My friend Bonnie was talking about carrying her granddaughter around Sarasota, Florida, when the girl was 18 months old. (She is now seven.) Because there are fewer children here than other places, the baby was a novelty, and she always got bucketfuls of attention, in part because there are so many grandparents who live in Florida.
Something about that surprised me. I guess I always knew different geographic areas have different market makeups, but I have never thought what that really means in terms of day-to-day operation and how it compares with the area I know well (urban Nebraska).
If there are more grandparents here (many who have come from other places after retirement), that means you have a need for different products than places with a lot of kids and few grandparents. I know it seems obvious, but it’s interesting to see it in action in the lives of the few people I know here.
Bonnie’s daughter works at an optician’s office, but it’s a very high-end office–to serve the wealthy clientele who can afford to retire here. She has found it’s difficult for someone her age to make friends and it’s difficult to find good jobs. When she moved here with her mom from Wisconsin, she didn’t know she wouldn’t like those parts of living here. Now she seems very settled, and she’s made a great life here. Her daughter, I understand, seems to always know people wherever she goes.
Marketing is different here. People have more money overall–especially in Sarasota. Many are in a leisure stage of their lives, or close to it. There is a relaxed aura about them and their needs. But they can be demanding.
That means products and services are geared toward leisure, affluence and extreme customer service.
On the other hand, wherever you have affluent people, you also have lower income people to serve them. So, you also see marketing to those consumers. That’s true of anywhere. Maybe the real difference here is the gap between the two classes…to be very general.
The result for me is that I can see a real need for products, services and messages that fit this crowd in Florida–for very good reasons. I’ve always had a sort of cynicism about marketing, believing there was something fake about it. (My dirty little secret.) But this helps me see there are real needs being filled by those who sell things anywhere in the world.
