You Are Your Zipcode
Decatur Metro | May 6, 2008 | 9:15 am
Have you ever wanted your entire life generalized by a cute little icon and what you purchase? Then do I have the website for you!
Actually, I’ve been sitting on this post for a few months now and finally have a free moment to write it. And due to my procrastination…the AJC kinda beat me to it. They wrote an article a few days back about “hip” zip codes and referenced the cool resource I was going to point out. There’s a division of Nielsen called “Claritas”, which has an online tool called “Prizm” that lets advertisers pinpoint market segments by zip code for sales/marketing initiatives. The cool thing is that there is a free version that anyone can play with. Check it out here.
After entering your zip, the site will spit back a list of five market segments that dominate your area. The real interesting part is clicking on these cleverly named market segments and seeing which group you belong to. It not only gives a median HH income, age range and education level, but also gives a list of “life style traits”. These are places you’re likely to eat, magazines you read, and TV shows you’re most likely to watch based on the segment. While its obviously not perfect, I remember the first time I tried this out and it pinpointed the exact car I drove. Was I that predictable? Probably.
Anyway, it’s a fun distraction if you’re looking for one.
So, what’s Decatur? According to the software, the city is dominated by the very rich that are likely to own their own business, the pretty rich that like to live in town, families with few kids, young yuppies, and middle-age suburbanites. Hmm…not sure I really needed a software to tell me that…but its still kinda cool/freaky as to how accurate it can be.
I’ve worked with Prism data professionally and IMHO, I think it’s quite dated– seems like it has a bad case of the 90s. Its behavior examples are indicative of that– Houlihans and Range Rovers? Very 90′s. Note too that the income levels are a little skewed towards 10 years ago. If I were guessing on 30030, I’d say “Money and Brains” and “Young Digerti” are well reperesented. Just my 2 cents.
Yeah Sheila…early 00s at the latest. And I agree with you about income levels…the “young influentials” in this town make a lot more than $47k per HH.
I agree. It’s dated. If you put in 30030, you get a variety of childless categories. That may have been true a while ago, but not now…
The problem with most ZIP code demographics tools is that the only reliable data they can use are Census 2000 data, which is pretty darn old. Although incomes may have increased significantly over the last decade, the “relative” rankings between ZIP codes have remained mostly unchanged. So a ZIP code that was ranked in the top 1% of the country 10 years ago most likely remains in the top 1% today. There are exceptions, of course, such as areas affected by Hurricane Katrina for example.
If you’re interested in ZIP code demographics, you might want to check out ZipWho.com. That site gives a nationwide percentile ranking in addition to the raw median income dollar amounts. You can supply different search criteria like: Give me the list of all California neighborhoods with median income over $100k, with at least half its residents being college graduates, at least 5% Hispanic, and median age between 35 and 45.