Ms. Adverthinker

As I am reading my latest issue of Wired, I learned the name of condition that I was already familiar with:

Homophily - the human tendency to seek out information that supports preexisting assumptions.

And, according to Wired, the internet “magnifies this echo-chamber effect.”  So, whether your beliefs are right or wrong, you can find a web resource that supports your beliefs and validates whatever argument you are having.

Makes sense.  This “condition” aligns with “niching” trend that is facilitated by the internet.  With a sense of individualism, people are making choices based on their own needs rather than following the masses around them.  To quote the book Microtrends,

“No matter how offbeat their choices, they can now find 100,000 people or more who share their taste for deep fried yak on a stick.

…the Internet has made it so easy to link people together.  In the past, it was almost impossible to market to small groups who were spread around the county. Now it’s a virtual piece of cake to find 1 million people who want to try your grapefruit diet, or who can’t get their kids to sleep at night.

With the rise in freedom of choice has come a rise in individuality.  And with the rise of individuality has come a rise in the power of choice.  The more choices people have, the more they segregate themselves into smaller and smaller niches in society.”

As marketers, this trend presents both a challenge and an opportunity.  The challenge is reaching broad audiences with our messages.  But the opportunity is that our dollars can be more efficiently spent targeting just those consumers likely to connect with our messages.

Using the Internet as a tool, more and more consumers are engaging in culture consumption, broadening their knowledge horizons and then using that experience and knowledge to contribute their own creative expressions and deposit those right back into our culture for further consumer consumption. According to a recent article in Ad Age:

“For years, marketers viewed the cultural consumer as an elite market segment, estimated to represent 2% of the overall population. As we witness a maturing knowledge economy, it’s become evident that we must enlarge our view of who’s consuming cultural experiences and how often. To benefit from the coming era, smart CMOs need to see that American consumers aspire to be viewed as thinking, expressive human beings…Consider these facts:

• The typical adult attends an average of 1.9 cultural events per month.
• 68% of the American public is interested in independent films.
• Gen Y-ers (those ages 18 to 29) attend an average of 2.3 cultural events per month.
• More Americans visit museums, historical sites, zoos and aquariums than attend all professional sports events combined, including auto racing.
• In 2006, 65% of households ranked “avid book reading” as their No. 1 at home leisure activity, according to the Standard Rate and Data Service.”

(Then again, according to a recent article in The New Yorker titled The Twilight of Books, you might not believe consumers are more culturally inclined and reading literature “…if you consulted the Census Bureau and the National Endowment for the Arts, who, since 1982, have asked thousands of Americans questions about reading that are not only detailed but consistent. The results, first reported by the N.E.A. in 2004, are dispiriting. In 1982, 56.9 per cent of Americans had read a work of creative literature in the previous twelve months. The proportion fell to fifty-four per cent in 1992, and to 46.7 per cent in 2002. Last month, the N.E.A. released a follow-up report, To Read or Not to Read, which showed correlations between the decline of reading and social phenomena as diverse as income disparity, exercise, and voting. In his introduction, the N.E.A. chairman, Dana Gioia, wrote, ‘Poor reading skills correlate heavily with lack of employment, lower wages, and fewer opportunities for advancement.’”)

If your target is an avid Internet user, they are more likely than not consuming cultural experiences frequently. And, as that Ad Age article notes, “Knowledge is power. Ideas are the killer app. Learning is the new status skill. This is an enlightened age, and culture consumers revere brands that teach them new things without pontificating.” What can brands do to feed that consumer hunger for cultural and knowledge?