What The Brady Bunch Can Teach Us About Segmentation?
Why Matrixed Approaches Are Best And Understanding When It Is Time To Change
Remember the theme song?
Here’s a story, of a gender segment, who was oddly without a single outlier. They were four men that exactly fit their segment profile. And more oddly, they were NOT all alone. Here’s a story, of the other segment, who was equally without any outliers of their own. They were four women who met their profile exactly, until the marketers got unknowingly got pwned. Because one day the middle aged members of our segments met each other, which made the marketers giggle with glee. Because now they were all just one segment, that they could call the Brady Family…
Segmentation in a Microcosm
Marketers are huge fans of a single segmentation to rule them all. There is something Gollum-esque about that need, but that is another movie and article entirely. If marketers had written the Brady Bunch, it would have been little more than a theme song. Nine people come together (let’s not forget Alice), give themselves a segment name, and then act completely identical to each other so that all products, creatives, and experiences work perfectly for every member of the bunch.
The TV series of course, made great use of how totally wrong that thinking is. Four girls plus four guys in one household leads to some pretty entertaining experiences. No matter how many Alices you add, girls and boys have different wants and different expectations. They also had differing prior experiences, priorities, and former parents.
Even this level of differentiation did not complete the story, which is fortunate if you are looking to write past season one. Soon episodes would segment across age groups with themes around lisps, bullies, sports, teenage angst, and even puberty. Because not only did the Brady grid have a column of girls and a column of boys, it also had a row of teens, a row of pre-teens, and a row elementary schoolers.
So if the writers got it, why are so many marketers trying to over simplify? If the Brady Bunch could have a matrix, why can’t they? And why are they always so keen to jump straight from one to nine?
When Its Time To Change
Perhaps part of it is change? Besides being the start of a sitcom, other things change ‘then one day when this lady met this fellow’. The Brady Bunch predated email and internet, but it is not hard to imagine what the content of marketing material in Mike Brady’s mailbox was. Nor Carol’s. But once these two start dating, all bets are off. Suddenly Carol is occasionally buying for men and once they got married, even more so.
Christmas, Back to School, and other times of year get quite messy. The original gender segments don’t matter nearly as much. Although in the more gender biased 70’s, it might have been a little more clean than today. Did Mike ever buy groceries or go shopping?
Even our aged based segments get sloppy as the years go by. Is Marcia likely to get a football to the face without younger brothers? While Peter’s voice was changing, so were his interests and purchasing habits. Just ask Alice. In the early days there were lost dogs and flooding laundry rooms to clean, by the later years there were automobile parts, attic renovations, and Johnny Bravo’s disco outfits to deal with. The latest advertisement for Kitty Carryall was going to have a much lower response rate at the Brady household in those later seasons.
Finally, even the population started to change. Whether it was Greg leaving for college, Sam the Butcher’s mysterious departure, or the arrival of cousin Oliver — segments just don’t stay the same.
The Brady Bunch gave us segmentation on the smallest of scales. It made it easy to see and inspired plenty of episodes. Although I am still not certain what inspired the Grand Canyon or Hawaii episodes… oh yeah, ratings. It provides us with a view of just how many subsegments can exist even in a small population and how everything is impacted by time. These are important principles to recall when constructed segmentation for your business.
