One Half Minute with Your Target Audience

I had originally intended on starting up "One Half Minute" as a regular column and I've discovered through tracking my page hits that it's the most popular of everything I've posted here. So, I'm going to continue the idea as I had it a few years ago and delight you all with another edition of... da da da daaaa... ONE HALF MINUTE!!!

Today we're going to talk about target audiences. Here's Wikipedia's definition:

A target audience is the primary group of people that something, usually an advertising campaign, is aimed at appealing to. A target audience can be people of a certain age group, gender, marital status, etc. (ex: teenagers, females, single people, etc.) A certain combination, like men from twenty to thirty is often a target audience. Other groups, although not the main focus, may also be interested. One of the most important stages involved with market research. Without knowing your target audience advertising and the selling of a particular product can become difficult and very expensive.

I feel especially proud that my demographic got its own shout out in this definition, because I've often felt that a lot of advertising is at me. Now I know that that's not part of my paranoia; Wikipedia has supported it.

The day I saw the auto insurance commercial (I'm almost positive it was State Farm or Progressive, but it could have also been Geico. Google is failing me right now) with the musician who backs into a poll I remember saying out loud, "Wow, I feel really marketed to right now."

In this particular ad, A hip-looking twenty-something guy says, "It's good to know [whichever company]'s there in case my van gets pummeled by adoring fans... or I accidentally back into a poll. Seriously, it came out of nowhere."

Auto commercials are a great place to look to when dividing up what the industry calls "market segments." Let's go again to Wikipedia: "A Market segment is a subgroup of people or organizations sharing one or more characteristics that cause them to have similar product needs."