Customer Profiles

MOST IMPORTANT TOOL

One of the prime tools of advertising is profiling the customers you wish to reach. Knowing your target audience's characteristics is vital to advertising success, and this important research step cannot be skipped in any advertising project. The more you know about your audience, the more you can cater your advertisements to their likes and dislikes. The advertiser can use many models, such as the values and lifestyles system (VALS), to analyze demographic and psychographic profiles. For example, you wouldn't advertise denture bonding powder in a high school student newspaper, would you? Heaven's no! You might get the custodial staff all excited, but the high schoolers could care less. They want cutting edge coolness. Poly-Grip is definitely not c ool. While this is a simple and perhaps far-fetched example, it clearly shows the importance of demographic research.

KIDS, KIDS, KIDS . . .

Aerospace education's main market is kids, especially for the realm of this study. Aerospace education can be a powerful tool for the general public, but it's dynamic lessons are best learned by young minds, open to exploration and learning "neat" th ings. Parents are another important audience to aerospace education. Even though AE is geared towards kids, a lot of sideline activity is associated with parents, especially when the more advanced forms of the industry come into play, such as actually fl ying in a general aviation airplane. So an advertising executive must keep both sides in mind: the exploring mind of a child and the cautious mind of a parent. Sometimes these two elements can come into ferocious difference and confrontation. Advertising for aerospace education must bring these two views into harmony to be successful. If parents are not impressed by the safety and quality of the program, then no matter what promotion is run, the kids will not participate. On the other hand if a promotio n is so full of "we're so safe, and full of quality education for your youngster," kids will find this very adultish, boring and repetitive from the stuff which they've already rebelled. The advertising would then backfire in that the kids wouldn't want to par ticipate. The young kids of today are more hip to technology and understand the meaning of value. They grow up in a world savvy to international trends and communication that spans the globe. More and more, computers and technology are becoming an importan t part of life, not just work, for the upcoming generation now in middle and high school. Here's a cute, fictional portrayal of the future:
Eight-year-old Matthew asks mom to increase his allowance from $3 to $5. After some family haggling, they agree on the terms and mom calls Allowance Express to authorize an increase on Matthew's personal debit card. He then adjusts the personal pigg y bank program on his computer to reflect the increase and e-mails the news of his successful negotiation to his buddy Mark. They plan an indulgent Saturday afternoon of shopping for new CD-ROM games (Coltun-Webster:S-1).
While this is a farce, it does have some truth to it and is clearly how things could come to be with the advances in personal computing and legislation in telecommunications recently. In 1994 the Zandle Group did a study on youth and technology. It shows that of 300 8-to-12-year-olds, computer use in schools runs at 91%, with 51% using computers at home and 16% using on-line services such as CompuServe and America Online (Colton-Webster:S-2).

NOT ALL IS HAPPY

Even though technology will certainly permeate throughout the next generations' lives, not all kids are so lucky to have access to it at appropriate levels at the current time. An advertiser must look at the way people live before making a judgmen t. The lower class has difficulty finding the means to purchase high-tech devices such as computers for their kids because of the high cost involved. Schools in lower class, industrial, working neighborhoods also have a hard time keeping pace with the res t of society, even in the state of Washington where technology usage is higher than the national average. Although nearly all schools are equipped with some sort of computer, students' access to it is sometimes severely limited by either the equipment itse lf, due to age, or the lack of training on the teachers part (Long:A10) So not all kids are as deft at computing as it sometimes seems. These kids are more prone to be tough and street smart. They are often "latch-key" kids with both parents working or only one parent altogether. They have to fend for themselves in a sometimes very hostile environment filled with adult crimes.

HOME SCHOOL NICHE

One niche that has become more and more evident to aerospace education, especially in Washington, is home-schooled kids. These kids are taught at home by their own parents or by a group cooperative formed by several parents. Many home-schooled s tudents have to seek out math and science electives that are outside of the home. Programs such as the Aviation Academy serve their purpose well. These kids are often very intelligent and are infrequently violent. When compared to publicly schooled kids, home schoolers often fly right by them in test scores. This is due to the high parental involvement with their education-the parents are always making sure that they get a good education.

7.5 BILLION SPENDABLE DOLLARS

Buying power is what drives advertising, and the buying power of our children is impressive. Kids spend more than $7.5 billion a year themselves alone and also have considerable influence on $130 billion of their parents' pocketbooks (Colton-Webster:S-1).

Advertisers in aerospace education must address the young market, but other audiences and target markets demand other, more specialized attention.

PARENTS AN INTERESTING BUNCH

Parents can be an interesting bunch. Since aerospace education is tightly focused at getting children's attention, many times the attitudes of the parent's can vary greatly, since this is not the section of the population AE advertising is targeted . Nonetheless, however, this group has heavy influence on the target group and must be considered in nearly all advertising, but especially at the administrative level. Since the demographics of this group are so vast, aerospace education must focus on th e one thing that they all have in common: varying degrees of parental instincts to protect their children from danger and to foster their education and growth. Aerospace education has to cater to the carefulness of the parents and ensure that in every ins tance all activities are safe. In this case, targeting parents is more of a public relations and management function rather than an advertising function.

TEACHERS A DELIGHT

Teachers are a delight to the aerospace education advertiser. It takes little to get this group interested, since exploration is a main theme in all of academe. The target for aerospace education advertisers are science and math teachers, as thes e seem to be the group most receptive to the ideals that aerospace education represents. Teachers are in search of curricula all of the time. They need new things to liven up their lectures and class assignments. Most teachers that are interested in aeros pace education are older, more mature individuals rather than young teachers just out of school.

ADMINISTRATORS CAUTIOUS

Administrators monitor and verify that educators are teaching the curriculum according to the guidelines that the specific school districts and the state have set forth. They are most concerned with the management of the school rather than the on e-on-one education that happens in the classroom. Administrators think about liability and lawsuits, while the teacher dreams up activities and worries about behavior concerns. The administrators tend to be older, having moved up the ranks of management to their positions. An administrator has a network of other administrators which can be an advantage to an aerospace education advertiser. Teachers often find that administrators are out of touch and highly aloof. This situation can create radical con flicts, and the advertiser must be aware of this when planning campaigns for both groups.
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Created: Tuesday, March 05, 1996, 6:25:57 PM Last Updated: Tuesday, March 05, 1996, 6:25:57 PM