Learning About Consumers

If we are going to market to people through lots of different media, than we should probably know about how these crazy folks interact with these media. There are a few great articles from MediaPost that address this question well: On the Record: They aren't just like us ; Consumer 3.0 ; Calling all Pets ; Targeting Harried Commuters ; Portrait of a New Media Consumer.

The new media consumer is able to not just interact with multiple media at one time, but be creating and sharing ideas through these media as well. Marketers as being faced with smarter consumers that a little more difficult to figure out than the old tv-watching, radio-listening-to, newspaper-reading commuter.

Because of this, marketers are being forced to be much more creative in how they converse with their target audiences who are more like active members in a conversation than an audience. Take a look at "Consumer 3.0" and how they talk about social netwrking sites. Getting their info about how may kids have a social networking site from a study, marketers have to start using what consumers are in order to find out what their consumers want.

Lets continue using this idea of Social networking sites for an example: Some one does a study and reveals that kids are using facebook a lot. I mean A LOT. So now a marketer has to try and think like his client. Which after reading On the Record, you realize it is pretty hard. You can't say, "how do I interact with this site?" Cause are a weird media junkie and interact with everything a differently (especially media). Half the time consumers don't even realize they are being that engaging in the media they are using (New Media Consumer).

With TV, you are only guessing at how people are interacting with it. With the www, you need to find out what people are using, then go get some.