I was just reading the book Karma Queens, Geek Gods and Innerpreneurs. Personally, the books agenda to sweep people into convenient little marketing buckets annoys the shit out of me. The authors have dubbed these buckets as “C-Types,” that is Consumer Types, which umbrellas both demographic and psychogrpahic data. Maybe it’s just me, but the tone of “target marketing” is eerily reminiscent of the quiet observing narrator on those nature shows. Somehow it feels as if human beings have become unsuspecting animals being monitored for migration, consumption and behavior patterns. Marketing even does that whole “catch and release” thing – snagging a few consumers for close-up analysis and then releasing them back into the marketplace. Animals are, at least, smart enough to struggle when this happens. Human beings on the other hand are very complacent when it comes to being captured by marketing and turned into data. Maybe because they see the advantage of being “understood” by marketing. Perhaps they know that Marketers are willing to cater to them, assuaging their pains, fears and insecurities with products that are – as they would phrase it – “tailored to meet your needs.”

Or are we tailored to meet their needs?

I still can’t figure out which one drives the other: Are Target Markets shaped by Target Marketing or does Target Marketing shape itself based on the aesthetes of Target Markets? The Entertainment Industry seems to shape its markets…but only up to a certain point. After that it seems as if what they’ve shaped, shapes them. For instance, it’s a truism that magazines are written on a high-school reading level. For that matter, Broadcast Television is usually at a high-school entertainment level. So…if all people over the age of 17 are limited to 17 and under reading and entertainment material, well than that explains the “dumb American” syndrome. And yet, the pendulum begins to swing in the other direction when dumb Americans, through their purchasing habits, make it clear that they will only settle for “dumb & dumber” content. Suddenly you have an entire marketplace competing to see how low they can go to reach the lowest common denominator. My guess is that they’ll reach this bedrock when adults are being entertained by big and bold, colorful talking animals who are easily excited by their own platitudes. Or has that happened already?

Some markets seem, not so much shaped, but created. For instance, this new breed of parents who are unsure about how to raise their children seems to have come out of nowhere. The publishing industry is making a killing on women who abdicate their maternal instincts, defaulting instead to the judgment of anything in print.

What’s really interesting is how the system of marketing inevitably results into playing two ends against each other. On one end we have a sleuth of “expert” products that help parents compete with other parents for breeding and “developing” the smartest child on the block. On the other end are even more products– mostly profane music, movies and fashion – that help kids find more inventive ways of telling their parents to fuck off.

Marketing is so entangled in the psychographics of consumers that in many ways it is the consumer psyche.

Shit, that scares me. Not for any political reasons. It has nothing to do with the rise of an “evil empire” that controls people or any crap like that. It scares me simply because marketing almost always equates to sameness. Homogenization. Dullsville. Marketing thrives when people are programmed for repetition. The moment people think, act and move outside of their prescribed demographic, marketing mavens are forced to rethink and restructure themselves. Diversity is simply not practical in the world of Marketing.

American segregation has been replaced with marketing demographics. After college, people just seem to automatically migrate into their assigned demographic areas, only rarely integrating with other demographic circles. So conditioned are we to coloring within the lines that when someone “crosses-over” they get smeared for it. The first white kids who decided to cross-over to hip-hop were called “Wiggers.” I questioned a guy about this once and he said that he just hates when people pretend to be something they’re not. Apparently he didn’t realize that everybody is pretending to be something they’re not. We’re all pretty much wearing identities that were prescribed to us and our demographic. It just stands out more when you start trying on identities from some other demographic.

Personally, I’m rooting for the Wiggers. I’m rooting for the Sell-Outs. I’m rooting for all the demographic cross-overs and anybody who’s crazy enough to be “something they’re not.” I say we keep the marketing MoFo’s on their toes. Keep ‘em guessing. If we have to be Target Markets then we should at least be moving targets.