October 30, 2024
We do a lot of hyper-local analysis. Census 2021 is a brilliant data source that challenges many marketing myths about the composition of the UK population and how brands need to communicate in a new era. For example, Braintree and Brent are 60 miles apart: 7% of the population of Braintree were born abroad, while 56% of the population of Brent were born abroad; yet most communication plans wouldn’t take this into consideration The Office for National Statistics has mapped the latest census data, looking at levels of deprivation from national down to neighborhood levels in England and Wales. It's granular and examines multiple variables of deprivation, including education, employment, health, and housing, as well as areas where people are less exposed to deprivation. Traditional campaign planning taught us to think that the South East is wealthier than the rest of the UK. This is now a massively inaccurate generalization; the distribution of wealth is far more complex and patchy. Areas of Hampshire, like Havant, are deprived, juxtaposed to Winchester, which is wealthy. London is fascinating, and I think we rely on old stereotypes of an affluent capital city at our peril. Over 40% of Londoners were born outside the UK, and it's far from uniformly wealthy. Former Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Alan Johnson said on the Rest is Politics podcast that "the difference in life expectancy between North and South Kensington is the same as the difference between North and South Korea." Fifty-four percent of the borough's population were born outside the UK. This data should influence the choices we make in developing marketing propositions and targeting advertising, as well as the messaging to motivate specific groups of people. It also shows that London needs to be treated in a completely different context from the rest of the UK and, in many respects, is increasingly an outlier. Get in touch to find out more; we're still burrowing through the data!