Farewell 'target audiences,' hello 'constituents'

For decades, the conventional approach in planning marketing communications was to define your 'target audiences' – the groups at whom your messages were aimed.

Marcom was essentially one-way: I the marketer have an ad that I want you the consumer to see / read / hear so I can persuade you to buy my product or service. It all made sense.

But in today's real-time, non-stop, fully interactive (online and offline) environment, I believe the notion of a 'target audience' has become outdated. With your customers or clients (I prefer to use those terms instead of consumers; here's why) now being able to find out a great deal about your product or service on their own, being able to comment on your product through user reviews or blogs, and even able to customize their own version of your offering in some cases, the relationship is less about persuasion (one-way) and now more about collaboration (two-way; deliving mutual value and achieving mutual benefit). 

Hence, I'm going to use a new term – constituents – to describe the various players (both inside and outside the organization) involved in 'transactions' around products and services, as well as programs and ideas.

The Oxford Canadian Dictionary includes the following elements in its definition:

con-stitu-ent 

adjective – composing or helping to make up a whole.

noun – 1 a member of a constituency (a body of voters in a specified area who elect a representative member to a legislative body; the area represented in this way; a body of customers, supporters, etc.). 2 a component part.

As you can see, implicit in this definition are notions of collaboration, participation and having a choice or voice, which strike me as being very appropriate for today's marketplace.

What do you think?