A study released last week by iHeartMedia and bestselling author Malcolm Gladwell’s Pushkin Industries found that marketers can better understand — and therefore serve — key audience segments with an enhanced focus on being clear-eyed about the differences between their own lives and the clients they serve.
In remarks accompanying the release of the second annual “The New American Consumer 2.0,” presented last Tuesday at iHeartMedia’s AudioCon 2024 in New York City, iHeartMedia Chief Marketing Officer Gayle Troberman said marketers “need to be reminded that we are not the target for most of our marketing campaigns. There’s a big opportunity to improve marketing results with a more conscious focus on the real-life influences that the majority of consumers rely on — and by more accurately reflecting our customers’ real values, passions and priorities.”
“I think human bias is a powerful force,” Troberman tells Inside Radio. “When messages are pervasive and consistent in our own circle, we assume that circle reflects the larger world. Then, when we look at the data, we risk overly focusing on the points that reinforce our own point of view and experiences. In the age of endless data, it’s easy to see what you want to see and make biased decisions that will result in less growth.”
The report, for example, cites research showing consumers are much more likely to enjoy hunting, fishing, and buying lottery tickets — while marketers are more likely to choose pickleball and tennis. The same research found that 44% of Americans feel ignored by advertisers, 72% don’t want to patronize brands that make them feel ignored, and three-quarters say they’d even pay a bit more to bolster brands that share their values.
The numbers speak to a wider truth: there’s a disconnect between marketers and the folks to whom they’re trying to sell goods and services. The research said the path to purchase is much longer for consumers than it is for marketers, and consumers are far more focused on religion, law, and order. In fact, the study found that consumers place twice the emphasis that marketers do on religion and law and order — despite both groups agreeing on the primary values of family, health and safety.
Troberman said the tendency to not focus on the lives and circumstances of others is “human nature” and something that has always posed a potential risk — but the disconnect is deepening in the age of Big Data and artificial intelligence. (On that note, the study found that consumers increasingly feel “creeped out” by marketers’ reliance on hyper-targeting, data, and AI, with 67% saying they hate being “targeted” by ads.)
“The wake-up call we hope to send is to the buy-side clients, advertising planners, buyers [and] small businesses who cannot afford to let human bias get in the way of effective marketing,” Troberman said. “Hyper-targeting alone will not deliver scaled results, and as much as we all love the precision and accountability, the simple fact is we need to reach the 44% of American consumers who we are missing and often feel ignored to find new growth. Audio, particularly radio, is an easy and efficient way to reach more consumers and find incremental sales.”
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