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Your new sweet spot: The 50-plus consumer

Forbes Magazine, 7/21/09

Abstract:

Today's advertising agencies are filled with young, talented people whose job is to create messages for a world of consumers who look, act and feel just like they do. In advertising parlance, reaching the 18-to-34-year-old demographic is called targeting the "sweet spot." Ninety percent of today's marketing dollars are spent trying to reach this group. Marketers lust after them, and media companies do everything in their power to lure them to their Web sites, magazines, TV shows and radio stations...

...If you're a CEO or a CFO you're probably wondering why, if people over 50 spend twice as much as their 18-to-34 year-old counterparts, your marketing department and your advertising agency are still fixated on the younger generation. The answer: Youth equals success. Youth is what made Madison Avenue a publicly traded industry. Despite articles and arguments that have occasionally, over the past dozen years, pointed out the flawed thinking behind this industry's obsession on youth, Madison Avenue continues to live by a set of outdated rules.

Marketers wrongly believe that older consumers don't spend money. They don't change brands. They don't try new things. They're not tech savvy. Older consumers aren't cool. They're hard to reach with advertising. And my particular favorite: They (we) won't live long enough for the marketing investment to pay off.

These misconceptions were quite true 30 years ago. Today, however, the world is different.

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