Your Lens is not THE Lens.
Geography. Where you live, where you work, where you play. Your life is dictated by the space that you inhabit. Yet, with the rise of digital marketing, we often neglect geography as nothing more than a targeting mechanism for ads.
That is a false prophet.
Growing up, I lived in a small city about an hour’s drive from Toronto. The community was expanding, and there was a growing diversification of the town. I knew I didn’t live in the most culturally diverse area of the world but felt that I had a grasp on looking at the world through another person’s lens. I was wrong.
Before I went to post-secondary, I took “a year” (which is code for I wasn’t 100% sure what I wanted to do and didn’t get into the schools I had wished to) and moved out west. I went as far as I could go and still be in Canada, heading to Vancouver Island.
Now, Vancouver Island is not a busy metropolis by any stretch. The population of all of Vancouver Island is less than Metro Vancouver or Toronto. But when I moved to the Island, I was confronted with a lens I had never experienced in my life. I’ll call it the Island lens.
As I became established in my new town, I initially thought, “ok, this isn’t so different.” The majority of people I lived/worked with looked like me (which is a whole other discussion), and we were all at a similar economic standing (again, complete further discussion). But over time, I began to notice a significance in my innate behaviour vs. my friends who had grown up on Vancouver Island or had lived there for years.
I have a memory of one such realization that occurred early in my new Island life. I had driven west from Ontario to Vancouver Island with the thinking, “it will be far cheaper for me to drive my truck than to get a new vehicle (that would be somewhat right and somewhat wrong).” It had never crossed my mind that I wouldn’t need a vehicle as everyone in my hometown either owned a car or wanted to own a car. Further, I would be living about 45min away from where I was working when I got to Vancouver Island and couldn’t for the life of me think of how I would get to work. And yes, I did look into public transit — that indeed wasn’t an option.
I didn’t work for the first few weeks as I arrived early and wanted to establish my living space before my time was consumed by work. But after a few lonely weeks, I started to work and began to meet people and then it happened.
One day I was driving to work — remember, this is a pretty small town, so there are not many roads. Anyway, I was going to work and noticed two of my new friends at the side of the road. At this time, I should mention that we all worked at Mt. Washington, a snow resort and fairly major employer. So my friends had all their snow gear — skis/snowboards/boots etc. As I got closer, I was scanning for what I had assumed was a broken-down car. They must be having car troubles, I thought. But as I got closer and closer, I couldn’t find any sign of a vehicle anywhere. I pulled over (I’ll admit, even though I knew them, me pulling over was a MASSIVE deal and went against my initial response of ‘carrying on) and invited them to hitch a ride with me. My new friends were grateful and jumped in, tossing their stuff in the bed of my truck.
It was at this moment my world view, the lens I had thought I didn’t have — was broken. As they got in, my one friend said, “Thanks, Josh — it’s great to know someone with a ride.” “Yeah, sure, no problem. What, how were you guys getting to the hill today?”
“Oh, we hitch-hike.”
“Are you having car trouble?”
“Nah, man, no of us have a car. We just bum rides to the hill.”
BOOM!
Here were two people who, again, looked like me, somewhat sounded like me (a more relaxed version) and who were in a similar economic situation. But their world view was different. They didn’t see owning a car as a must-have. I recall on several other occasions my friends asking why I owned a truck, letting me know it was straightforward to get rides out of town and that I could save a lot of money in the process. This thought of hitchin’ a ride never crossed my mind. Through my lens, there were only three types of people who would need to hitchhike.
- People who were having car trouble
- People who were too poor to afford a vehicle or even public transit
- Bad people < yes, that is literally how I thought
But that wasn’t my friends’ lens. They saw hitchhiking as a legitimate form of transportation. Even more, they struggled with the idea of car ownership. Sure they knew the appeal — but the cost was too high for them to justify, especially when they could get to the hill daily without one.
But why do I tell you this story, and how does it relate to marketing?
As I discovered my friend’s lack of interest in cars, I saw dozens of ads promoting vehicle ownership to the same group of people. The actors in the ads looked like my friends down to the snowboards and skis. But when I looked at the people who owned the majority of cars in my small town, they were (for the most part) significantly older and more likely to be driving their kids to the hill than themselves. This is the issue.
Marketing, and by extension Advertising, is created in a vacuum. Yes, companies and agencies will bring in focus groups or have a diverse group of individuals weighting in creating the campaign or initiative, but rarely if ever, are people brought in from a large geographical area. They all come from the same city or town that the marketing/advertising is being created. They all share that lens. And like me, I will have beliefs and assumptions that this regional outlook has reinforced. This has been a problem for decades, but it has been exacerbated as digital marketing uses geography as a mechanism to help target ads.
I can picture a marketing director going through creating Instagram ads for my friends on Vancouver Island. They would think they’re brilliant by including a snowboard and a mountain bike (two prevalent activities) and some copy around “conquer the day with the new XYZ SUV from such-and-such.” They would launch this campaign and, because we have told ourselves that a 1–2% conversion ratio is good, feel like they “nailed it,” never wondering why the other 99% of people who saw those same ads never did a thing.
Their assumption: Not my buyer or Not in the market at this time.
Wrong.
My friends on the Island were never IN the market. They didn’t understand why anyone would want to own a car. The assumption from that marketing director is, like himself, everyone ‘wants’ a vehicle. And that is the lens that will continuously place geographical importance into the grossly misunderstood bucket — right next to the other diversity buckets and economic buckets we have issues with.
