Reaching the digital gurus - identifying early adopters

With buzz around the latest gizmos at the Mobile World Congress and Apple announcing the launch of their much-vaunted iPad2, the media and marketing industries have rarely been so attuned to what is on the technological horizon.
The potential is huge, particularly for the tablets market for which it is still very early days and penetration amongst British adults is currently tiny. But manufacturers and others with a commercial interest in this market are of course investing huge sums with the clear expectation that these will catch on.

One thing we can be confident of is the kinds of consumers that will initially embrace these products as they seek to establish themselves more broadly amongst consumers. It will be the 29% of the British adult population - over 14 million people - who say they love to buy new gadgets and appliances.

These are the early adopters, a holy grail to marketers - standard bearers for the success of many a high ticket item and those most likely to extol the benefits of particular technology and digital brands to their friends and family. Recently released insight from Kantar Media's TGI survey reveals more about this group and how they can be most effectively reached.

The key test for any group calling themselves gadget or appliance lovers is whether they put their money where their mouth is. A glance at how much more likely these technology advocates are to own a range of new technology items than the average adult is reassuring. For example, TGI reveals that they are almost three quarters more likely to have a Blu-ray recorder at home and two-thirds more likely to have a high definition camcorder.

Young, male and wealthy would be the demographic shorthand to describe these technology lovers. A quarter more likely to be male, over 50% more likely to be aged 15-34 and over 50% more likely to earn £50K+.

Attitudinally, there is very much a sense of this group wanting to keep one stylistic step ahead of their peers, within the context of being very socially active. They are far more likely than the average adult to buy new products before most of their friends, feel their car should catch people's attention, wear designer clothes and want to get to the top in their career. This goes a long way to explaining the appeal of new gadgetry - it gives this group yet another 'cool' point of difference over their mates and delivers the admiration and recognition they seek.

Their stand-out socially-oriented attitudes are reinforced by their highly active social behaviour. They are almost 40% more likely to go out for a meal in a restaurant once a week or more, almost 80% more likely to regularly visit nightclubs and over 60% more likely to have an interest in extreme sports.

Cinema and internet emerge as the particularly efficient means for reaching these early adopters. They are over 50% more likely than the average adult to be amongst the heaviest 20% of consumers of both media.  They are 62% more likely to pay most attention to adverts on the internet, relative to other media and 58% more likely to find the ads at the cinema most useful for making purchase decisions. The most visited sites on the internet for these gadget lovers are those devoted to music, news, weather and sport. Favourite film types are action/adventure, thrillers and comedies.