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Marketing to boomers

Business Week, 7/23/09

Abstract:

Consumers over age 50 have 2.5 times the discretionary spending power of the coveted 18-to-34 age group. Yet ads aimed at boomers still seem to miss the mark. BusinessWeek asked industry veterans Brent Bouchez, David Page, and Nancy McNally — who recently formed the Five0 agency to help companies reach the 50+ audience — to give their views of some recent campaigns. Here's what they had to say:

The AARP Cop
"When I turned 50 and got that letter from the AARP, I was mortified." This is the one thing we hear consistently from people over 50. Boomers see the AARP as the antithesis of what it means to be 50+ today. Commercials like these don’t help. Besides being a ridiculous premise, the older person is portrayed as frightened and unintelligent, while the "cop" speaks to him like he’s either senile or a 4-year-old or both. Nobody is surprised that the AARP offers discounts; they simply don’t want to be a member of a group that casts them in this kind of light.

Honda Insight
The tagline in the commercial is "the hybrid for everyone." And yet there isn’t a car buyer (or consumer) who appears to be over 30 in any of the three Honda spots. Consumers over 50 buy more hybrid cars than any other group. Do you really want to exclude all those people who are already in the market? Or worse, suggest that they should buy a Prius because Honda is for a younger audience? More than half of the 90 million 50+ consumers in America say they want to buy green. But in the Honda spot, the only people in the their 50s are two guys sitting on the beach playing…wait for it…checkers...

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