GROWING OLD SUCKS… But it Doesn’t Have to!

Not alone ago I was fired from a job. It ticked me off. But it got me to thinking about advertising and marketing. Hello Agencies: You’re Doing It All Wrong!

 In general, advertising is geared to young people. This is really stupid. Companies are selling all kinds of expensive stuff to 20 somethings. My question is how can a 24 year old afford a six-week world cruise. The answer is: they can’t! So if they can’t afford it, why try to sell it to them?

To be fair there are some 20 and 30 year olds that can afford a Maserati. But for the handful of Olsen twins, Britney’s and Lindsey’s, there are millions of others that can’t afford a new Taurus. 

Marketers target the 18 – 34 year age group as if this was the only group that counts. It’s not. The 40 plus and even the 50 plus year old groups, especially for luxury items, is the better target. There are 93 million Americans in this group. It’s the fastest growing group of any age group (we just added thousands while you were reading this). 

Marketing controls the media worlds. Ipods, computers, cell phones, and Internet applications are all designed for the younger generations. But the age group that adopts new technology in droves is the boomers! Sure we might need a 9 year old to help set up our computer or cell phone, but we are ones who buy the things and use them.

Television shows are a form of marketing. They are vehicles to sell stuff. You have an acne product; you create a rock and roll dance show. You sell hair care; you create a show featuring 20 year olds with hair problems. You sell Buicks; you develop a show for 55 year olds (which is the average age for Buick buyers). But this doesn’t happen. They are aiming for a younger buyer. Agency dudes: Give it up. You have a product that older people like, so go for selling more cars to older people. This just makes sense. Duh?

 Take a look at the spokesperson for Buick. It’s Tiger Woods. GM is attempting to lower the age of their buyer using a young guy like Tiger. Come on – Tiger can afford any car he wants and I’ll bet he doesn’t want to drive a Buick (unless they pay big bucks). GM can use Tiger to drive older buyers to showrooms to purchase, rather than waste their time (and money) selling to young people. I told my 20-year son I was giving him a present, a brand new Buick. He would rather take a bus.

The traditional networks keep pushing the new young generating programs at us and they die. Shows that don’t target a segment of the audience do better. “ER” is going strong after more than 10 years. They have good ratings – Great writing – Super TV.

 Recently an Internet based TV (Quarterlife) was given new life as an ABC network show. Designed for young viewers, it’s either dead or dying. Very few people are watching it.

 The fact is that the media is vastly under serving those of us over the age of 40. FM radio almost completely ignores us. Talk radio for boomers is found on the AM dial. And radio itself is loosing listeners because they don’t know what to do (don’t get me started).

 I’m not big on research because it can be skewed to a particular point of view. I base things on results. I did some research for this column. I asked 10 friends (yes, I have friends) to give me a few of their favorite TV shows. 

I Love Lucy was number one. This show went off the air in 1958! That’s 50 years ago. And this is the favorite show that people watch today? The age range of my test group is from 19 to 80 plus. And they all love Lucy. Okay this is a small sample, but people of all ages are looking for “something” that is not being offered. 

What’s your favorite shows from way back? What are your favorite current shows? Let me know!

Tags: advertising, boomers, feeling young, luxe, upscale

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 21st, 2008 at 11:36 pm and is filed under Growing Old Sucks - Or Does it?. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.