Demographics: DOA

"If death meant just leaving the stage long enough to change costume and come back as a new character...Would you slow down? Or speed up?"

                                                                                                 - Chuck Palahniuk

This is the question that advertisers, brand strategists, and marketers should be asking about the demographic reports that they have traditionally been cozy with to help them determine who their customers are.

The idea of demographics; what they are, what they mean, and their usefulness has run its course. Reading the quote you can translate it as; demographics is in the process of leaving the stage, changing what it is and coming back as something else. If you want that reality to slow down because you hate change. . .well then get left behind. If you want it to speed up, then you're amongst those engaged and involved in the discovery of what's next, positioning yourself to be relevant in the burgeoning new economy.

One reason this information set, that "helps" to understand who your customers are, is soon to be/is doa, is because in a world of blogs, facebook fan pages, and ning sites (and this is just the tip of the iceberg), you can drill down exactly to who your customer is (her name is Cecilia, she has a dog named Choo Choo, and she loves youtube videos of Nirvana) and potentially interact with them on a much more personal level. As opposed to demographic data; analysis and understanding mainly in terms of generalizations, broad strokes, and approximations. The value factor comparison is like a typewriter on one hand and an iPad on the other.

As was stated in an Ad Age article last year, with the findings in the 2010 census "the message to marketers is clear: No single demographic, or even handful of demographics, neatly defines the nation. There is no such thing as "the American consumer." Demographics expert Peter Francese even goes as far as to say that "the concept of an 'average American' is gone, probably forever."

What needs to be done is to begin looking at customers as people (not as data). Who are they? What do they do? Why are they doing that?  You need to understand them through a behavioral lens. What drives them to the decisions they make? Behavior is independent of age, region or any of the usual demographic lenses. This approach begins to inject a type of orientation in which the relationship between the brand and the audience becomes more than just transactional, it also becomes organic and has meaning.

So now we're not dealing with resources that are lifeless and dead on arrival, but agile, nimble and dynamic. A direct reflection of where we are, right here, right now.