Targeting by age still possible, "but so is travelling to work on a horse-drawn carriage"

Marketers who are still segmenting audience based on age may need to rethink their strategies. Studies launched earlier this month by both McCann Worldgroup and Entropia titled “Truth About Youth” and “Moment is the new Marketplace” respectively, encourages modern marketers to bank on "moments" rather than age.The milestones or life stages typically based on age definitions that most marketers subscribed to when devising marketing campaigns, are now too broad, Nura Yusof, McCann Malaysia planning director, explained. She added that the McCann study found that for young people aged 16 to 30, when it comes to being an adult, it is no longer about how old they are, but rather the moments that they are in."They choose when they need to be an adult. This flexibility allows them to delay complete adulthood,” she added.Agreeing with the studies above is Sulin Lau, head of marketing services at Maxis. She added that most people don't declare their age on media platforms, and age is hard to deduce from media behaviour alone. She added:Using age as a key trait in audience building is of course technically still possible, but then so is traveling to work by horse-drawn carriage.While banking on moments is important, she warned that moment-based targeting is only one of many different new ways marketers can identify audiences."What's important is not to limit your brand to any one way of thinking about audiences, but test different techniques such as CRM, contextual and technographic segmentations that work best for your brand," she said.Elaine Soh, chief marketing officer and director at Samsung Malaysia Electronics, said she definitely sees the importance of personalised marketing as consumers are now distinct and unique in the way they view, as well as interact with brands."I realise the importance of micro-moments as consumers can easily access to a brand's relevant content at different point of time and touchpoints," Soh added.Agreeing with Soh, Entropia's partner Ramakrishnan CN, stressed it is imperative for marketers to understand the moments that matter for their brand and commerce, and plug into them with the right form of content and channels."People have always lived in moments. They continuously move from one moment to another depending on where they are, who they are with, what they are doing and how they are consuming media. This means that they will respond differently to brands and messages depending on the moment that they are in," he said.With always-on media now in consumers pockets, and the deeper personal understanding of each consumer through behavioral data, Ramakrishnan said marketers now have the great opportunity to actually tap into each moment window with the right message and right channel."The opportunity [made possible by the popularity of mobile usage] of this scale did not exist earlier," he added. Therefore, Ramakrishnan said it is essential for marketers to include "moments that matter" as a part of their strategy rather than limiting themselves to only the "segments that matter".