I SAW YOU – Last week at the Downtown ACAC. You: buff business type, reading GQ on treadmill. Me: petite brunette wearing UVA sweatshirt. You caught me peeking at you over my Shape magazine while you were talking with your friend about real estate. Later, you drove by me in your BMW. Take me for a ride?
The above encounter never happened. But it could have, because the characters in the fictional personal ad represent two of Charlottesville’s most common stereotypes, at least according to Claritas, a California marketing firm. Specifically, the hotshot guy is what Claritas calls an “Executive Suite.” He makes around $70,000 a year and watches “Will & Grace.”
One of 66 detailed American caricatures described on the Claritas webpage, the Executive Suite is a white-collar professional “drawn to comfortable homes and apartments within a manageable commute to downtown jobs, restaurants and entertainment.”
The smitten gym vixen is an “Up-And-Comer.” A 20something who likes to party, she drives around “second-tier cities” in her Mitsubishi Eclipse, watches MTV and rents a swinging bachelorette pad—perhaps she’s moving into one of the newly refurbished apartments at Norcross Station?
Reducing Charlottesville to a handful of caricatures might not be the most politically correct way of gauging our gaggle, but it works. Claritas and many other market research firms produce reams of information about the habits, hobbies, brand affinities and socioeconomic realities of virtually every segment of society. The thinking goes that the huckster ethnography, termed “neighborhood lifestyle segmentation” by Claritas, is possible because people are easy to pigeonhole.
Claritas dips deep into the cliché well to describe the central theory behind “You Are Where You Live,” the free, stripped-down version of the company’s marketing models, available at claritas.com. Claritas claims that the system works because “birds of a feather flock together.
“It’s a worldwide phenomenon that people with similar cultural backgrounds, needs, and perspective naturally gravitate toward one another,” Claritas says.
Therefore, every neighborhood can be divvied up like a high school hallway. The cliques stick together, and are as easy to spot as the hoods, jocks, nerds and the foreign exchange student in an ’80s movie. A real-life example of this human tendency is when immigrants congregate in specific enclaves, such as the Ethiopian communities in Los Angeles or Washington, D.C., or the Hmongs in the Twin Cities.
Upscale gym lurkers aren’t the only Charlottesville residents Claritas funnels into categories like cows in a chute. For instance, the company has identified the working class paragons of Americana, dubbed “Red, White & Blues,” who hang out in the 22911 ZIP code, which encompasses a chunk of Albemarle County east of town, including Pantops. A good perch from which to spot this cluster might be a table at the Tip Top during the lunch rush.
“Red, White & Blues typically live in exurban towns rapidly morphing into bedroom suburbs. Their streets feature new fast-food restaurants, and locals have recently celebrated the arrival of chains like Wal-Mart, Radio Shack and Payless Shoes,” Claritas says.
Despite their affinity for strip mall retail chains, these folks are into protecting the environment and like to paint and draw. They read Hot Rod magazine and often drive Chevy Trackers.
Another nearby stop on a Charlottesville stereotyping safari might be the Everyday Cafe, also in 22911, where one can observe the so-called “Country Squires” in their natural environment. This group and their Wal-Mart-loving brethren account for two of the five most common people “clusters” in the area. In the illustration that accompanies the marketing profile—Claritas includes cute drawings of each stereotype doing their thing, the better to help retailers envision their clientele—the Country Squire is wearing a riding cap and standing in front of a horse and white picket fence. If you look long enough, you might spot a Country Squire when she pulls up to the Everyday Café in her GMC Denali to pick up a latté and a copy of USA Today.
“In their bucolic communities noted for their recently built homes on sprawling properties, the families of executives live in six-figure comfort,” Claritas says of Country Squires, adding that their turf is “an oasis for affluent Baby Boomers who’ve fled the city for the charms of small-town living.”
Sound familiar?
Claritas first developed its demographic analysis 30 years ago. And though a well-known progenitor of the market research field of “geodemographics,” the company is hardly alone in compiling detailed information about Americans. Market research in the United States is a $6.2 billion-a-year industry, and is gaining in clout each year, according to Euromonitor International, itself a market research firm.
