Understanding Audiences
Several stories appeared over the weekend that I found interesting and may give social marketers some ideas to ponder.
The first is the fourth in the NYT series on Class Matters I noted last week. This week’s article looks at the successful efforts evangelical Christians are making in outreach to the Ivy League schools. The story, though, is about the increasing influence evangelicals are playing in today’s society. It’s not about increasing numbers, the authors argue, but the rise in class status of this segment of Americans.
The growing power and influence of evangelical Christians is manifest everywhere these days, from the best-seller lists to the White House, but in fact their share of the general population has not changed much in half a century. Most pollsters agree that people who identify themselves as white evangelical Christians make up about a quarter of the population, just as they have for decades.
What has changed is the class status of evangelicals. In 1929, the theologian H. Richard Niebuhr described born-again Christianity as the "religion of the disinherited." But over the last 40 years, evangelicals have pulled steadily closer in income and education to mainline Protestants in the historically affluent establishment denominations. In the process they have overturned the old social pecking order in which "Episcopalian," for example, was a code word for upper class, and "fundamentalist" or "evangelical" shorthand for lower.
As you read this article you may find that your mental picture of what a conservative Christian is may undergo some transformations. As the saying goes: It’s not your father’s Oldsmobile.
A second story finds the America of 2025 today in Lakeland FL. A group of economists from Wake Forest University found that Lakeland closely resembles the over 65 demographic projected for the US in 2025. The assumption is that by studying Lakeland now, better guesses might be made as to what is coming for the rest of the country in the next 20 years. Marketers, start your focus groups!
Sure, sales of furniture, garden equipment and cars are booming here as they are in many other places. But grocery stores, restaurants and bars, clothing stores and department stores are pulling in far less of the consumers' dollars than in cities with more representative age demographics. Health care and golf are in; fast food and musical instruments are out. And forget about doughnuts.
There are certainly questions that can be raised about the empirical rigor of this study, but its innovativeness and ability to gain some insights into this increasingly important demographic group is a new twist on the use of ethnographic research.
Finally, the NYT Book Review features Nascar Nation on its cover. The reviewer of one of the featured books notes that
''Sunday Money'' is, for my money, the first (and maybe only) book that nonfans or casual fans or just the mildly curious should crack in order to understand the ''noise and speed and glory and death'' that is Nascar.
When you consider that Nascar estimates that nearly 25% of the US population are fans (include in that list the likes of Don Imus and David Letterman), “Sunday Money” is one of those books that many of us should be putting on our reading list. I also want to note that Paul Bloom and his colleagues were doing research at Nascar events years ago looking at the prominence and impact of tobacco sponsorship and promotions at these events. [And for the hearing loss prevention folks, note the muffs in the cover photo!]
7:46:25 AM 
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