely misaligned with the values of those drinking the product. The rights and wrongs of the situation don’t matter; what does is the negative reaction of consumers.
As a life-long retail marketer, I have always found that strong talent is always ahead of the consumer, but successful talent knows what and when to leverage to appeal to their target markets. Using key trends to attract influencers and early adapters is critical to staying relevant. By contrast, volume comes from being more commercial and mainstream. There is a balance in driving innovation and change but not alienating your core consumer. Budweiser is a perfect example of how sensitive the balance is and how important brand messaging can be to a company’s sales and profitability.
I am not sure it is one’s personal perspective rather than the environment. Marketers live in a marketing environment. They talk marketing, they think marketing. Their information source is always about the new and shiny. If a marketer is a regular reader of RetailWire, they would think if you are not in the NFT game, you are missing the greatest marketing tool of all time.
To paraphrase Yogi Berra. “You can observe a lot by just watching.” By watching the consumer, that is.
This! 100%!
I disagree with the premise of the argument — that marketers are out of touch with mass audiences — because these professionals are paid to be aware of trends before they become mainstream. Some of these new ideas may turn out to have mass appeal — think sushi at Kroger, to cite a recent discussion — and others may never take off.
I’m also interested in the survey methodology: Who were the “typical consumers”? Do they live in cities or elsewhere? What’s their education level, and other behaviors? This broad-brush approach flies in the face of effective target marketing to specific consumers.
You don’t have to be a member of the GenZ generation to market to GenZs, but you better know and understand them. The same could be said for any generation or segment of the population – or any targeted group a retailer is marketing to. Shame on the marketer who doesn’t know their target audience. There are plenty of tools to help understand buying patterns.
… in fact, maybe it is better not to be a GenZ in order to market to GenZ.
2,206 people in an online survey is a snapshot, not canon for what is happening. I have never heard of Aperol Spritz, so I did a Instagram search and found loads of posts from people who looked to be half my age, so there’s that. I would expect anyone in marketing to be up on the latest trends, people living normal lives? Not so much.
But when marketers say recipes with cottage cheese and watching NCIS, both things beloved by millions, are cringeworthy then there is a disconnect. Early in my career as a retail buyer I learned the hard way that I couldn’t buy just what I liked. Sounds like those 200 marketers surveyed need to learn to walk in Joe and Jane Average’s shoes. There are way more of us out here there are of them.
To that point, a survey of just 200 marketers is also statistically worthless. Of course they’re supposed to have heard of a broader variety of things – that’s their job to be open to “what’s next”. The survey conclusions seem to be tailored to pitch iHeart Media services (“because Madison Avenue is out of touch with Real America(TM)”)
Everyone has a bias, no two ways about it. The Bud Light fiasco is a prime example of marketers not understanding their customers and underestimating the downside. Conversely, clever marketing like Kmart’s infamous “ship your pants” won’t save a brand either. I don’t blame marketers for being “in the know” or having different experiences, but I do blame the clueless ones like Alissa Heinerscheid, the vice president of marketing for Bud Light who carelessly let go of the reins of the brand to become a cultural touchpoint.
Every marketing campaign strategy should be purpose-driven and centered around driving value with the targeted consumers. With all the social listening capabilities and robust data and analytics CRM solutions, marketers have all the tools and systems to gain a greater understanding of the drivers and motivations of their consumers.
In the age of personalization, regionalization, and generational marketing (Boomers, GenX, Millenials, GenZ, Gen Alpha), every customer journey is very different across the demographics. Gone are the days of mass media and the industrial advertising complex, where one advertising campaign meets the needs of our society. Marketers must do their due diligence and take the time to know their customer segments intimately before developing targeted campaigns.
There are a lot of factors at play here. Full disclosure: I was 2/5 on this list. I think what’s not mentioned here is a shift in what media channels people are consuming. Older Americans, in particular, are less likely to engage in social media; they may not be willing to pay for premium channels or expanded media packages. This is especially true as you move down the economic demographic. Those folks are going to miss a lot of messaging. On the other hand, even among affluent consumers, there are enough ad avoidance behaviors and people choosing other forms of entertainment that have impacted ad rates on some network events.
As the country becomes more and more polarized, people are limiting the media channels they consume, their belief systems become more hardened, and they become harder for marketing people to learn about them and to reach them.
Marketing has turned into a digital heavy affair. I see this in College and High School students I work with–no on thinks to go out and talk to anybody. This leads to a strong disparity with what marketing teams think their customers are like and what the customer actually wants and values. You need to look no further than the Bud Light Fiasco-the head of marketing decided it was time to broaden the appeal beyond who the customer was.
Yes! There is no substitute for actually spending physical time with the target customers, doing what they do, watching what they watch, reading what they read, etc. You won’t only be a better marketer, you’ll broaden your personal horizons and be a far more interesting person!
Absolutely, the role of a marketer does include being aware of the bright & shiny, but it doesn’t mean they abandon one of the golden rules of marketing, which is to know thy target audience. Recently, there have been many examples of this very situation, where disconnects are occurring, where there are wide chasms between the values of average American consumers and marketer’s campaigns. Getting to brass tacks, marketing is about selling as much stuff as you can, which means the 4P’s are firing on all cylinders. If marketers are blinded by their own interests and can’t understand their audience, my intuition tells me they won’t be long for the job.
This feels like an old-school argument altogether. One of my top Retail Trajectories is that shaping is the new responding. In other words, retailers, brands, and marketers of all stripes are now armed with data and a constantly-expanding toolbox of solutions that allow them to shape consumer behavior, not just react to it. It’s a marketer’s job to uncover the next and stay ahead of the curve, not to sit on the sidelines. That isn’t yielding to personal preference, it’s acting on awareness. The tone of the research is reminiscent of the polarizing “regular people” vs. “elite” conversations and other binary labels that ignore nuance and the spectrum of consumer preferences.
