Traditional products and services have had a hard time relating to Explorers. file photo | nmg
A fool and his float are soon split. No, I’m not referring to
the neighbourhood M-Pesa agent who never has any float, but instead I’m
illustrating an attitude that defines the youngest breed in the
segmentation series, the Y&R 4Cs.
They are called
The Explorer and they will go to all lengths to discover new frontiers,
seek new experiences and tear away from the proverbial box.
The
Prophets in the Good Book will tell you that there is a little Explorer
in each one of us and that we should leave our childish ways
gracefully; yet some of us go kicking and screaming. Yes, if members of
The Explorer market segment are not young, they are young at heart and
therefore indulge in childish things gleefully.
Out of
the seven segments, Explorer, Aspirer, The Mainstream, Succeeder,
Reformer, Struggling Poor and Resigned Poor, no one strictly embodies
one trait but rather a set, usually made up of two of the types.
You may be a Succeeder with an Aspirer slant, Struggling Poor
with an Aspirer’s perspective, a Mainstreamer with an Explorer
mentality, or a series of other varying combinations.
What
marketers are concerned about are the primary characteristics of the
group that they intend to activate because it guides the overall method
and strategy.
As Explorers are always on the look out
for emerging trends, if not actually creating them, it is therefore
critical to engender a sense of newness and inventiveness.
Unilever
appealed to The Explorer in mothers when they continuously reinvented
their leading washing detergent — New Omo, Brand New Omo, Brand New Omo
with Powerfoam, on and on they went.
However, it seems
that in the developed world mothers within Generation X had an
undercurrent of the Explorer running within their Mainstreamer veins.
This
is because they emerged out of the Baby Boomer Generation that hailed
purified Mainstreamer values to overcome the negative effects of WWII
(World War 2) that prevailed at the time.
In Africa
the mothers were of a different calibre. They clearly espoused the
gentrified Mainstreamer mentality and turned away from the clever, edgy
advertising welcoming the down to earth ‘we are in this together’ type
of commercials that the P&G flagship washing powder brand, Ariel,
was splashing on the airwaves.
It pays to intimately
know who you are addressing because Explorers reject the staid and
boring and instead they embrace the latest and fan-dangled styles.
When
Rupert Murdoch spoke about the Digital Natives who will never know a
world without ubiquitous broadband Internet access, he meant this group
that is helplessly attached to Snap, Gram and WhatsApp.
They
don’t just want to consume news, they want to be an integral part of
its creation; they want you to take notice and hear their unique and
profound voice.
To capture their devotion, brands must
not only offer cutting edge tech and appeal, but also supply the means
of self expression where their association with the product is deemed to
shift it into a higher gear.
Traditional products and
services have had a hard time relating to Explorers and inadvertently
opened up gaps where new types of brands have made monumental headway.
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