I have very little experience with massive marketing budgets that make provisions for extensive market research and message testing. The idea is very attractive to me, but the projects I’ve worked on simply do not allow the time or the money to conduct such research. I have constantly been told that advertising is king when it comes to research – typically because advertising budgets are more expensive and thus command more dollars to ensure such expensive endeavors don’t fall flat. Public relations, at least on the larger scale campaigns, does test messages and conduct pre-campaign research.
There has been quite a lot of talk about PR and advertising beginning to merge. In fact, it’s already happening, from what I’m reading – consider this: twelve of the 15 largest public relations companies are owned by Omnicom, IPG, The Pubilicis Groupe or WPP, according to The Marketer’s Guide to Public Relations in the 21st Century, by Thomas Harris and Patricia Whalen. I am interested to see when firms stop buying each other and start merging their service capabilities. And, with merging capabilities will come the merging of technique. Personally, I hope targeting techniques come first.
The Influential Marketing blog touched on the subject on a post last year during a rant against using age statistics as a primary tool for targeting. I think the author makes a fantastic point:
“Age doesn’t matter. What matters is relevance.”
Brilliant point. The blogger went on to suggest that marketers should go on to focus on interests, geodemographics and affinity groups rather than age demographics to denote targeting strategy.
I don’t think age demographics should be neglected, but they should not define the targeting strategy.
Richard Edelman acknowledged this during a post on his blog as well:
“Measurement and targeting: Our clients will be expecting us to reach specific groups or even individuals. Can we rely upon the power of influencers and amplifiers to make the content so alluring that the average person will pull it in? Or will we have to push material to them based on our knowledge of their specific interests and purchase behaviors (who owns a pet, etc). We have to provide both paths to our clients, and we must have far better research/data to justify our recommendation.”
The opportunity to point out marketing inadequacy will always be present. Someone will always be able to point out that there’s something more you can do to define who your audience should be. I think there are plenty of examples of companies that have conducted fantastic research and precise targeting.
One of my previous posts touches on Tungle. The post was more directed at the perfection of the pitch rather than audience targeting, but I believe both were flawless (thus the title of the post, Tungle’s Perfect Pitch). Tungle’s target audience are those who communicate with each other, frequently across boundaries that are unreachable without such scheduling tools. The F.I.R. podcast audience is such an audience – made up of communicators who have some boundaries to transcend. This pitch – and targeting technique – was perfect.
Advertising, remember, is king of targeting. Let’s look at a couple of campaigns.
I’m a big fan of work from Draftfcb – so it’s no surprise I’ll mention their work in this post (it’s clean, it’s effective and it’s always clever). Check out this video of their 15-second commercial for the Honda Civic. This piece (and the entire campaign) targets cost-conscious, environmentally friendly individuals who are interested in knowing a little about how their car works. The pieces appear to target people like me (they worked on me, it’s really a shame I don’t have a paycheck. Hey, Draftfcb, if you hire me, I’ll buy one of these and tell the dealer it’s because of your work. What do you say?) – those who are young (and poor) professionals who are beginning to think about making some large purchases. The ads provide a sense of comfort to the audience, that they’re doing something that’s not only cost-conscious, but also environmentally conscious and who have short attention spans, hence the 15-second spot. Well done, again, Draftfcb.
This piece – from Ogilvy & Mather also targets a very specific group – senior citizens. Just kidding. Take a look at it and consider how specifically the Coca-Cola target audience has been defined in this video. Well done, as well, Ogilvy & Mather.
I believe the targeting in this video is even more specific than the Honda commercial by Draftfcb. I don’t think either is better from a strategic standpoint – rather, they’re made to solve different exposure problems.
I know of a few good case studies that exhibit fantastic targeting work on the part of PR efforts as well – some of which, I am proud to say, I had the opportunity to participate in (see the Greater Chicago Red Cross digital footprint campaign released a couple of weeks ago). We spent a lot of time defining who our audience would be and how we would reach them, and our efforts yielded astounding success. Our video garnered thousands of impressions and was even posted on the Chicagoist blog – one of the main sites our target audiences view regularly.
Finally, a combo example of PR and advertising targeting prowess with the most recent Breast Cancer Awareness campaign. Check out the PRepguide blog and see what the author has to say about it. It’s right on the money!
Take some time here to share some of your successes in targeting. How have you gone about defining your audience? What are some examples of PR triumphs in targeting, and what do you think either discipline can do to improve its strategy?
Stumble It!
