Advertising is even more ageist than you thought.

Product managers don't want to take advice from their grandparents..

           

Have you ever wondered why advertising is targeted exclusively to 18- to 49-year-olds… why even products such as anti-wrinkle creams use 25-year-old models…why advertisers portray us older folks as doddering idiots who have no idea how to use technology? 

 Is it because younger people have more money? No.  In fact the opposite is true.     In 2017, half of the U.S. adult population was 50 and older and they controlled a full 70 percent of the disposable income, according to Nielsen.

 Is it because “brand loyalty” is formed when you’re young?  No.  Boomers are notoriously fickle and change brands as frequently as their children.

So what’s going on here?  Why are we being ignored?  Why are corporations, which supposedly make decisions based on economic reality, shooting themselves in the foot when it comes to marketing to boomers?

In 2018 I interviewed a few of the original Mad Men, Chuck Schroeder, Don Blauweiss, and Sid Myers, graduates of the Doyle Dane Bernbach creative group, the innovative agency that came up with the original Volkswagen campaign (the “Think Small” ad) in the 1960s that changed the face of advertising forever.  They are now in their 70s and 80s and run a consulting firm, Senior Creative People, which is trying to influence advertisers to change their ways.

 The news is not good.   They are not having a lot of luck getting clients. No one really cares what our generation buys even though Boomers control a huge chunk of the nation’s wealth.  Part of it is our own fault.

 “We were the Pepsi Generation.  We grew up with a cultural emphasis on youth, which passed down to our children,” say the Senior Creatives.  “We’re just reaping what we sowed.   We were the generation who didn’t trust anyone over thirty.  Now here they are not trusting us.”

Advertisers assume that the “old” people of today are some monolithic group of codgers who don’t know anything. The problem, according to the Senior Creatives,  is that product managers are all young and they don’t want advice from people who could be their grandparents.  

 “They have the same attitude I had when I was 30 largely based on hubris and youthful lack of experience,” said Chuck Schroeder. “They don’t grasp that they could sell more product if they actually talked to the people who have the money– and started by hiring people who know them best.”

Traditional wisdom says consumers establish brand loyalty in college or young adulthood and maintain it throughout life.  “This is rubbish,” they told me.   “Studies have shown that boomers have even less brand loyalty than younger people    You just have to offer a benefit that’s interesting, appealing and memorable for them to switch.  Ads featuring young people partying is not going to do that.”

So why isn’t advertising more inclusive?  It’s not a new concept.  The Senior Creatives pioneered inclusive advertising  in the sixties.

 “We operated on a different planet.  No Volkswagen ads were ageist or sexist or excluded any group.   That formed our ability to think the way we do.  It’s not just a question of thinking outside the box.  We “created” the box for the sole purpose of working outside it.  The advertising business in the fifties was exclusionary.  Doyle Dane was the first agency that hired ethnics, Jews and Italians and even “hippies”, and became the first agency with a sense of humor.”

I asked if they had any juicy stories from the Mad Men era to share?   They said the show is very accurate.  It even referred to Doyle Dane accurately, discussing a Volkswagen print ad and calling them the “Jew agency”—which is what they were called at the time because the founders were “two Jews and an Irishman” and the staff was from every ethnic and cultural group imaginable.

They wished they had better news to report, but prospects for change aren’t good.   Not one brand has come to the Senior Creatives for advice.  And commercials with the slogan, “It’s not your grandfather’s whatever,” are still ubiquitous.  So is the assumption that we are techno-idiots.

When I asked what kind of ads they’d like to see, they came up with an idea for a commercial to promote the wisdom of elders: “During the tsunami in Indonesia in 2004 that killed thousands, a community of natives called “boat people” (they live partly on the water) are staring at the water receding rapidly from the beach.  The younger people are just gaping; they have no idea what’s happening.   The older people shout, “get to higher ground.” They knew what it meant the water disappears from the beach because they’d been through it before.   The community survives because the wisdom of the elders saves them.

So will things ever change?  Despite the ageism in advertising, the Senior Creatives are still optimistic.  “There are just too many of us, there’s too much money at stake.  We live in a capitalist society, eventually some campaign featuring older people will be a huge success and that will turn the tide.”

I did this interview 5 years ago and am still waiting for that game changing ad.  Have you seen one?