stand in the place where you live...

Strictly local content here...but it's curious how marketers assume certain things based on geography. In today's mail was one of those packets of coupons that arrive periodically - usually, I open them to see if one of them might be for somewhere I go to regularly or might be interested in, then toss it in the recycle bin.

But I've noticed that that marketers assume folks in our neighborhood (about two miles north of the airport, near the Walgreen's where Howell and Chase meet) are more interested in businesses to the south: nearer the airport, in St. Francis, Cudahy, or South Milwaukee. Of the 11 coupons for local businesses with one or two locations, 9 of them were south of us, and of the 2 whose location is to our north, one was three blocks north. Only one featured anything north of I-94...and that was one with two locations, one of which is in the Third Ward. (Those coupons were for an exercise center and a fried chicken place. The other coupons were for a bar that serves your typical bar food, two different Chinese restaurants, an Italian restaurant, a pizza place, a donut shop, a discount haircut joint, a hotel, and a carpet and tile outlet.)

But we ourselves are far more oriented toward businesses to the north of us. We're far likelier to head north when we go out or shop - to the Bay View business district, to the Third or Fifth Wards, downtown, or the East Side or Riverwest. That might be because we're former East Siders and Riverwest residents...but more likely, it's because of the kind of restaurants, bars, and other businesses we're interested in. My guess is that if we lived in a hipper part of Bay View, more of those businesses would show up in such mailers.

Or not: I'm kind of thinking the older, lower-middle-class crowd these places imply are probably more into coupons than yr hipster joints might be. (O noes did I just out myself as being vaguely hipsteresque? Vaguely...I mean, Blogger is like the AOL of free blog sites, isn't it?)