Zoned

Posted on November 11, 2003 in Consuming Neighborhood Quizzes

Marketers get all the publicity.

Here’s an evaluation of the people who live in my zip code according to a “marketing research” (read “sells services to spam emailers”) company named Claritas:

Number	Name
06	Winner’s Circle
03	Movers & Shakers
11	God’s Country
05	Country Squires
08	Executive Suites
Click on the segment name for more detail

From the sounds of it, my zip code glows gold for mass marketers. Compare the neighborhood where my mother lives (or what is left of it after the fire):

Number	Name
47	City Startups
53	Mobility Blues
60	Park Bench Seniors
34	White Picket Fences
41	Sunset City Blues
Click on the segment name for more detail

She’s living in an area that’s not as plump pickings. Still, patent medicine shows can reap some benefits as can businesses that regularly attempt to plug their product names into the brain via the medium of television.

The homeless are invisible in such surveys. I checked a zip code where many live and Claritas makes no mention of their existence. No address, no existence as many of the homeless say to me.

One has to wonder about the tone of the marketers. Consider the description for “Mobility Blues”:

Young singles and single parents make their way to Mobility Blues, a segment of working-class neighborhoods in America’s satellite cities. Racially mixed and under 25 years old, these transient Americans tend to have modest lifestyles due to their lower-income blue-collar jobs. Surveys show they excel in going to movies, playing basketball and shooting pool.

Can you say “low-brow, probably not worth it?”

But this is how the mind of the marketer works. He/she discriminates between “winners” and “losers” (who often have the blues for good reason.) The one benefit of living in such a neighborhood is possibly that the level of junk mail is very low because there is very little money to pry out.

Filched from Nurse Ratched who has resurrected herself.