Honda's in Hot Pursuit of Gen X

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With All the Boomers It Can Handle, Automaker Goes After New Demo

Generation X. Generation Y. Boomers. All nice macro targets - invented by someone else years ago. And made a buck at. Now just part of the drive-by marketing scenery. Does anyone remember VALS - SRI's values and attitudes lifestyle studies that came on the heels of our launching Culturally Influential Consumer Groups® years before the dawn of qualitative research?

Today, marketers talk about Generation X, Y and Boomers as if they really exist, and think about themselves this way...as if saying it makes it so. What do researchers tell their focus group recruiters? Go find me someone who identifies with being Gen X. Guys, this was all made up so someone could sell something to you! Now you buy into it! No wonder marketing's in trouble, and Madison Avenue's worse. The conned are being led by the conmen.

But what Honda and RPA's research doesn't show is the presence of more Culturally Influential Consumer Groups within these audiences. These are the real decision makers and trend leaders. Culturally Influential Consumer Groups like "Walking Actors" are not theatrical people per se. They are simply men and women who because of their occupations and lifestyles must come into contact with more people everyday. For this reason they are more concerned with the cars they drive and the statements that they make. The clothes they wear and the statements that they make. The foods they eat and how food makes them feel. And given that over half the working population now works in a service or information driven industry, that's a huge group of consumers that Honda has yet to learn how to talk to in a private and personal context. This is how you learn what really motivates people about your products. The conversation would be much more intense that the shot this effort will put across the bow. And there are over 250 other Culturally Influential Consumer Groups that will cause more consumers to sit up and take notice.

Expect a bunt and the runner to get picked off at first base here.

Tell Clients to Stick It, Then Watch as New Biz Floods In

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Who knew publicly telling a client to perform an anatomically impossible act on your way out the door could be so good for business?

Cramer-Krasselt resigned the business as soon as CareerBuilder cited the weaker Super Bowl ads as grounds for calling an agency review, and Mr. Krivkovich said he was told that the unscientific Ad Meter poll was the sole reason for the decision.

In sales, telling a customer or potential customer to stick it is called "Indifference". It is one of the four factors of impulse under the anachronym FIGS (fear of loss, indifference, greed and sense of urgency) salesmen use to get people to say "Yes." It works like a Jedi mind trick. Imagine you're in a bar with your buddies eyeing the ladies. What's more attractive to the ladies, creeps in a group staring at them, or a bunch of guys off in a corner having their own fun and paying no attention to the ladies at all? The ladies will not pick the creeps.

Crispin Porter & Bogusky Seeks TiVo Answers

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Well what an admission that people skip over their ads. Wouldn't it be better if they just did the homework required to learn how to create ads people wanted to watch? They inject themselves into the equation and end up creating ads we skip over. There are so many examples like this. If McKinsey consultants had the answers, then why does their consumer practice web site admit that despite solid balance sheets client revenues are down and executives wonder where the growth will come from? If you fire an advertising agency, isn't that admitting that in all these years you've never really found out what motivates consumers about your products? The truth stares you in the face, but you look past it for solutions elsewhere. We are truly blind. You know, not doing this homework and shooting from the creative hip is the same reason this agency parted ways with ConAgra and Orville Redenbacher.