Phil PowisChief Wisdom Keeper @ Sacred Business Flow

Why demographics lie #substack #shorts

22 Apr 2026 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

0:47

In this YouTube short, the speaker critiques the reliance on demographic data for audience targeting, arguing that it is largely ineffective. He cites a statistic that only about 8% of people who share a demographic characteristic (such as income, age, or location) actually agree on any given issue, highlighting the weak predictive power of demographics. To illustrate, he contrasts the late Ozzy Osbourne and King Charles, noting that despite sharing the same demographic profile—British, married twice, wealthy, and castle‑dwelling—their behaviors and preferences are vastly different. The speaker concludes that targeting based on psychographic characteristics (profiles, attitudes, interests) is far more useful than demographic targeting.

Chapters

if you're more corporate, then you're targeting certain psychographic characteristics, you know, certain profiles as opposed to demographic, which is almost useful. I think the stat is that only 8% of people who share a demographic characteristic such as income or age or what have you on any given issue, only 8% of people agree based on that. So demographics, just like, how do you— I always use the example of the late Ozzy Osbourne and King Charles, they have the exact same demographic profile. They're British. They've been married twice. They're wealthy and they both live in a castle. If you're looking at zip codes, those two couldn't be any more different. But here's the interesting thing.