Symposia Session ' Segmentation reveals new ways to Connect Optimally with Consumers in an Economic Downturn

Speaker: Tony Cardinale, Bravo, Oxygen, & Women at NBCU, NBC Universal

Tony begins by stating that the problem that they first encountered. There were hundreds of pieces of intelligence about consumers in the economic downturn, but they weren't sure of the validity of the information. To replace the information they had about a demographic target and replaced it with more dynamic intelligence. They did mixed surveys and asked questions like how are you doing a year ago, how are you doing now, and how do you think you will be doing in year.

There were over 4,000 respondents to the questions and they created several segments. Based on the survey people were quoted as a 1, 2, and 3 depending on how optimistic they were about the recession. What they found out was that consumers that had digital cable were more recession-proof than those consumers who had satellite.

By utilizing the economy scales, marketers can send personalized messaging and offerings to consumers. Also, just like the scale 12 category scales were created including nightlife, style, food, etc. The tool allows to separate the categories and economy scales which helps companies understand if they have to create a new product line to reach the 1's who are most at risk because of the recession or change their messaging.

Tony summarizes my mentioning that demographics and product usage history aren't enough to efficiently target in this new economy and that there are measurable benefits to optimizing against a target that's economy sensitive.