It used to be that you could create a broad campaign that ran in one or two mediums to persuasively reach your target group. Messaging was heavy on product features and specific benefits. Not anymore. Today the message, the medium and the audience are changing.

We’ve entered an age of visual saturation, sound bites and the micro attention span. The number of images, voices and an unending stream of new products shouting for our attention, has accelerated beyond critical mass. At the same time, media outlets have proliferated and in so doing have fragmented the public’s mind. Consumers have developed mental filters to help them guard against hyper-communication.

Added to this the idea of the ‘average American’ or mass market is gone. In fact demographics expert Peter Francese writes in a new Ad Age white paper, “the average American has been replaced by a complex, multidimensional society that defies simplistic labeling.” The new 2010 Census will support this. It is expected that we will see the following:

• The population is getting older
• Minorities are the new majority
• The most prevalent type of US household is married with no kids
• Single person households are a close second
• The nation is moving from the Northeast to the South and West (3 million people moved South or west in the past 10 years)

So what do you do? Today it’s about creating a relationship with your customer. This is not really a new idea it’s just being re-invented.

• The buying public is still out there. What’s gone is their willingness to pay attention to drivel. So identify the niches within your audience and craft your message and medium to them. Create communications that tell as story and speak to the psyche of the consumer, the emotional benefits of your brand
• Utilize technology to reach your audience. It’s customizable and the audience can control it.

A brief example of this is Geico, a company that runs ads featuring Caveman, blinking eyes on dollars, geckos and more. Car insurance has a broad potential audience by gender, race, age and lifestyle preference.  The Geico scattershot approach works because of this. Some spots are silly to appeal to the younger audience, others are more straightforward. Each message is targeted to relate to each specific target group on their own terms. Each approach is as different as the consumer group itself.

So bottom line you can’t generalize about your target group anymore and you need to be creative and customize with message and medium for each niche in your overall audience.