Marketers track and scrutinize virtually every move a consumer makes. The Washington Post’s webpage now requires the age, profession and all-important Zip code from readers before granting access to Web versions of news stories. The Los Angeles Times asks about online purchases and requires Web readers to disclose their household income. These readers’ specs likely find their way to Claritas, which also gathers information from media audits.
Though the freebie data from Claritas doesn’t say who reads C-VILLE Weekly, the firm’s profiles include several local characters who match up with our auditing data. The “Greenbelt Sports,” who are usually college educated and like to backpack and mountain bike, are likely candidates to pick up a copy of this newspaper. But somewhat surprisingly, from a stereotyping point of view, research suggests that the Greenbelt Sports might appreciate a column on professional wrestling—they love their wrasslin’.
The root source for market research is the U.S. Census, which is conducted every decade, most recently in 2000. This work is then refined by the surveys and research of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, most notably in the Consumer Expenditure Survey, which provides data on the incomes and buying habits of Americans. Marketing firms subsequently pile on the research with phone and Internet surveys, as well as data collected from the customer rolls of companies. Claritas draws from 1,600 private and public sources to develop its neighborhood profiles.
The result is that advertisers and businesses can know, in astonishing detail, who they are targeting at in a neighborhood or any other place where people come together, such as an airplane, sporting event or morning commute. Market research isn’t necessary in every situation: It should be self-evident that a Banana Republic billboard featuring androgynous models (why does he look so sullen?) might not have the intended effect if placed beside a rural Texas highway. But for subtle consumer preferences, such as whether Ivy residents like pizza from Papa John’s, Claritas has the skinny.
For example, the “Boomtown Singles,” a young set who rent apartments on the west side of town, would be good targets for a liquor promotion. But where can you catch this crowd? Sure, these entry-level office workers like to stay active, and can be found in soccer leagues or jogging on the Mall—such as in the Claritas illustration, where a woman in a yellow sweat suit is seen scooting along with her trusty Dalmatian. But a Guinness toast doesn’t seem like a good fit during a soccer game. Fortunately, Claritas knows the Boomtown Singles like to rock out to alternative music—a tip that could lead the savvy liquor promoter to place a call to Starr Hill or the Tokyo Rose.
Market research is about making safe bets. An example of this strategy is the play lists for New York City radio stations. In such a giant media market, the stations want to appeal to the greatest number of possible listeners. That means the quirky programming you might hear on WNRN 91.9 FM would never fly in the big city, where Nelly’s “Hot In Herre” can dominate the airwaves for an entire summer.
The Claritas stereotypes for Charlottesville, though not inclusive of all residents, are calibrated to the most common types of people you might see around town. The six most prevalent Claritas stereotypes in Charlottesville’s 22902 Zip code, which includes the area east of Ridge-McIntire and south of the Rivanna River, are the Executive Suites, Suburban Pioneers, Hometown Retired, Family Thrifts, Bedrock America and the hard-luck Mobility Blues, whose name is in reference to their transience. On the other side of town, south of 250 and west of Ridge-McIntire, including UVA and some of Ivy, you’re most likely to run into the so-called City Startups, New Beginnings, Boomtown Singles, Mobility Blues, again, and the gym cruising Up-and-Comers.
Remember the guy who was sitting at the next table at Duner’s last weekend, the one who was yakking about the story he’d read in Rolling Stone? And though he was somewhat stylish, he had the sheen of someone who might hit a Hooters or watch “That ‘70s Show”? He was definitely a “Young Influential”—a common resident of 22901. Claritas says his tribe “reflects the fading glow of acquisitive yuppiedom.”
Scottsville residents: Like fast cars and fast women? Have a small apartment and gloomy service industry job? Perhaps you’re a member of the “Young & Rustic” segment. Though Scottsville may be sprucing itself up with money from the State and with talk of new subdivisions, the Claritas specs say the town has retained its old-school core. For instance, joining the Young & Rustics are the “Crossroads Villagers,” who own handguns and like to order videos by mail (no word on what type of videos).
