Death of demographics | Fresh Baked Entertainment

A couple of years back, media mavens recognized that the time-honoured measure of “eyeballs on the tube” was a dying quail. The smart money migrated to measuring actual advertising efficiency; in a sea-change, CBS has put another nail in Mad Men-era measurement practice by disposing of that old warhorse, the demographic.

Cohorts and cadres mean almost nothing in the age of tribal allegiances and the utter fragmentation of any audience across media verticals. So why make the case it’s time for demographics swansong now?
Well, among the conclusions the CBS-Nielsen white paper offered up are that:

"Reliance on the 18 to 49 demographic is hazardous to all media and marketers, partly because it doesn't strongly correlate with purchases and partly because it's declining fast."
Duh. Twice over. But this sacred cow deserves to be buried once and for all.

"A growing amount of data that matches audience measurement with purchase information shows that using demographics to target commercials is 'essentially invalid...resulting in a misallocation of television advertising investments.'"

Wee-oh.

OK: enough with the sarcasm. The crackle of energy this ought to send through marketing circles is obvious: you are what you eat. If you choose easy numbers instead of eloquent numbers, you’ll fail your brand and you’ll fail yourself.

So what are the hard numbers? The behavioural ones that social influence marketers have been evolving to begin to mesh consumer insight and sentiment to sales channel. Razorfish is one shop doing great work here; Organic is another. Where is all this going?

I believe it’s something like “cultural insight”: those values which actually create collaborative thinking (and interactivity!) around a brand attribute. Loyalty is far too coarse a category; think: how does my audience actually, in specific, measurable ways, interact with my content?