Market Segmentation, It's easy as A, B1, B2, B6, B12, C...

[alt text]
bottom: a photograph of a pile of upright, block-like figurines of cartoonish people of various ages and races in various colors. the majority of figures are Caucasian with a group of three African-Americans (an adult male, adult female, and child) featured to the left of the group of thirteen total.

[transcription]
Market Segmentation. It’s easy as A, B1, B2, B6, B12, C… Traditional market segmentation is well recognized as a basic marketing strategy. But are you aware of a different and important way to segment the market in which vitamin fortification can play a role? It’s segmentation through nutrition, which can help identify new product opportunities. What’s so different about nutritional market segmentation? The food industry has long and successfully used vitamin fortification. By recognizing a nutritional need on the part of consumers and hen responding to it, food marketers have been able to give their fortified products a competitive advantage over other products in the same product category. Now, there is segmentation through nutrition, which applies the principles of good nutrition to traditional market segmentation. It’s based on the purposeful positioning of your product to appeal to the interests and concerns that are common to specific groups. Some examples…
RCD 1958

[additional notes]
(Marjan Stuckart)
the inclusion of three African-American figures with ten Caucasian ones is interesting and a good example of what racial representation might have looked like at the time, even within food advertising. their separation from the rest of the figures and grouping to the left is also significant.
in general, the choice to implement toy figurines as representatives of separate American population groups is fascinating.