A high proportion of marketing briefs these days seem to contain the statement that the target audience is ‘savvy’ – and indeed, in the spirit of effective mirroring, a high proportion of agency responses also acknowledge that the target audience is ‘savvy’.

But what does it actually mean? And is it anything new for marketing people to get to grips with?

 Savvy is defined in the Oxford English Reference Dictionary as ‘Knowingness, shrewdness, understanding’ – OK, so people aren’t daft.

As far as marketing communications is concerned, people understand it’s about trying to build preference for a particular brand, encouraging them to like one brand more than competitive alternatives, and therefore buy more of it.

Many years ago that great sage Jim Williams at Young & Rubicam talked about communications literate consumers – referring precisely to this point. After all we’ve all been exposed to advertising spiel for years – it’ll be 56 years in September 2011 since Gibbs SR proclaimed itself as ‘the tingling fresh toothpaste for teeth and gums’ on the first UK TV advertisement – and, of course, print media pre-dates TV by many years.

No doubt the internet encourages many people to research their purchases in advance (even if that in reality means ‘comparing prices’ rather than learning to appreciate the comparative benefits promised) – so perhaps savvy means ‘price conscious’?

Or does it really just mean it’s increasingly difficult to convince people about the merits of a particular brand – that people are simply not as gullible as they once were – that we all have to work a lot harder to create campaigns that have any chance of being effective?

My suspicion is that ‘savvy’ has become just another word that marketing people love to adopt when they don’t really understand what makes people tick – we play lip service to it, but not much else – whereas what it really means is that we all have to work harder to seduce /persuade /encourage/ entice people to buy ‘our’ brands.