Aging hip-hoppers eager to spend if it feels real
Even hip-hoppers have to age, and the demographics of hip-hoppers/young urbans are shifting. This may mean a bright future for marketers because the earning power of older hip-hoppers only stands to increase, according to The Young Urban Consumer Market in the U.S., a report from the Packaged Facts division of Marketresearch.com, Rockville, Md. For the study, hip-hoppers are defined as those who choose hip-hop music as a favorite music type in the Simmons Consumer Surveys of adults and teens.
Currently, 12-to-17-year-olds represent the largest segment (13 million) of young, urban consumers, but 25-to-34-year-olds are close behind (12.1 million), followed by 18-to-24-year-olds (11.6 million). The youngest group is expected to actually decline by 4.2 percent over the next five years, and the middle group is projected to grow just 2 percent.
Meanwhile, the older hip-hoppers will increase by nearly 5 percent, to reach 12.7 million.
The oldsters account for two-thirds of the overall young urban market’s aggregate income, and their aggregate income is expected to jump by 17 percent (from $402 billion to $468 billion) by 2012. The youngest group’s income will rise 7 percent, to $45 billion, and the 18-to-24-year-olds’ will grow 14 percent, to $171 billion.
Hip-hop seniors are more likely than their younger counterparts to be employed in management and professional jobs. Further, young urbans at the older end of the scale share the attributes that make marketers salivate over this overall relatively young segment of the population: unusually high brand loyalty; a penchant for spending their money now on goods ranging from electronics to cars rather than saving; and an unusually strong influence on product and fashion trends within the broader marketplace.
And the golden ticket to hip-hoppers’ hearts remains the same, whatever the shift in age pattern within the group: authenticity.
Product placement works well on this group, but credibility is key. Brands that have benefited most from hooking up with hip-hop artists are those that have been prominently featured in lyrics without the complicity of the brand (Courvoisier sales leapt after Busta Rhymes wrote a rap song about the French cognac); or are apparently spontaneously embraced by hip-hoppers (the Cadillac Escalade); or were apparently used by the artist prior to his or her becoming a brand spokesperson (50 Cent for Coca-Cola’s VitaminWater).
If you’re happy and you know it, you might be religious and 65+
Religion and age are influential factors in Americans’ overall happiness, according to a recent survey. Over 2,500 American adults were polled by Rochester, N.Y., research company Harris Interactive and asked about nine areas in their lives that contribute to their overall happiness to create a National Happiness Index, intended to track changes in happiness in the United States over time. This year’s index stands at 35 (out of a possible 100).
People who describe themselves as “very religious” come in 10 points higher than America as a whole on the Happiness Index (45 percent compared to 35 percent are considered “very happy”). In contrast, just over one-quarter (28 percent) of people who describe themselves as “not religious” were measured at that level of happiness.
Older people tend to be happier, according to the Happiness Index. Less than one in three (29 percent) in the 18-to-24 age bracket are very happy according to the survey, compared to almost one-half (47 percent) of people age 65 and older. The survey results also show a clear trend in increasing happiness between those two age groups.
Other findings include: Women are 3 percent happier than men (36 to 33); married women are 5 percent happier than single women (39 to 34); and those without credit card debt are 6 percent happier than those with credit card debt (38 to 32).
Politicians could play the Games to stand for human rights
A majority of adults in Germany (55 percent) and France (54 percent) believe their respective leaders, Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy, should not attend the opening ceremonies of the Olympics in Beijing this summer because of human rights and freedom issues, according to a poll conducted by Rochester, N.Y., research company Harris Interactive. In addition, pluralities in Italy (48 percent), Japan (45 percent), the United States (43 percent), Great Britain (43 percent) and Spain (39 percent) also believe their country’s leader should skip this year’s opening Olympic ceremonies.
More than three-quarters of adults in France (84 percent) and half the adults in Germany (51 percent) say they have heard a lot about the recent global protests surrounding the freeing of Tibet from Chinese rule. Pluralities in China itself (46 percent), Great Britain (44 percent) and the United States (41 percent) have also heard a lot about these protests; and at least three in five adults in Italy (60 percent), Japan (66 percent) and Spain (68 percent) have heard at least a little about the protests. Three-quarters of adults in Italy (75 percent) and Germany (74 percent); two-thirds of adults in Japan (69 percent), France (67 percent) and Spain (64 percent); and a majority of adults in the United States (59 percent) and Great Britain (53 percent) all believe Tibet should not be under Chinese rule.
One of the issues surrounding all of these concerns is human rights as part of a foreign policy strategy. Very strong majorities in the five European countries, the United States and Japan (between 56 percent in Japan and 85 percent in Italy) believe that human rights should be a central figure of their country’s foreign policy. Interestingly, a plurality of Chinese adults (45 percent) believe human rights should be a central part of China’s foreign policy compared to 38 percent who say that it should not be a central feature of their foreign policy.