What should marketers take away from the latest Canadian Census? Look at how our population is growing. Between 2001 and 2006, the population grew by 5.4 percent—about 1 percent a year—which is about the same growth we‘ve had for 30 years. But the real difference is that immigration is the main driver of that growth. We’re also aging as a population. The median age in Canada is now 40, having jumped two years since 2001. And the visible minority population increased by 27 percent—five times faster than the overall population. Our four large mega-markets accounted for all the growth in Canada: Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary and Montreal. Calgary is growing twice as fast as the rest of the country. Vancouver and the Golden Horseshoe of Toronto are growing at high rates. And the big turnaround story was Saskatchewan, which lost population from 2001 to 2006 but grew between 2006 and 2008. Meanwhile, many rural areas are undergoing population decline. As a result, the country is seeing more fragmentation in the marketplace, which creates challenges for companies.

When it comes to income, Calgary has the highest level of income, about $100,000 a year and now surpasses Toronto. Many of the high-income places relate to high population growth, so Calgary and Edmonton are growing in both population and income. That high-end market is increasing, and there were declines in low-income places. It’s important to understand your trade area at the neighbourhood level. In our big cities, there’s a contrast between central cities and suburbs. We expect the suburbs to be growing more rapidly and to be younger. But the suburbs are also growing much more rapidly among those aged 65 and older. Some of those suburbs were settled 35 years ago and that population has aged in place. But Boomers are also moving out to the suburbs to retire. So the shift is challenging for companies, for products and services and for infrastructure.

Meanwhile, immigration is at high levels. We’ve been bringing in 250,000 people a year for the last decade. The visible minority population is also growing, with one in six residents considering themselves to be a member of this group—five million Canadians. The South Asian population is now 1 million people and larger than the Chinese population. The other story of diversity is that it’s no longer concentrated only in Toronto and Vancouver. About half the urban areas in Canada are made up of immigrants. Within five years, that visible minority group will be a majority.

What’s ahead? More of the same. We’re going to grow by about 1 percent a year. We’ll see that growth concentrated in Alberta, along the West Coast and in Toronto’s Golden Horseshoe. And the largest areas will continue to attract immigrants, particularly in areas where immigrants have already settled. One of the issues we’re going to see is the growth in retirement communities. We expect more older consumers, more empty-nesting couples. Early indications are that Boomers are staying in the labour market longer than previous generations, even before the current economic upheaval. Some Boomers are moving out to property on the lake or to houses on golf courses. We’ll see a more educated consumer. Finally, we’ll see increased cultural diversity in large urban areas, including places other than Toronto and Vancouver. Many demographic trends are fairly predictable. The devil is in the detail. You need to drill down geographically to understand various population groups at small levels of geography. The good news is that we have the data, analytics tools and technology to understand what’s happening.

An interesting question is what’s going to happen to the Baby Boomers over the next 30 years. Deferred gratification was the mental posture of the previous generation. In my family, we specialized in the delayed gratification until the next life. That changed with the feminist movement and suddenly we had the democratic right to hedonism—with girls joining the boys in having fun. These days, we’re more likely to have fun during the day at Starbucks or taking a vacation somewhere when we can get away. We all know you can’t learn without having fun. Our research shows that Boomers continue to be about taking classes and exploring new pursuits. In the past organized religion was the way to express your spirituality. Now people have a spiritual quest.

We’ve been doing an annual survey since 1983, with a sample of 2,600 Canadians asking over 100 values questions. This is the basis of the Social Values data for the PRIZMCE neighbourhood segmentation system and the 66 clusters. We position key trends on a values map and see how they evolve over time. In general, the long- term direction of social change in Canada shows people moving from Conformity and Exclusion to Ideals and Individualism. And we can see what’s happening by generation. The Early Boomers, born between 1946 and 1955, have been at the vanguard of changing Canadian Social Values at every stage of their life. The Late Boomers were more into materialism, buying homes and possessions. But between 1992 and 2007, the Early Boomers’ values led all Canadian society down the map towards Ideals and Individualism. Even the Elders, who were born before 1945, have moved away from Security and Exclusion.

Some people believed that Boomers would be like their parents when they got older. But they’re even more the way they were at Woodstock, believing strongly in Experience and Personal Development. Their values crystallized by age 10 or 12. As we’ve said for many years, your values never change. You don’t become your mom or your dad. You become you.

