As a recent transplant to New York City and an avid people-watcher, I’ve been doing a bit of thinking about barriers; specifically, barriers to communication.
My subway ride in the morning takes me from the hipster neighborhood of Williamsburg to the west side of Manhattan in the Garment District, on two subway lines and through 8 stops. I typically make this journey with music in my ears and a coffee in my hand, and on mornings in which I get a seat, a book as well.
My time in the morning is my “quiet time”; time for me to prepare for the day, wake myself up and begin to be aware of my surroundings. As you may have guessed, I’m not a morning person.
Enter, the barriers. The barriers are the headphones, the books, the gazes that dance around the subway or street in a dedicated effort to miss everyone sharing the subway car. In a city brimming with people virtually living on top of each other, it’s amazing how many of us exist in our own little world and pointedly avoid joining another.
As marketers, we are guilty of creating artificial barriers. We create straw houses and segment anything we can get our hands on.
Thinking like a record label….
Your new hit band makes punk music whose main audience is made up of males from 18-25. Not satisfied? You know that most of them live in California and also surf. Still not satisfied? OK, fine, you know that at your shows, most of your fans have brown hair and also wear Threadless t-shirts.
Next album the band makes? You make sure it has that male young adult California brunette Threadless-wearing surfer feel to it. Plus you test it with the radio stations who cater to this demographic, just to make sure it will sell.
Marketers do this in the name of relevancy, or rather, the guise of relevance.
What’s to say an Alaskan female isn’t just as reasonable of a target market? She stands in line for your new CD and even flies to Seattle whenever your band plays there. If I were a record label, I’d be concentrating my efforts on finding people like her to talk to, instead of sticking my new hit band in one demographic who is bound to grow out of their sound in a few years. Alaska may have the passion to be a staying power instead of a transient fan.
What gives marketers the right to slice and dice into oblivion? Who says people should be placed in straw houses according to the characteristics or habits marketers view as important? Why not accept the fact that these straw houses will eventually be blown down, and that our “highly targeted” messaging may still fall short?
Old way of thinking, meet new way of thinking.
Remove the barriers, treat individuals as individuals, and give your market a voice. Don’t be a creep about it, but make hypothetical eye contact with that person on the subway and say “Hi”.
Or, do the social media equivalent and start following them on Twitter, or connect with them on Facebook, or comment on their profile on MySpace, or… the list goes on.
To labels and bands alike – know your market, but don’t let yourself be defined by that market.
Think outside and use the tools at your disposal to break down barriers to communication, blow up the straw houses and treat each fan like the individual they are.