segmentation

There is a lot more talk about Millennials in the media. This is the age cohort born somewhere between the early 1980s and early 2000s (i.e. they are somewhere around the age of 17- 35).

It's early January and that means one thing - forecasts for the coming year.

I have this image of the poor sods that have to come up with these insights huddled in a room in late December trying to come up with something interesting to say. Time is running out and they default to rehashing the forecasts from the previous year or the one before that. In this case, the ones from a decade before.

As usual the Economist doesn't just regurgitate the usual boilerplate wisdom of ageing but comes up with something new.

The key argument is explained in this video.

The author of a New York Times article titled Facebook’s Existential Crisis reports:

Two Customer Types

Taglines for products and brands are everywhere, but often they don’t get the attention they deserve. A variety of research shows that one phrase slogans can have a profound effect on how customers see the product. One key factor in crafting that phrase is matching its content to the customer’s mindset, and in particular to two important consumer motivations: prevention and promotion.

A few weeks back I was a speaker at an ageing business conference in Singapore.

More so than usual I gained a great deal from meeting the other speakers and spending time in one of the world's most vibrant economies. A fantastic (and horrifying) reflection on what is happening closer to home.

I have mentioned in an earlier blog post that I was recently in Ireland presenting about my favourite subject – segmentation.

Segmenting markets by income/expenditure is covered in marketing 101 textbooks. That doesn’t mean that it is something that marketers necessarily do, but it is basic stuff.

I don’t know what to call it, but I think we need to refine our thinking about income segmentation to reflect the reality of the chasm that is growing between the haves and the have nothings.

This is an interesting white paper from Yahoo! about the effectiveness of the different channels to reach women. I really liked the visual methodology that was used to represent the results.

Maybe it is not surprising that the results indicate the effectiveness of Yahoo’s online presence.

One big crazy week. We have clients visiting from San Diego, Seoul, London and Boston for big workshops, a local station TV crew (second TV stations this month) filming us at work plus 3 very cool project kick-offs that we need to prepare for (and also pitches). The workshops were great and clients were participating fully and great people. Our team always bring a lot of creative energy to our data rich process which is probably the most rigorous and scientific in the industry.