A few weeks ago, we published the first in a series of papers looking at some of the meaty issues facing marketers today.   Each paper was first presented at our 25th Anniversary conference in London in June 2011:  ‘Back to the future of branding - A look at what the past 25 years of brand marketing tell us about what the next 25 may have in store’. 

Our aim was to encourage new thinking, make a few predictions and perhaps even challenge some of today’s orthodoxies.  We wanted to show that we remain as committed as ever to helping our clients out-think, out-compete and out-perform their competition.

For those of you who weren’t able to attend the conference, I’m delighted to present the second
of our anniversary papers, entitled ‘Variations On The Role & Measurement of Brand’.

Co-authored by Sony Ericsson’s Nigel Turner and The Value Engineers’ Paul Durrant, the paper examines how marketers can provide consistent brand cues to help people navigate the exploding universe of mobile technology, while measuring the effect of their activities with discrete, purpose-built tools.

We hope you enjoy it.  If you’d like to discuss any of the issues raised in the paper, why not submit a comment below, or get in touch with us directly?

This is the next in a series of posts which discuss the question of the tools every good marketer should have in their tool box. Last time the Kano Model, today Segmentation.

Segmentation is as old as the Caesars – Omnia Gallia in tres partes divisa est

If you’re not thinking segments, you’re not thinking marketing’ said Ted Levitt  and he’s still right.

There are of course many different types of segmentation – attitudinal, behavioural, occasion-based, needs-based, location based, demographic, geographic, psychographic, hair colour based, whether you prefer to pour the milk in first or the tea etc.

To enable you and your organisation to derive commercial benefit  – for the segmentation to prove its ROI – it must drive decision making and therefore be predictive about future customer behaviour, not just explain why red heads prefer the milk in last.

In the end a good segmentation is a tool to help you focus your marketing efforts and make choices.

I’m not going to argue for any specific type of segmentation since your segmentation should be tailored to  your organisation or brand’s unique capabilities and business objectives (otherwise everyone would be targeting the same segments in the same way) but suggest you reflect on a few fundamental principles of what a good segmentation should do:

• Make intuitive sense and be recognizable in the real world
• Be predictive of the choices people make (in the future, not just the present)
• Be robust enough to hold up to scrutiny (otherwise you might as well have sketched them out on the back of an envelope)
• Have enough (but not too many) segments of sufficient size for you to make meaningful choices about where to focus resources
• Be replicable  so you can find the red haired segment who like the milk in first in other data sources and when you want to find out their views about your brand or target activities towards them
• Be used – which means making sure the relevant people in your organization can also see the segments and find the insights inspiring and actionable

Last week some fascinating new research was published by WARC.com regarding the media consumption habits of African Americans, Asians/Pacific Islanders and Hispanics in the United States. The findings have serious implications for media planners as well as marketers in general, since they point to strong differences in behaviour amongst these ethnic groups.

For example Asians and Pacific Islanders have the highest fixed line internet consumption – 80h/month versus the national average of 55h/month. This group is also least interested in TV – they only watch about 3h15min of it a day. Compare that to African Americans, whose daily average of TV consumption is nearly 7h. Hispanics, for their part, are way ahead of the game when it comes to phones – with 45% smartphone penetration and an average of 943 texts per month they really seem to have gotten on board with the mobile revolution.

Any research that points to consistent correlation between multiple variables is useful. Yet as an anthropologist I feel uneasy about an ethnicity-based segmentation in the 21^st century – for reasons that have nothing to do with political correctness.

 ‘Ethnicity’ is a funny term and should not be used unquestionably. Like ‘race’ before it, it’s the kind of word that derives its power from the assumption that it is something physically engrained in us, passed down from our predecessors. But ethnicity is not inherent. Rather, it is part of our (also frustratingly fuzzy) ‘identity’ which is fluid, situational and constructed in our daily lives – in the way we dress, the food we eat, the language we speak and so on.  It is through such practices that we come to identify ourselves as belonging to one group or another. What we do is not just a result of ‘what’ we are (and by ‘what’ I mean the label). Americans of Hispanic origin do not just use smartphones because they are Hispanic. Rather, it’s a two-way process – smartphones become one of the ways in which they reinforce their Hispanic identity.

