Christopher S. Penn – Marketing AI Keynote Speaker

Marketing to stereotype or reality?

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Christopher S Penn

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Here’s an interesting question. In marketing, especially mass, B2C marketing, we make a lot of assumptions based on “studies”. I’ll give you an example from the student loan world. When marketing student loans, a number of studies say that if you are going after the Hispanic market, you should use photographs and language that shows multiple generations of the family, as opposed to just parent/student or student by themselves. Some of this dates back to a 2005 study by Sallie Mae on decision factors for Hispanic students in borrowing for college which said that Hispanic students tend to make financial decisions in favor of borrowing with the advice and guidance of parents and grandparents.

The question is, is that accurate? Is using any kind of ethnosocial marketing effective, and if so, how do you determine which studies are reliable?

Do you risk giving offense to a targeted demographic if you’re marketing to a stereotype that came out of a study that might have been less than scientifically valid?

If you do any kind of demographic targeted marketing, I’d love to hear how you handle these kinds of things.

Full disclosure: I work for the Student Loan Network, a student loan company, and anything I say should be assumed to be biased towards my company because we’re awesome.

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Comments

8 responses to “Marketing to stereotype or reality?”

  1. JasonFalls Avatar
    JasonFalls

    Bravo. I've long suspected the majority of B2C mass marketing “research” is nothing more than lazy assumptions based on insufficient sampling of people in Kansas or some sterile place some research firm can reasonably say represents a cross-section of American attitudes. Your ethnic example serves a much better example to offer the point that research needs to be more broad than it ever has been to be relevant. Well said, sir.

    Reply
  2. JasonFalls Avatar
    JasonFalls

    Bravo. I've long suspected the majority of B2C mass marketing “research” is nothing more than lazy assumptions based on insufficient sampling of people in Kansas or some sterile place some research firm can reasonably say represents a cross-section of American attitudes. Your ethnic example serves a much better example to offer the point that research needs to be more broad than it ever has been to be relevant. Well said, sir.

    Reply
  3. JasonFalls Avatar
    JasonFalls

    Bravo. I've long suspected the majority of B2C mass marketing “research” is nothing more than lazy assumptions based on insufficient sampling of people in Kansas or some sterile place some research firm can reasonably say represents a cross-section of American attitudes. Your ethnic example serves a much better example to offer the point that research needs to be more broad than it ever has been to be relevant. Well said, sir.

    Reply
  4. douglasrice Avatar
    douglasrice

    The application of research is a lengthy topic, too broad for here. It would include motivation, method, validation, applicability, etc. More directly, is marketing to stereotypes effective? I am familiar with research done by two major companies that use target demographics as a competitive advantage and it's hugely effective. How do you know what studies are reliable? Much of the truly useful research doesn't show up in journal articles. It's internal to the firm, they are testing it all the time, and they aren't making it public. Can you be offensive? Sure, but that's always the case. Putting any picture of a person in an ad opens that door to someone. Therefore, it's back to hypothesis (including ideas from existing research), test, and re-test. That's what those with the inside scoop are doing, they just have bigger budgets and private, sometimes better, results.

    Reply
  5. douglasrice Avatar
    douglasrice

    The application of research is a lengthy topic, too broad for here. It would include motivation, method, validation, applicability, etc. More directly, is marketing to stereotypes effective? I am familiar with research done by two major companies that use target demographics as a competitive advantage and it's hugely effective. How do you know what studies are reliable? Much of the truly useful research doesn't show up in journal articles. It's internal to the firm, they are testing it all the time, and they aren't making it public. Can you be offensive? Sure, but that's always the case. Putting any picture of a person in an ad opens that door to someone. Therefore, it's back to hypothesis (including ideas from existing research), test, and re-test. That's what those with the inside scoop are doing, they just have bigger budgets and private, sometimes better, results.

    Reply
  6. douglasrice Avatar
    douglasrice

    The application of research is a lengthy topic, too broad for here. It would include motivation, method, validation, applicability, etc. More directly, is marketing to stereotypes effective? I am familiar with research done by two major companies that use target demographics as a competitive advantage and it's hugely effective. How do you know what studies are reliable? Much of the truly useful research doesn't show up in journal articles. It's internal to the firm, they are testing it all the time, and they aren't making it public. Can you be offensive? Sure, but that's always the case. Putting any picture of a person in an ad opens that door to someone. Therefore, it's back to hypothesis (including ideas from existing research), test, and re-test. That's what those with the inside scoop are doing, they just have bigger budgets and private, sometimes better, results.

    Reply
  7. douglasrice Avatar
    douglasrice

    The application of research is a lengthy topic, too broad for here. It would include motivation, method, validation, applicability, etc. More directly, is marketing to stereotypes effective? I am familiar with research done by two major companies that use target demographics as a competitive advantage and it's hugely effective. How do you know what studies are reliable? Much of the truly useful research doesn't show up in journal articles. It's internal to the firm, they are testing it all the time, and they aren't making it public. Can you be offensive? Sure, but that's always the case. Putting any picture of a person in an ad opens that door to someone. Therefore, it's back to hypothesis (including ideas from existing research), test, and re-test. That's what those with the inside scoop are doing, they just have bigger budgets and private, sometimes better, results.

    Reply
  8. douglasrice Avatar
    douglasrice

    The application of research is a lengthy topic, too broad for here. It would include motivation, method, validation, applicability, etc. More directly, is marketing to stereotypes effective? I am familiar with research done by two major companies that use target demographics as a competitive advantage and it's hugely effective. How do you know what studies are reliable? Much of the truly useful research doesn't show up in journal articles. It's internal to the firm, they are testing it all the time, and they aren't making it public. Can you be offensive? Sure, but that's always the case. Putting any picture of a person in an ad opens that door to someone. Therefore, it's back to hypothesis (including ideas from existing research), test, and re-test. That's what those with the inside scoop are doing, they just have bigger budgets and private, sometimes better, results.

    Reply

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