Reading Right to Left in Segmentation

Doing things backwards rarely makes sense. Usually it means undergoing a task directly opposite to standard practice. There are many parallels in the scientific community that led to breakthroughs by turning conventional theory on its head. It often involves re-ordering an established stepped process, resulting in a markedly different outcome. The same concept can be applied when one looks at segmentation in the business/disability space.

Typically in marketing, one first buckets a population into homogeneous groups to speak to their common experience. Soccer moms, NASCAR dads and baby boomers are excellent examples as they all have a set of common experience that can be targeted. Marketers tend to drill down to the smallest segments, bundling these segments as appropriate to attain efficiencies along the way. When composing a message the first question one asks is, who is the audience, and how can I speak to them as directly as possible?

Disability is a little different. The typical approach is to segment based on medical diagnosis, which has been the bastion of charities and health-related businesses. As we have previously suggested, the ‘holy-grail’ in business/disability is to bond the entire disability market to a common lifestyle brand. Let’s envision the 1.1 billion person disability market at the core of three concentric circles, a bull’s eye if you will. Immediately surrounding that core, are the stakeholders in disability – family, friends, employers etc. This group understands disability and is swayed by things that marketers do to address the disability market. This group unto itself has a potential size of 2 billion people globally. Finally, in our outer ring of the ‘bull’s eye’, is the broader market. The broader market is made up of the 3+ billion people on the planet that define pop culture, societal norms and the general limits prior to which revolts take place.

Disability currently has a poor standing in the brand library of the broader market. The approach to date has been to target the center of the bull’s eye directly, speaking directly to specific conditions and only those conditions. The real hay to be made in business/disability is to start with the broader market by trotting out a positive brand/twist on disability. Taking the notion that most PWD don’t define themselves as disabled, going to them with a direct disability message falls flat on its face. A more subtle approach is required.

If you sell the broader market, the stakeholders and PWD will follow. This statement simply says that what is most important to Jane Q Public, is also important to PWD and Stakeholders. All one has to do is find a way to connect disability to it. By defining disability in terms of pop culture and mainstream desire, we start to relate to its context. How many people with disabilities (or anyone else) can relate to a one-legged skier hurdling down a mountain? Last time I checked, disabled sports weren’t anywhere near Nielson’s top ten rated shows. Yet this is the imagery used in the disability space. Now, if you put Simon Cowell’s butt in a wheelchair with Christina Aguilera on his lap belting out ‘Ain’t no other man’, you’re in the right ballpark.

You are telling your market base, “Hey, this is how we include our Customers with Disabilities. You should too”…without actually saying the words. It’s got to be bold, it’s got to be jarring and it’s got to be so positive that even Walt Disney himself would scratch his head. It must center on what everyone desires or denotes important, not just people with disabilities. If you are successful in getting the broader market to open a door to PWD, the other two parts of the ‘bull’s eye’ will follow.

Organizations have been approaching PWD and their stakeholders as a foreign market that has nothing in common with the rest of society, akin to how one would pitch Marvin the Martian. The average American male with a disability likes football, wants to date (at least) a Cowboys cheerleader and probably eats too much red meat. If your firm can put a disability twist on Peyton Manning hugging a cheerleader while eating a cheeseburger, you’ll sell more product to all three bands of the ‘bull’s eye’…at least amongst men.

Marketers currently message on disability using as sledge-hammer. That may work if you’re selling pills and canes, but some subtle scalpel dancing is needed in every other product/service group. Direct messaging is proven a turn-off to PWD, and is risky with their stakeholders. By integrating a disability message in the broader market, the target group follows. While backwards to convention, this approach propels your firm forward.