Week 4A: Finding Your Peeps

There is a mysterious concept in the advertising world. They call it target marketing.


Kind of creeps me out.

Am I their target? Will their marketing arrows hit me?

How many points do they get for an old lady in her 50's?

Am I going to end up looking like a pin-cushion?


Chill out Crafties.

It's all about finding your peeps,

a tribe with the same vibe,

the rockers that you roll with.

For instance...

Let's say, you want to sell hip-hop CD's 'cuz your hip-hop band is all that.

Well, your Tribe with the Vibe might be these kinds of people:

• Millennials who are down with the hip-hop vibe and buying those CD's
• X-Gens who are checking out Jay-Z on facebook.
• Homies who just came back from a Kanye West concert and just sent a tweet about how amazing it was.

See, that's not so bad. But what if your band doesn't really have a CD yet and only plays in, let's say, Milwaukee? Now you need to find your local peeps in that town and invite them to your next gig.

And yeah, that's possible with social media.

So let's check out two sites and brainstorm about who their tribe is, their peeps, their target market.

Chili's

This site strikes me as clean and organized. Simple menu at the top lists a few easy choices for where you want to go. For some weird reason, the fist thing I did was scroll down to the footer. Lately, I've had this footer fetish thing going on.

Well, way down there is a link about nutrition. Amused, because I think of Chili's as fun and maybe delicious, but not nutritious. I take the bait. There, is actually a lot of information about the food. Allergens are listed as well as a long list of their menu items with all manner of food stats like fat, carb and calories. Lots more than that, even.

Then we get to the meat of the matter. Or anti-meat actually. Here they admit that the vegetarian dishes listed may not be perfect. Meat products may wander in (so to speak), so they can't guarantee anything for sure. Nice transparency. Still, there are many dishes listed there. My conclusion is that many vegetarians would feel comfortable there and be able to have a nice meal.

So, we have stumbled across the first two groups that Chili's may be targeting. The Health Conscious and Vegetarians.

Next, we click on "Chili's at Home". I assumed this would be a take out service but was surprised to find that Chili's has created a line of single portion frozen food that can be found in grocery stores. Who might they be targeting?

Well, they do have multi-serve packs so it could be the parent of a family with kids. More likely they are trying to appeal to single folks, though. There seems to be an emphasis on appetizers and single serving offerings. The convenience of popping it in the microwave is great if you only need to feed yourself. So..

Health Conscious * Vegetarians   *  Families  *  Singles

Back to the top of the page and click on the Menu. Here you find beautiful photos of their offerings with no prices. Click order, fill in your zip, and you can easily order food to take home. So very convenient. So we add busy people to the list and perhaps busy people who can't cook that well or just don't want to do it. We'll call them un-cooks.

Maxine's target market list.

Health Conscious * Vegetarians  *  Singles  *  Families  *  Busy People  * Un-cooks

Of course, not everybody can afford this food, so we could add some income. Maybe start with $60K per year for a family, shooting up to, well superstar. Of course, their personal assistant is sent in the limo to pick up this posh vegetarian cuisine, darling.

 The Yellow Deli

The ultra, uber first thing I noticed is that I can't read the menu at the top. Frowning, I scrolled down through a bunch of photos of buildings, hoping to satisfy my footer fetish. Not much there. I drooped in my chair.

Maybe these people sell buildings?

So I blindly clicked on a link in the top menu. Oh, I get it now! Maybe the hard-to-read top menu is locations? And when you click on a location, then there is a minor little menu on the left. If you look real hard, you can see something called Menu. Amazingly, there was no food listed on the first page.

I decided to give them one more chance and clicked on Photos. More buildings.

I got bored and called Chili's for a late night snack. Sent my man to pick it up (thanks, babe).

What do we conclude about The Yellow Deli? The market they are targeting might be the following.

Architects?  *  Realtors?  *  People who like Chandeliers?  *  People who don't like footers?

I don't know, but I can hardly wait for my Guacamole Burger with a side of Loaded Mashed Potatoes.

Maxine