Early Boomers today look very little like the Elders of 15 years ago. In 1992, the Elders wanted Conformity and Exclusion. Today, the Boomers are all about ideals and individualism. Nearly 30 percent of Elders want to get paid work during their retirement. For Early Boomers, the figure is 59 percent. Boomers don’t want to put their feet up. They’re going to die with their boots on. But Boomers don’t just want to work. They want it to be fun, challenging and exciting. Early Boomers say they want to exercise and take classes in retirement. Compared to Elders, they’d rather visit an exotic place than spend time with their children. They’re less interested in being involved in a religious community and Boomers are concerned they won’t have enough money to live comfortably in the future. And look at the differences when they die. Among Elders, 59 percent want a traditional funeral compared to 40 percent of Early Boomers. They prefer a party or celebration of some kind, preferably one they could enjoy themselves.

While the technology has improved over the past three decades, the goal of geodemography has stayed pretty much the same: trying to make meaning out of vast arrays of demographic data. The guiding principle is still that birds of a feather flock together, that you can make sense of individual behavior based on the neighbourhood where they live. And businesses are still using geodemography to answer four burning questions: Who are my customers? What do they read, buy and do? Where do they live? And how can I best reach them?

The greatest strength of geodemography is that it enables the use of survey databases for local marketing and segment targeting. Politics has been transformed by geodemography because it translates survey data into very fine marketing. Elections are being fought on the ground in small neighbourhoods. And these are the same tools that marketers use. While surveys have been useful, the general drawback is that you can’t translate them easily to action on the ground. If you survey 2,000 people about going to the opera, you can translate the findings into an actionable, economically sound marketing strategy as long as you link the respondents to a segmentation system. With geodemography, you can take any type of survey data and translate it into behaviour on the ground. And that info can be used for new customer acquisition and new voter acquisition. With a database of 2,000 to 3,000 clients, you can cluster-code the customers and then find more of them. And geodemography helps you do any type of marketing and select any kind of media preferred by your clients. Geodemography allows you to coordinate all these surveys and work with your clusters to take actionable information from them.

It’s interesting how many marketing tools have been created in 30 years—from CRM (Customer Relationship Management) to the advent of household-level information—but geodemography is still in vogue and growing. Why is that? It’s inexpensive and effective. It satisfies the connectivity issue, getting a survey or your internal segmentation onto external files. Then there’s the expense issue of maintaining an update. People think they can build a system and put it out there and it’s done. But a company has to make sure that it’s still relevant and maintain the integrity of the system all year long. And it’s easy to understand. Clearly, for segmentation to be effective, it has to be in the domain of the entire organization. It has to be part of the company’s DNA. You can’t succeed unless you incorporate the entire idea throughout your company. And, finally, the best reason is that it still works.

One of the true benefits of geodemographics is that it simplifies and communicates throughout the organization and your clients. So you can describe what you’re trying to achieve and who you’re trying to reach. You can provide characteristics of segments to a marketer or the media. You can use the results across a wide range of strategies, to target media and messaging, to analyze a site, identify who you want to be your future customers and determine where to find them on the ground. So much behavioural and attitudinal information is hard to put on the ground. Geodemography lets you not only look at tactical information but execute strategic implementation.

One hundred years ago, every child could explain what their parents did. In the old days, what you did determined your social status. But now there are such specialist jobs, children can’t explain what their parents do, so we spend money on clothes and cars to show whether we’re successful. And where we live—your house and your neighbourhood—tells the most. Your house is the ultimate lifestyle acquisition telling people something useful about your values. Where we want to live affects what sorts of people we want to influence and the kind of people we want to influence us and our children. Neighbourhoods self-select the kinds of people that influence them. And they influence values and what are socially acceptable forms of education. I’d suspect few people discuss what diaper brands they buy at the store. But when it comes to holidays and other social behaviors, they do talk to each other about where they go and what they like to do.

Another benefit of geodemography is that the results are measurable. On Wall Street, there’s no shortage of clever people or analytical data. But segmentation models will perform far better than demographics alone. As environments change, segmentation models can shift. Even in a credit crunch, we can look at disposable income and create a new segmentation system to show the areas where new marketing programs would succeed. If a retailer thinks that it’s useful to have a promotion for yogurt, which generally has a flat consumption profile, geodemography will still indicate which stores to use for a promotion. Geodemography can anticipate tactical opportunities in the future.