Today’s Family

This month creative company, VML, released a report on the Family Fallacy, which covers how different realities are shaping culture and modern family dynamics. The report highlights some interesting stats that marketers and brand owners should keep in mind when planning campaigns to make sure to reach a wide range of audiences and families here in Ireland.

Some key take aways in the report are:

  • Overrepresentation: The traditional family structure only accounts for 36% of Irish households, yet it is the most overrepresented group when it comes to advertising and marketing products and services.
  • Know your audience: Only 38% of people in Ireland feel brands and companies are in touch with their family’s life and needs as they are today.
  • ‘Family’ has been on a journey: Nearly 80% of people in Ireland agree that you don’t have to have kids to be a family. 78% of people say that family is no longer defined purely by blood or marriage. 61% of blended and divorced families believe brands in Ireland should help to normalise non-traditional family structures. 80% of same-sex families want brands to understand how their family works, while 1 in 4 families with children in Ireland is a one-parent family. Are all of these  families being catered for in marketing campaigns?
  • Housing shifts: Brands need to adapt to meet the needs of co-living and multi-generational living. 68% of Ireland’s young adults are currently living at home and the average homebuyer is now 39.
  • Motherhood and fatherhood: 73% of people in Ireland think that becoming a mother makes career progression harder and 68% of mothers in Ireland feel the portrayal of family structures in advertising and marketing is old school traditional and stereotypical. In other European countries, such as Sweden for instance, 90% of men take paternity leave. In Ireland, less than half of fathers entitled to paternity leave take it. 25% of respondents in the report also stated they do not want children, which leads to a new demographic, DINK ‘Double income no kids’. Are marketing and communications campaigns making content relevant for this market?

The overall take away from the report is that consumers trust, prefer, and support brands that understand their needs. They want to see themselves and their peer group truly represented in campaigns.