Single parents love Smirnoff Ice, and other demographic data

Smirnoff Ice is THE drink of single parents. Grey Goose drinkers are smart enough to know better. Mike's Hard Lemonade drinkers really like killer whales. And women are way more attached to booze brands than men.

These are some of the interesting results from a marketing survey issued last week by New Media Metrics, a brand strategy firm that measures consumers' emotional attachment to brands.

The press release mentioned the shocking fact that the top interests for consumers who are most attached to McDonald's are news, health and cooking. Seriously.

I asked an NMM representative for some data on spirits brands, and she delivered some fascinating stuff. Starting with the highlights above:

* Single parents love Smirnoff Ice, with domination at the top of the charts way more than any other brand surveyed. Single parents also like Grey Goose, Svedka, Captain Morgan and Mike's Hard Lemonade, far more than married people or singles without kids do. Basically, single parents are very attached to their booze.


* If you look at other brands that spirits fans are attached to, the interests of Grey Goose fans stand out as intellectual: BMW, X-Box, Google, Apple and Microsoft Office. In contrast, Johnnie Walker fans are most attached to Gillette Fusion Razors, Nintendo Wii, Always (it's a tampon brand), Sara Lee and the iPad. So you'd think Grey Goose fans could use Google to discover that they're paying too much for a branded vodka when all vodkas above a certain level of filtering are basically the same. But emotional attachment isn't logical.


* Adult women are all over this survey, expressing their attachment to brand after brand, including counterintuitive ones like Johnnie Walker (non-working mothers love it!). The only brand that adult males express attachment to, more than women, is Mike's Hard Lemonade.

* Speaking of Mike's, the other brand its fans are most attached to really stands out: Sea World. A few spirits brands have fans with attachment to Disney parks and Six Flags (Bailey's drinkers love both), but no other drinkers love Shamu.

* Jose Cuervo fans have cheap cars that they love. They are most attached to Toshiba, Ford, Dos Equis, Honda and Pampers. The last explains why it's not BMW and Lexus.

* Captain Morgan's TV ads always seem to be for 23-year-old men, but their most attached consumers are single parents, many with children over age 20 at home, followed by women age 55-64, followed by working mothers. Maybe the ads get them excited?

* Spirits companies are not supposed to market to underage drinkers. Yet males age 13-17 make up the most attached group of consumers of several brands: Jack Daniels, Johnnie Walker, Svedka, Bacardi and Absolut. Buy better locks for your liquor cabinet, people.

* Jack Daniels fans love Hyundai -- and Nationwide Insurance. And their number one fan group is males ages 13-17. And you wonder why you need uninsured motorist coverage.

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