We’re market segmenting ourselves to destruction.

It’s been going on for a while. Marketing experts and consultants generally advise that market segmentation is an improvement to any market strategy. You can take a database of your customers, and in the parlance of the marketing dweeb, “drill down” into it and turn your market into various different segments.

If you’re not segmenting your market you might as well slit your throat. And if you don’t have much imagination, or can’t be bothered faffing about with any database themed bullshittery, what might you do? Let’s see… Erm…

Boys and girls! That’s it!

Cos nobody’s got any fucking imagination. Boys and girls. Even though it’s not relevant to the product.

Look, I suggest we take the whole idea of marketing back to a tautology. We’re marketing this product to the sort of people who like this sort of product. THAT’S IT. Either think a little bit about the sort of person that might be, or just say what the product is. I’m thinking of a television channel that shows The Avengers, The Saint, and motorsport. That your sort of thing? Course it is. Welcome in, we’re itv4. Instead, it’s MEN’S TELLY, and marketed in MEN’S MAGAZINES and that, where I don’t see it, so what happens is I FUCKING WELL MISS THE MANX TT.

This is not acceptable.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll have seen blogs and mainstream press on the topic of gender specific marketing of kids’ toys and clothes. Here’s a quick aside, though; based on the hidden object and puzzle adventure games that my (male) partner likes.

They’re marketed for girls, in a subtle way mind you, rather than by having the protagonist dressed in pink and searching for pink objects on a pink background. They have, so he says, better stories; as if girls have an innate sense of story, and boys just want explosions and guns and fast cars and, when they’re old enough, titties. Michael Bay to the white courtesy phone! MICHAEL BAY TO THE WHITE COURTESY PHONE, BEFORE IT EXPLODES.)

Stop being so damn lazy. Sell the product to the kind of people who might think the product is good. And if you can do it without putting us all on the train to Tweesville that would be fan-ruddy-tastic. (Read that last link: it’s by Dorian Lynskey who is a better blogger than I am). Hedgehog and out.