South Africa, March 17 -- Go too far back, and you'll lose your audience on age grounds alone - and despite the reality that the "grey rand" is the most powerful around, many agency clevers think the world belongs to the young.

The mistake of misjudging audience demographics

As an aside, when I was working years ago on a newspaper that shall remain nameless, the editor was enamoured by researchers who revealed that the best target to go for was the 19- to 24-year-olds.

Said editor then decreed that we flood the paper with articles about football, fashion, and kwaito music - the natural stamping ground for that age demographic.

That decision ignored the reality that, even in those days, people in that age group simply did not read news...