Marketing To Us

 It’s nice when people talk about you but sometimes a little daunting when they analyse you unless it’s how advertising and marketers look at baby boomers.

This week in Sydney a forum asks a question we posed at the birth some three years ago of the FiftyUp Club:  why is so little advertising aimed at the folks with the most to spend?

To remind you of the size of the pie, of which many of us are part, the FiftyNotOut site, ‘ we start where advertising stops’ , says there are 7,620,723 Australians aged over 50.

And as of Tuesday afternoon July 25, when I wrote this, their household net worth is a figure somewhere north of trillions ie  $4,375,00,744,763 and climbing.

And they spend according to one of the forum’s moderators $4 billion a week and outspend younger groups on groceries, entertainment and by a country mile on leisure travel—80% by ones estimate

Maybe not individually but as a group we are a honeypot but here’s the rub - 94% of those in advertising are under 50 and guess what 94% aged over 50 dislike how ads talk to them!

But that’s their problem not necessarily ours. Looking globally a report from Nielsen into boomers found  those born between 1946-1964 control more than half of the household expenditure in the world.

Yet for all that wealth we are impoverished by stereotypes of being past it, over the hill and somehow passive members of society.

While nothing could be further from the truth, check out your own peers if aged over 50, there’s little doubt some younger people do harbour their doubts about our vitality.

It’s not often I recommend youtube videos, mainly because my kids do it endlessly, but have a look at this clever dissection of how over 50s see themselves and how younger generations unwittingly cut them down to size.

It’s called Are Our Perceptions of Age Distorted? : 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwNjYe7MM7Y

So the take home message is it’s not just the government which is after your ill-gotten gains via their latest raid on your super… it is also the advertising industry but  beware they are far more cunning!