Perhaps these two Scottsville groups enjoy socializing with the “Bedrock Americans,” a prevalent posse in Charlottesville, who are seen wearing tank tops and Daisy Dukes in the Claritas illustration. With a median household income of $25,692, a third of this group fail to graduate from high school, and a full quarter of them live in mobile homes.
Clear Channel Communications, the media mega-conglomerate that owns radio and television stations, billboards and performance venues—including six radio stations in this market—has often drawn on Claritas’ expertise. In one particular success story cited by Claritas, Clear Channel used the market research to help sell tickets to a Minneapolis performance of a traveling children’s show that included life-size characters from a Bible-based cartoon. Claritas helped Clear Channel target clusters from among the group’s fan club. Clear Channel’s then e-mailed these likely attendees and generated $70,000 in advance ticket sales.
Many other companies from a variety of industries are on the Claritas client list, including BMW, Eddie Bauer and the L.A. Times. Claritas helped a “family dining” restaurant chain, whose name Claritas has kept on the down low, expand beyond its 300-plus franchises around the country. By targeting clusters of likely customers in every metropolitan area in the United States, Claritas developed a “Game Plan Matrix” for the chain that pinpointed the best markets for expansion, as well as a plan for where to place specific restaurants within those cities.
If the massive amount of retail space in the massive Albemarle Place project on 29N begins to fill up, chains may use the population-sorting methods from Claritas or other companies in deciding whether to move into the center. The low-income Mobility Blues may “excel in going to the movies,” but will there be enough of them spilling out of the proposed movie theater to justify building another Burger King? Furthermore, will the big-spending Country Squires drive to the shopping mall if it includes a Pottery Barn?
There are, of course, people who find the entire premise of “lifestyle segmentation” distasteful. With the nation growing more diverse every year—see, for example, California, which is now home to more minorities than whites—do we all fall neatly into 66 character sketches? Still, the persistence of “birds of a feather” is tough to deny. Opposites don’t attract, even in the melting pot. The black middle class seems to settle in mostly black suburbs, more Jewish families reside in the Maryland suburbs of D.C. than in the Virginia ‘burbs, according to a recent Washington Post article, and other ethnicities continue to clump together in neighborhoods all over the country, despite the efforts of well-meaning city planners.
“The United States might be a diverse nation when considered as a whole, but block by block and institution by institution it is a relatively homogenous nation,” writes David Brooks, in a recent issue of The Atlantic Monthly. Brooks cites the example of newly developed suburbs in Arizona and Nevada, which he says often begin as integrated communities. But as these communities develop reputations and personalities, they gradually shift and solidify into clusters. Eventually, the Young Influentials and Family Scrambles will have their spots, and everybody in town will know where they are. If you’re a Claritas-dubbed Boomtown Single in Phoenix on business, you’ll likely find a bar that caters to your crowd. As Claritas says, that’s just human nature.
In the book The Clustered World, Michael J. Weiss, a journalist who has long covered the geodemographics industry, writes that he finds comfort in the “benign nature of the clusters” and in the fact that marketers are targeting group behavior rather than that of individuals.
“I recognize that the basic clustering concept, that people in the same neighbourhood tend to behave (or at least consume) in the same way, goes back to cave-dweller time. The clusters simply help describe our diverse world today—the good, the bad, the dull, the outlandish,” Weiss writes.
Presumably cave dwellers would fall into far fewer marketing clusters than do Americans today. And even more encouragingly, this trend seems to have continued over the years. Back in the ’70s, Claritas could size up every neighborhood with only 40 clusters. But now we’ve swelled to 66 categories, having accounted for 62 just recently. That’s progress. At this rate, perhaps Americans will eventually outgrow easy stereotypes, and Bedrock Americans will be difficult to distinguish from the City Startups or Mobility Blues.