Interesting Demographics Argument Spawned From Digital Hollywood

I spent yesterday down in San Jose, mingling with burgeoning start ups and venture capitalists, at Digital Hollywood’s Building Blocks event. The opening day of the three day affair was littered with top notch speakers and panelists. A great mix of backgrounds graced the stages of the different presentation rooms, including agency minds, entrepreneurs, portal giants, and VC partners. As with any event, most panelists stayed clear of throwing big punches, and there weren’t many earth shattering moments, but I did walk away with a few interesting insights.

In an event that touched on most things emerging, with a track session every hour devoted to mobile or social media or video, I heard an interesting argument for the proliferation of young consumers in these spaces. There was a discussion taking place on how to target consumers demographically and contextually in digital and emerging spaces, and Mark Walsh of Genius Rocket cited an interesting analogy. When arguing in support of why older consumers would not adopt media in emerging outlets, he referenced the Stockholm Syndrome, which says that a captive, if held long enough, develops certain loyalties toward their captor. Walsh likened this to the media consumption choices of older demographics. For example, the baby boomer crowd has always had three television networks to watch from, and have come to choose media based on when and where the network says it will be distributed. Meanwhile, younger generations are overloaded with choices for consumption, and we choose to accept it where, when, and how we choose.

While not totally ground breaking in its simplest form, I found the analogy quite perceptive, and it can definitely be considered when crossing certain demographics with certain media outlets.