Books, Covers, and Demography...

Stupid Assumption Tricks.

I have been thinking lately about television and demographics. According to this article, the "...'holy grail' of advertising is knowing exactly who's sitting in front of the television at any moment..." Of course, the programmers and advertisers usually only have the shows themselves to work backward from in order to figure out who is doing all that sitting. Therein lies a bit of a problem.

Let's take some of the shows I watch regularly these days and extrapolate what an advertiser might assume: As Time Goes By (a 50-year-old female!), Battlestar Galactica (an 18-year-old male!), Daria (a 15-year-old female!), Good Eats (a 40-something food geek of indeterminate gender!). Am I perpetuating a gross generalization? Sure. But when I view a show and the advertisements (or in the case of As Time Goes By, the PBS lead-ins) are obviously directed at another age group or gender, I feel sure that someone charged with selling high-priced advertising is making a convincing argument to advertisers about the core viewership of this show - a much more expensive gross generalization, to be sure.

Do I really care? Not so much - I don't watch many commercials. But I have seen time and time again that conventional assumptions about what people will prefer based on age, gender, and even previous purchases* are wildly off the mark. Both the overt and subtler cues about who is "supposed" to be watching this show (or reading this book - etc.) also lead to arbitrary lines outside the world of advertising. I have been on the receiving end of superior glances, snickers, and even lectures because I watched things like "Buffy," for instance. I, a thirty-something, well-educated woman, was not supposed to be filling my mind with such adolescent silliness. What were the opinions usually based on? They focused on the outer trappings of the show - its title, its young cast, its occult-laden subject matter. Few had actually seen it.**

All of these assumptions about what I am supposed to be viewing, reading, etc. are tiring. Indulging in this "match the age with the gender with the clothes with the income with the viewing habits" outside of advertising smacks of stuffing people in restrictive little boxes. I neither know nor care what your viewing habits say about you, but I do believe I know what box-stuffing says about the people who indulge in it.

*Could Amazon's recommendations be more wrong?

**Full disclosure: I thought it looked dumb when I first saw it as well. It took me until the end of season two before I gave it a real chance.

Posted: Tuesday - March 08, 2005 at 08:06 AM | |