Yes, marketers sometimes prioritize trendy things over understanding what consumers truly care about. This can lead to a disconnect between marketing campaigns and consumers’ values and priorities. Many consumers are unaware of trendy things like NFTs, Aperol Spritz, and shows like “Succession,” while marketers are more in tune with these trends.
To combat these tendencies, marketers should extensively research their target audience, remain open to feedback for campaign adjustments, promote diversity within their teams, prioritize long-term trends over fleeting ones, and align campaigns with ethical values.
The question in my mind is not whether marketers have different preferences or values than their consumers; rather it is whether marketers’ preferences and values influence their marketing. If marketers are leveraging market research, and other forms of insight to inform their product and marketing decisions, then their personal preferences should not be a factor. At the same time, I think this article has highlighted a real risk that marketers might be biased in favor of other people who look like them. That is always a risk in marketing. Using good research and good data should permit marketers to determine when they have strayed off the focus on consumer needs, and help them rectify it quickly.
Many, many markets are misaligned from the market because of their over reliance on “trends’, traditional demographics, and generic and aggregated data. And, a fair number of them suffer with what I call “Marketers’ FLU (Folks Like Us)” or the mistaken belief that they, their friends, families, neighbors, and co-workers represent a projectable sample of the population. Sorry folks, it just isn’t true. As for the obsession with “bright and shiny topics”, how many marketers became instant experts/advocates of VR, the Metaverse, cryptocurrency, blockchains … well … I (and you) could go on and on. As to what marketers could do to reduce this tendencies, I’d say get out more, listen better, and opine less.
Marketers (and media) are in their own bubble not only in terms of trends but in terms of social values. Consider the Bud Light fiasco juxtaposed with the hotest property in music who no one heard of 2 months ago, Oliver Anthony. OA is the wakeup call for marketers and media who could never have predicted how he would resonate with people worldwide and across the political spectrum.
The point of marketing is to try and sell something; so does “shiny and new” describe what they are selling or how (they’re marketing it)?? Logic would suggest only the latter is what we should be talking about, but that isn’t what’s implied by the questions (about specific products). If someone selling something knows more about it than the (potential) customer, isn’t that a good thing??
At any rate, I didn’t find the survey very convincing (ironically, I think they did a poor job of… well, marketing it!) While I don’t have trouble accepting the idea that some things aren’t marketed well, that’s on who was hired…let’s not make it an industry-wide “often” claim.
Marketing leaders make costly mistakes when they don’t understand their own customers deeply, instead relying heavily on reports, research, or remaining in an isolated office of same-minded workers. This is how instinct becomes the unleashed enemy.
Good marketing leadership starts by getting close to customers, watching, listening, knowing where and how they buy, what they experience. Sometimes this means being in store, taking customer service phone calls. Understanding who the 20% of your customers are who are responsible for 80% of your revenues and profits is a good place to start, because they already love you. And then figure out the next layer or two of customers who have considered buying, or buying more, but have reservations, shop elsewhere. Get to the core of what motivates them. Communicate with them, not at them, and build an experience they love.
Focus on these things to drive your marketing so instinct doesn’t dominate.
Nothing replaces the need to spend real time with your target customers, ideally where they are exposed to and purchase the type of products you are selling. Of course there are great tools, reports, analytics, and studies. However, if you don’t spend time where your customers spend time, you will be out of touch and you risk misfires like those already mentioned.
One quick personal example to illustrate the challenge. Years ago I presented to a senior executive team, covering the topic of how we could help retailers be more successful. There were plenty of comments, questions, and suggestions from the audience. However, when I asked who had been in stores of our top 5 retail customers in the last year, no one was able to raise their hands except me!
In the realm of marketing, understanding the target audience is paramount. While it’s essential to stay updated with emerging trends, marketers must remember that there’s a distinction between what’s trending in the marketing world and what genuinely resonates with the broader audience. Malcolm Gladwell highlighted the importance of not solely chasing the “new and shiny.” A marketers primary responsibility is to connect authentically with the audience. This requires a careful balance of leveraging current trends while staying grounded in the real values and interests of the everyday consumer. It’s a reminder to always prioritize genuine consumer insights over fleeting industry buzz.
Just about every brand marketing team has an “aspirational” consumer target. This is, in part, intended to stimulate desire, ambition and purchase. At the same time, it can serve to keep brand marketers alienated from “real” consumers who, as this research suggests are somewhat disconnected from marketers ideals. To stay grounded, it is important for brand marketers to foster live engagements with consumers eithet via focus groups, instore intercepts or even candid interviews when possible.
That being said, this research is self-fulling. Marketers are not average people or average consumers. Most live well educated, ivy league, upper middle class lifestyles. Contrast this with the average consumer who is likely living towards the opposite end of that spectrum. In this light, it can’t be surprising that Aperol Spritz and European vacations are more common with one group vs the other.
Marketers are heavily plugged into trends and often look ahead to what’s next. As a result, their campaigns tend to reflect the conversations and murmurings they’re witnessing online and in person and what trends they foresee will have value to the customer. That said, it’s critical for the marketing team to have a clear understanding of their customer personas to gauge which trends will resonate with their audience.
This is also a great example of the potential of AI applications. Marketers should be adopting AI-powered tools to ensure that they’re providing personalized experiences to customers, from product discovery, to add to cart recommendations to post-sale targeting. These are all opportunities to leverage trends and consumer behavior to create individually optimized experiences.