Who The Hell Is "The Consumer?"

One of the things that gives me big chuckles is listening to account planners and creative directors talk about "the consumer."

"The consumer" is someone they think they know a lot about. Apparently she attends the same pilates classes as planners, and goes on mountain bike rides with creative directors.

Despite their unctuous devotion to mouthing the word, most people in advertising don't know the first thing about "the consumer."

This point was reinforced to me recently by two things I read. First was a blog piece by the great Dave Trott, writing about the reaction he gets to his cockney accent when speaking to business groups.

"Was the white collar world of marketing and senior management made up exclusively of middle class people with middle class accents?

Did they think everyone, everywhere was exactly like them?

Because here’s a funny thing.

Where I grew up everyone had cockney accents.

Around three million people.

And I’d lived my whole life without anyone ever commenting on it, until I started doing talks to people in marketing.

People who, apparently, never hear anything but middle class accents."

The second occurred when I was doing some research on automotive trends. I was reading a piece about how some cars stay in the hands of owners far longer than others. The writer of the piece thought he had uncovered a startling anomaly. He found that people with crappy cars held on to their cars longer than people with quality cars. Why would people hold on to lousy cars, he wanted to know?

He was digging around for explanations for this crazy fact. I'm pretty sure this would have stumped most agency people.

So here's the answer Mr. Strategist -- they hold on to their crappy cars longer because they don't have any fucking money.

Unlike us marketing wizards, people in the real world are forced to buy crappy things and hold onto them. To them, Walmart is a way of life. To us it's a punch line.

Here's something I wrote three years ago in a post called Reality At The DMV...

I'm thinking of making a monthly visit to the DMV a condition of employment for everyone on my staff. 

I want them to see what the people they're making ads for really look like. I want them to see the people they never see at the restaurants they go to; never see at the bars they frequent; never see at the focus groups they attend; and never hear from on Twitter.

In other words, I want them to see the "consumer" they're all so very certain they know everything about.