Do You Know This Much About Your Clients?

This article from an IT website caught my attention today. Well, actually, it was sent to me by an IT friend so I could hardly avoid it. I promise, he is not a "metal T-shirt" wearer, but it's fascinating to see how trends can follow a particular group.

The article read:

IT people “twice as likely” to wear heavy metal t-shirt as other people

IT people “twice as likely” to wear heavy metal t-shirt as other people

NEW YORK (September 13, 2006) - According to new research, IT staff are twice as likely to wear a heavy metal t-shirt as their non-IT counterparts. The study of 1000 office workers, by Intermedia.NET, the leading Microsoft Exchange host, also found IT types 34% more likely to sport a ponytail. Other key findings:

Lisa Coleman
Marketing Manager
646-519-8206
lcoleman@intermedia.net

• Black jeans are 63% more popular among IT types than other workers
• IT workers are 32% less likely to wear clean clothes every day of the week than business managers
• Business and IT people are equally likely to wear a cellphone belt clip

The survey also found that despite unhelpful stereotyping such as Apple’s ‘Mac and PC’ commercials, IT and business people are equally likely – at 5% each – to wear dated 1990s spectacles.

Confirming one stereotype, however, was the finding that IT workers were almost twice as likely to carry a Maglite and a Leatherman. Both businesspeople and IT people prefer a Leatherman over a MagLite, and are 20% more likely to carry one.

“Our research provides an interesting insight into the life of IT people,” said Rurik Bradbury, VP marketing for Intermedia.NET. “Our large Microsoft Gold Certified team of engineers was comforted that IT people are twice as likely to wear Megadeth and similar t-shirts, and that black jeans and ponytails are still hot items. However, they were distraught to find that the cellphone belt clip has gone ‘mainstream’ and lost its identification with the IT subculture.”

One interesting finding from the study was that IT staff are more likely to wear an expensive suit than a cheap one. While business staff are still far more likely to wear any suit at all, IT people shun cheap suits, with 33% more of them choosing a pricey suit over a bargain one. Fake expensive watches are currently not popular among techies, with only 2% of IT people admitting to wearing one.

This lends some credence to recent studies on advertising that suggest looking at Other things that a prospective client for your business is interested in - not just the item that you'd like them to buy from you... and concentrate some marketing effort to locate him/her where they like to hang out. Here's the hint: People who move homes, also like to travel, buy cars, drink wine, etc.