Where age doesn’t matter, seems to be the way the “New-world” communication proponents would like to view the world. Out go the traditional demographic markers such as sex, income, education, etc. that make up the target groups of yore to be replaced with “taste groups”. As the name implies, these groups reveal hidden tastes, emotions and common beliefs in groups that transverse traditional demographic barriers.
Although this makes it difficult to contain and measure a particular group - because now it becomes an oozy amorphous mass - most people would still agree that the fact someone is an accountant has less much less influence on how much they like microwave pizza than emotional, psychological and social aspects of their life. This is true even if doing “accounty” things with “accounty” people is a big part of their life.
This is a key point to remember when trying to beat out all the other microwave pizza guys with the message of how absolutely, pepperonily and double cheesily fantastic your pizza is by appealing to the standard ledger in him.
But that doesn’t mean that those demographic aspects should be totally ignored. Age in particular should be considered as it’s not something that people choose and like it or not, the time in which you lived probably has a greater influence on your views and attitudes than whether or not you have a tattoo, for example.
Tattoos have been worn by different sorts of people at different times in history and for different reasons. So does an 80 year-old with a tattoo pattern from an island he visited in the merchant marines have anything in common with an 18-year old who saw got the same tattoo because he heard a famous actor has the same one and it matches the one his girlfriend over her arse?
And speaking of those over-the-arse porn-girl tattoos; seeing as they are primarily designed to be seen by while the wearer is on all-fours and the viewer is behind them, you’d think they would be something more meaningful. Like some basic instructions, for example. Or perhaps a little comic strip to distract while in the act. Or even a simple arrow pointing down with an “Insert Here” for those duller pencils in the box.
That doesn’t mean that an 80 year-old can’t be in the same taste group as a younger person; just that is shouldn’t automatically be assumed because they have some similarities. So let’s say you find a group of people who, oh I don’t know, melt their Gummi bears with a magnifying glass while screaming “Die you gooey spawn of Satan!” before eating them.
Although this makes it difficult to contain and measure a particular group - because now it becomes an oozy amorphous mass - most people would still agree that the fact someone is an accountant has less much less influence on how much they like microwave pizza than emotional, psychological and social aspects of their life. This is true even if doing “accounty” things with “accounty” people is a big part of their life.
This is a key point to remember when trying to beat out all the other microwave pizza guys with the message of how absolutely, pepperonily and double cheesily fantastic your pizza is by appealing to the standard ledger in him.
But that doesn’t mean that those demographic aspects should be totally ignored. Age in particular should be considered as it’s not something that people choose and like it or not, the time in which you lived probably has a greater influence on your views and attitudes than whether or not you have a tattoo, for example.
Tattoos have been worn by different sorts of people at different times in history and for different reasons. So does an 80 year-old with a tattoo pattern from an island he visited in the merchant marines have anything in common with an 18-year old who saw got the same tattoo because he heard a famous actor has the same one and it matches the one his girlfriend over her arse?
And speaking of those over-the-arse porn-girl tattoos; seeing as they are primarily designed to be seen by while the wearer is on all-fours and the viewer is behind them, you’d think they would be something more meaningful. Like some basic instructions, for example. Or perhaps a little comic strip to distract while in the act. Or even a simple arrow pointing down with an “Insert Here” for those duller pencils in the box.
That doesn’t mean that an 80 year-old can’t be in the same taste group as a younger person; just that is shouldn’t automatically be assumed because they have some similarities. So let’s say you find a group of people who, oh I don’t know, melt their Gummi bears with a magnifying glass while screaming “Die you gooey spawn of Satan!” before eating them.
Now if the pattern of people looks like A, well fine this could indeed be a single taste group. Perhaps this is some kind of tribal ceremony which spanned generations since time immemorial. But if it’s B, these are not the same group despite how similar the behaviour may be. The actions of one group could be defined by dementia while the other by peer pressure…which group is motivated by what is anyone’s guess.
The New age mixed metaphor to take away from all this is than if the baby ain’t broken, don’t throw it out with the bathwater…