If we start talking about how media and technology consumption affects identity we get into a whole new ball-game. There is so much you need to take into account – Facebook, online forums, Apple versus LG – the list could go on forever. What’s more – the phenomenal speed with which technology and media trends emerge and become mainstream means that the next big thing is just around the corner. For a young American of Chinese origin his iPhone and Twitter profile might well form a much greater part of his identity than his grandparents’ immigration story.

A good segmentation is typically predictive of consumer behaviour. If the present study helps media planners devise more effective campaigns, it will have fulfilled its role. My note of caution goes out more against the implicit assumption inherent in this research – that ethnicity is a concrete stable variable against which other variables can be plotted.  Instead, both ‘identity’ and ‘ethnicity’ have never been as fluid and fast-changing as they are today, and media and technology consumption are central to our ever-changing concept of ‘self.’

Just as segmentations used to be based on demographic data such as age groups before we realised that needs and attitudes are often more indicative of consumer behaviour, so too ethnicity-based segmentations might fall behind with the times unless we really understand the effect that ‘ethnicity’ has on consumer ‘identity,’ and what effect that, in turn, has on behaviour.

According to some recent research conducted for Asda, 85% of women worry about the shape and size of their bottoms. This led Asda to team up with ‘bottom expert’ Dr David Holmes and create a new segmentation of female posteriors.  His results showed that due to modern day diets and exercise, today’s ladies have evolved in the bottom department and that the traditional “Peach” is no longer the norm. In fact, today’s women have one of four new fruity bottom shapes: “Tomato”, “Potato”, “Pear” and “Nectarine”.

• The Tomato – A new take on the peach, with 45% of the women surveyed declaring that this shape was most applicable to their behind. Bigger, plumper, rounder and squishy to the touch the tomato is fast becoming the norm in modern day society.
• The Potato – The second most common vegetable shape to have materialised across the nation, with 30% of women falling into this category, is the humble potato. This wide and long bottom is a less fortunate shape; lumpy in parts, it needs careful dressing and attention.
• The Pear – The pear shaped figure has now evolved into the pear shaped bottom, narrower at the top and almost twice the size at the fullest part of the behind. 15% of women highlighted that this shape was most applicable to them
• The Nectarine – Close to the cartoonesque derrière perfection of two bowling balls pushed together, the nectarine is full, round and pert in appearance. This is a rare bottom, not often seen strutting down the high street - only 10% claiming to own this picture perfect posterior.

Not surprisingly the reserach has created lots of comment, with The Times T2, creating their complimentary segmentation of Men’s bums…

• The (Rod) Stewart Bum – once sexy but withering with age
• The Gangsta Bum - Often seen in urban areas and popular with youngsters wanted to establish their street creds
• The Scratchy Bum - seems to be endemic amongst teenagers and young men who have just left home, probably caused by poor personal hygiene
• The Cowell Bum - its generous upholstery belies a mean streak and has a tendency to blow its own trumpet!

All of which remained me of a segmentation of segmentations we did a while ago which also played to a fruity theme…

• The Golden Delicious - tried and trusted and fitting to a formula, good if you think you have the same objectives and targets as your competitiors 
• The Sharon Fruit -  expensive and classy but tends to sit on the shelf as no one knows what to do with it
• The Dragon Fruit – funky and fabulous, the latest hot ticket but neither practical nor full of flavour
• The Peach - fundamentally changes the way your business plans, provides the answers you want tailored specifically to your business

Not too surprisingly, we would say that the latter fits with what we deliver in our segmentation projects. If on the oft chance you are interested in finding out more about our peachy approach to segmentation then please do contact Paul Durrant or Owen Williams. If you have any observations on bottoms, alternatively, I’d be pleased to hear them!