Unconscious bias has plagued family segmentation for too long
Up to 68.7% of Australian families are non-traditional. But looking at adland’s marketing strategies, you would think every house contained a mum, dad, and two point four children, argues International Creative Services founder Anne Miles.
How many of us still think that the family model is mum, dad and two point four children? By the look of the marketing creative we produce, I can tell you that it is a lot of us.
When spending time client side, I realised that it was uncommon for the creative agency, media agency, strategy team, sales team, marketing team, shopper data and researchers to all understand the target audience was one profile. Many are engrained in past systems and personas because ‘that’s how we always do it’. So, what’s going on?
If we look at past sales data and online metrics to define our audience, we will buy into the unconscious biases of the past. We will validate the impact of media channel choices and creative from the past in a self-perpetuating cycle. None of this is the potential market, where market growth is and isn’t necessarily reflecting the actual market right now either.
I don’t think the perception is that the traditional family is the only family. I think the perception is that the traditional family is who you want buying the product.
This is probably due to their wealth (turns out traditional families earn a bit of coin) and the diversity of products you can sell to them as having two different gendered adults in a household + kids + a dog probably, opens up more products to sell.
Gees, I haven’t heard that furphy of 2.4 children per household trotted out for aeons – probably in the ’70s.
It just takes a minute to check on the ABS website that for those households that do have children, the average number of children in that household was 1.8 (2016 Census), and that the average people per household overall was 2.6.
In days of yore we used to talk about have 2.4 children per household – but that was based on just those households with kids – but somehow over time some people took that to be the average household.
So my take is that this is less an unconscious bias than rehashing an old furphy proven wrong time and time again every Census.
Dear JG
Having just attended one of Anne’s Unconscious Bias workshops it was well worth it regardless of whether a family has 2.4 children or not.
Thanks for getting into the conversation on this. Lovely feedback from @Dear JG, which I really appreciate, thank you. It isn’t your usual unconscious bias training and very much about our work.
@JG – I’d love to see any examples running in Australia where a brand is actually producing creative for a non-traditional family. Can’t say I’ve recalled any other than the Volvo piece I found. Being in production, on the client side and in a research company for a short time I can’t say I’ve ever seen anyone put market segmentation in a strategy paper that comprises anything other than the traditional family, or an occasionally nod to a single parent. Any examples would be greatly appreciated.
If anyone else finds any we should be celebrating them.
(P.S) I definitely do not want to see families with husband’s being ridiculed though – that’s not a non-traditional family, that’s just gender bias over-steer in my books. Some people seem to misunderstand this.
“Unconscious bias” – psychobabble, and utter nonsense, motivated by political power plays.
There’s bias expressed through neuro-linguistics right there in fact. LOL