We Learned Something Today

Today I was at The Carlu in downtown Toronto for a great marketing conference called Brace For Impact. In our quest to provide the very best marketing advice possible, I love absorbing good info that we can pass along to our clients. Look at me posing with my shiny lanyard which is probably zero percent recyclable.

Hosted and organized by Canada Post, I expected it to be 100% focused on Direct Mail marketing. I would have been fine with that, because there are a tremendous number of advertisers, both local and otherwise, who get excellent results from Direct Mail campaigns. There's room for "new media" and "traditional media" to co-exist, and don't let a "media disruptor" (a silly, negative-sounding thing to call oneself) tell you otherwise.

But to Canada Post's credit, this all-day event crammed in all kinds of good info on demographic data, pop-up marketing, customer service, behavioural marketing, personalization, and online advertising.

As with any other conference, there were speakers and topics that were interesting, exciting, motivating and inspirational. There were also a few that did nothing for me whatsoever. In my next few blog posts, I'll feature a few favourite moments. Like this one:

"GENERATIONAL ADVERTISING HAS NEVER BEEN SO TRICKY"

As a society, we like to label generations. Baby Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, Gen Z. But these titles are being used to describe people who cover a 12-15 year span. Has this become too wide a margin? Does a person who is "single/hates animals/no kids/owns a home" really buy the same stuff as someone who is 12 years younger and is "married/1 child/has a dog/lives in a condo"? Of course not.

So how do we advertise to those two people? Instead of marketing to "Generations", consider marketing to "Life Stages" instead. You can no longer market to "New Parents" by simply marketing to 20 year olds. Let's look at ways to reach New Parents in their 30s and even their 40s.

25bikes Media can help you with this Life Stages advertising. Reach out to us and we'll brainstorm some ideas. We're located in Toronto Canada, but if you're not, we're only a video call away.