Albany is the Most Average City in America

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Annie Lowrey asks: What is the most perfectly average place in America? Tyler Cowen nominates Knoxville. Matt Yglesias nominates Jacksonville. As a former marketing weenie, I say we should let the free market decide. Back in 2004, Acxiom ranked the top 150 consumer test markets in the United States based on their overall characteristics: age, marital status, home ownership, estimated income, etc. America’s Fortune 500 companies put their money where their mouths are by conducting expensive and critical tests of their yummy new products in these aggressively average cities. Here are the top ten:

  1. Albany, NY
  2. Rochester, NY
  3. Greensboro, NC
  4. Birmingham, AL
  5. Syracuse, NY
  6. Charlotte, NC
  7. Nashville, TN
  8. Springfield, OR
  9. Wichita, KS
  10. Richmond, VA

In fairness, there’s more than just averageness that makes for a good test market. You also want a place that’s not too big and has reasonable advertising rates. Here is Neeli Bandapudi of Ohio State University explaining on NPR why Columbus is a pretty good test market:

So Columbus, Middle America, it was the idea that it truly was representative of the broader trends of the nation. And, of course, it’s not just that. You want to make sure that it’s a location where it’s not dominated by one employer or one cause, because you want to get a variety of opinions there. Maybe it’s the demographics of the people that you’re trying to reach and also a variety of shopping outlets and a variety of media outlets, so you can see how it would actually play.

Because advertising — there’s no point in just putting it in the store. You got to let people know it’s there.

Indeed. Without that, you know, you might not be very successful.

Anyway, there you go. The free market has answered this question for us. Isn’t the free market wonderful?

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

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