Turns out my friend is a PANK

Who knew that my friend EH is a PANK? I’d never even heard of such a thing until an after-work gathering this evening. Sounds like a kinky fetish, or some addiction that now has an official code. Not so.

PANKs have been mined out of marketing data and revealed to be Professional Aunts with No Kids, who “spend and average of $387 a year on each child in their lives”, according to a New York Times article from Nov, 2012. The term was first coined in 2008 by Melanie Notkin with the launch of her Savvy Auntie website, “the first community for cool aunts, great aunts, godmothers and all women who love kids”. There are books on the subject and NPR spotlights on the concept. Marketers are zeroing in on this new prey. Naturally they want to help connect the PANKs with their products.

I love the way data miners can tease out these societal trends and articulate them. Of course there are PANKs! I can name a couple right away. I just had no idea it was such a ‘thing’. Remember DINKs (Double Income No Kids)? We were in that group for a while until the obvious happened.

If marketers are really going to tap into this PANK population group, I’m thinking we should be looking at a service that connects us all with one of these PANKs. The market could be even larger than natural biological coincidence would dictate. Don’t limit it. I’m sure they can come up with ways to expand that pool of potential. I’ll be waiting for the ads in my mailbox.