Demographic Targeting and ‘Zoomer’.
In today’s Toronto Star, there’s an excellent article by Cathal Kelly called Moses Znaimer’s Second Act. Znaimer, the man who made City TV a force in Canadian media, is currently building a new empire focused at his own age group, that he has labelled ‘Zoomers’.
I will admit that if anyone could make the idea work, it’s Znaimer. He has a Steve Jobs-ian charisma and influence, something that Canada could definitely use more of. Znaimer has the mixture of vision and refusal to be led astray from that vision, that lets him accomplish unorthodox things. At the same time, I have to question the logic in basing an entire conglomerate on the idea that baby boomers are all a single market. Demographics are great when you’re judging how many people will be reaching the age to buy cars, or homes, or caskets. Demographic information is substantially less useful when building an entertainment / lifestyle brand, because an age isn’t a set of interests.
The battle-cry highlighted in the article linked above is that older people aren’t dead, they still go out, purchase, live, love, matter. Hopefully, no one is really debating that. But unlike brands that target a certain segment of a demographic (such as stores that cater to ‘indie’ teens, versus those that cater to ‘preppy’ teens), age seems to come first and foremost in the Zoomer brand. Being 45 and older does not make one inherently similar to anyone else 45 and older.
At 17, I was convinced to read Boom Bust & Echo, a great book about the predictive power of demographics. Looking at the current landscape, when so much information is available about what people are interested in, rather than just how many people fit into each box, focusing on demographics only makes sense if you deeply believe in the accuracy of stereotyping.
What I am, what you are, is substantially less important, from a branding and marketing standpoint, than WHO we are. Targeting based on demographics is inherently a matter of what.
People react poorly to being treated as a what, not a who.
