Environics Analytics Launches New Products To Help Businesses Target Their Customers

Environics Analytics today announced the release of the second generation of its popular segmentation system, PRIZM C2, updated with the 2006 Census, newly released Social Values from Environics Research and EA’s 2009 Demographic Estimates and Projections (DEP) database. At the same time, the Toronto-based company is launching ENVISION, a web-based micromarketing tool that provides business intelligence on customers and markets anywhere in Canada.

The release of ENVISION comes at a time when businesses and not-for-profits are struggling with challenges brought on by the global economic downturn. A recent Business Week survey of executives found that more than half believe that sophisticated analytics are critical to ensuring that their marketing dollars are well spent. Recognizing these needs, Environics Analytics has created an advanced but easy-to-use analytics tool to help marketers better reach their customers and prospects.

“This is the time for marketers to be smarter about how they spend their money,” says Jan Kestle, president of Environics Analytics. “Our new products can help users efficiently find their best customers, whether the targeting is based on their lifestage, their assets, what language they speak at home or their views towards green products.”

Like its earlier version, PRIZM C2 classifies all Canadians into one of 66 lifestyle types—with names like Cosmopolitan Elite, Electric Avenues, Les Chics and Lunch at Tim’s—based on their demographics, lifestyles and Social Values. But this second-generation model reflects demographic and values shifts that have occurred between 2001 and 2006 and, thanks to 2009 DEP, includes accurate current-year demographics.

While the overall segmentation schema has not changed dramatically, PRIZM C2 captures subtle differences that are important to understanding the complexity of the Canadian populace. Many clusters have evolved. Cosmopolitan Elite, a traditionally older and wealthy lifestyle type, has grown somewhat younger as a result of the increase of well-off, middle-aged families in Alberta and upscale neighbourhoods like Toronto’s Rosedale. Pets & PCs, an upscale suburban group, has expanded in size and, now 5.2 percent of the population, is the largest cluster as a result of the growth in the suburbs of many major cities.

According to Kestle, PRIZM C2 is essential to the success of diversity marketing campaigns. Over 1.2 million South Asians live in Canada, their number having increased between the last two censuses at a rate seven times faster than that of the general population. PRIZM C2 identifies those neighbourhoods that are most South Asian: Cluster 21 South Asian Society is almost half South Asian and is home to about a quarter of Canada's South Asian population. But where do the rest live? PRIZM C2 shows that another 50 percent live in above-average concentrations in 16 other segments—ranging in socioeconomic status from number 3 (out of 66) to number 64. After South Asian Society, the largest concentrations are in suburban Cluster 11 Pets and PCs and downscale urban Cluster 46 Newcomers Rising. For marketers seeking to reach South Asian consumers, they need to understand the distinctive lifestyles in Clusters 11, 21 and 46.

"Within Canada’s large ethnocultural groups there is as much diversity as between the groups", explains Michael Adams, author of Unlikely Utopia and President and Founder of the Environics group. "Generational status, family structure, employment and, yes, even mindset, vary widely. The values and attitudes that we have been studying for over twenty-five years in Canada have helped us see this from an altitude of thirty-five thousand feet. With PRIZM C2, we can help marketers and policy advisors use these insights to better design their messages and programs on the ground."

As Adams continues, "While South Asian families in PRIZM C2’s Pets and PCs and South Asian Society segments will tighten their belts along with most Canadians in this economy, our findings suggest that these two groups do not exhibit the same degree of financial concern about the future as their compatriots living downtown, and downscale, in Newcomers Rising. Those highly educated newcomers have fallen thirteen rungs of sixty-six on the socioeconomic ladder. This is important information for consumer marketers but equally important for those in government and NGOs who need to know in which neighbourhoods to make those critical investments in these hard times.”

ENVISION, the company’s new microtargeting tool, uses a point-and-click interface to allow users to create custom maps, customer profiles and executive summary reports along with rankings for markets, behaviours and product consumption. Companies and not-for-profits can classify their best customers, and most important target segments, and thereby find the most promising prospects to develop marketing campaigns at the national, regional and local levels.

ENVISION also draws on Canada’s most comprehensive set of demographic, marketing and media databases, offering EA’s newly updated segmentation system, PRIZM C2, just-released Social Values from Environics Research and EA’s 2009 Demographic Estimates and Projections (DEP) database. It brings together key Canadian media and marketing databases through PRIZM C2 links to data from Statistics Canada*, PMB, BBM Canada, infoCanada, Polk, NADBank, TeleAtlas and Canadian Financial Monitor. ENVISION was developed specifically for the Canadian marketplace by veteran research analysts, modelling statisticians and marketing pros.

“ENVISION leverages our years of experience in the field, including the lessons we learned regarding which variables Canadians want in a demographic report and how to choose the target clusters from a customer profile,” says developer Gary Wood, Vice President of Software Development for Environics Analytics. “The result is a powerful online platform that’s fast, affordable and easy to use. Everybody’s got a web browser so there’s nothing to install. The average entry-level marketing analyst could learn how to use the system and be productive in about 15 minutes.” But ENVISION also addresses the needs of the company CEO: One of the unique features is that it produces an automated, 20-page high-level summary report that combines insightful text, maps and graphics as well as more traditional tables and charts.

According to Jan Kestle, the new product represents an advance in information accessibility and application. “With ENVISION, we can customize both the data components and the functionality by industry, even for each client, helping our customers be more productive at a lower cost,” Kestle continues. “This is what businesses need in the best of times and even more so in our current economy. And this new software captures analytical methods that we’ve developed over decades from working with hundreds of customers in dozens of industries. So it’s exciting for us to put our expertise at our clients’ fingertips.”