There’s no shortage of creepy, Orwellian stuff happening these days.
Last week, for instance, we heard how high-tech automobiles are increasingly capable of sending out personal data tailor-made for targeted marketing.
Nobody likes their lives being scrutinized and packaged for those weasels trying to peddle product. But then again, it can be good for a chuckle.
Here’s an example. On Monday Toronto’s Environics Analytics, a marketing company, unveiled its new “population segmentation system” called PRIZM5. Essentially, PRIZM5 divides Canadians into 68 demographic profiles. This info is helpful for their 200-plus clients, including government, retailers, banks, credit unions, not-for-profits, and purveryors of insurance, pharmaceutical products and telecommunications.
Analytics creates its demographic profiles using info from Stats Canada and Equifax (a consumer credit reporting agency) as well as doing its own research.
With categories such as “Urban Digerati” and “Low-Rise Renters,” these PRIZM5 profiles are entertaining reading. Added bonus: visit the Environics Analytics site (environicsanalytics.ca) and you can punch in any Canadian postal code — including your own — to see what marketing pigeonhole you’re slotted into.
We live in a Saanich neighbourhood I’d diplomatically label as “working class.” Couches (and sometimes toilets) are abandoned on curbs for giveaway. Our next-door neighbour has a chicken coop.
PRIZM5 labels our neighbourhood as “Second City Retirees” with residents working in service-sector or blue-collar jobs. Second City Retirees are mostly 55-plus folk with “middle incomes” that allow the occasional cruise vacation or a trip to Jamaica or Florida.
My wife and I are indeed middle-aged. And we once took a cruise. (I hated it.) Aside from that, the Second City Retirees-tag seems off base. PRIZM5 says we love paddling about in canoes and meeting friends at donut shops for a chin-wag. Wrong and wrong. I last paddled a canoe in 1984; it left me with sunburned ears and a life-long detestation for non-motorized water transport.
Of course, there’s bound to be anomalies to such a survey, says Barry Heuman, Environics Analytics’ vice-president of research and development.
“We’re describing neighbourhoods. This is critical to understand. We’re not describing you, Adrian. We’re describing Adrian’s neighbourhood.”
Just for fun, I took a tour of Greater Victoria just to see what PRIZM5 has to say about us. (Google Maps allows you to look up the postal codes of specific neighbourhoods.)
Boomerang City: a row of waterfront houses in Cordova Bay. According to PRIZM5, the average household income is $126,272. “These adults tend to be baby boomers who have parlayed good educations into well paying jobs in science, government and the arts.” Boomerangers enjoy aerobics classes, yoga, theatre and ballet. (These people sound annoying to me, not sure why.)
Lunch at Tim’s: a rougher neighbourhood in Tillicum. Average household income is $67,248. “Downscale singles and solo parent families living in old, single detached homes, semis and duplexes.” Residents enjoy “local eateries like Tim Hortons” as well as burger joints and fish-and-chips. Typical pastimes are knitting, fishing and movie-going. They enjoy country music, casinos and “the closer-to-home thrill of buying lottery tickets.” (Love “Lunch at Tim’s” but this lifestyle sounds bleak.)
Cosmopolitan Elite: a primo chunk of Uplands waterfront. Average household income is $469,882. This is the wealthiest demographic in Canada — “a haven to new-money entrepreneurs and heirs to old-money fortunes.” Expensive homes, luxury imports, private schools. Supporters of opera, ballet, symphony. Enjoy travelling to Europe, U.K. and Asia as well as luxury cruises, spa resorts and vacation cottages. (Think the top-hatted, cane-wielding guy from Monopoly.)
Low-rise Renters: a neighbourhood in Esquimalt, near the naval base. Average household income is $53,694. This is PRIZM5’s most “economically challenged” category, “a world of mostly poor young singles and single-parent families.” Mostly white and poorly educated, Low-rise Renters enjoy skateboarding, playing basketball and “gambling, whether at a casino, bingo hall or video terminal.” Trips to an upscale retailer or fancy restaurant are out of the question. “Instead, they shop for bargains at second-hand stores and discount groceries.” (This lifestyle makes “Lunch at Tim’s” sound more appealing.)
Some of the PRIZM5 descriptions are weirdly specific. Urbane Villagers enjoy dinner theatre; Asian Sophisticates like to go sailing and windsurfing; Urban Digerati are into “bar-hopping and hitting film festivals.”
And the Beau Monde embrace such values as “vitality and [the] pursuit of intensity” (the pursuit of what?).
My favourite is the “Trucks and Trades” folk, who like to drive pickups, hunt, fish, watch mixed martial arts and get “tattoos to commemorate it all” (no doubt such an elaborate tattoo would take up one’s entire chest or back).
So type in your own postal code and see how one of Canada’s largest marketing companies has neatly summarized your lifestyle.
“Probably 80 per cent of the time,” Heumann promised, “it’s bang on.”
