Advertising Begins at 50 : Southland Is Finally Seeing Green in the Gray-Haired Market
Madison Avenue has a hang-up that keeps getting worse with age: If you’re over 50, you’re nowhere on its radar screen.
For years, most advertisers have intentionally ignored American consumers 50 and older--who now number 63 million. Witness the newest Pepsi ads, featuring children jiving to the slogan, “Be young, have fun, drink Pepsi!”
Not all advertisers have relegated people over 50 to marketing’s black hole. Certainly, life insurance and pharmaceutical companies have caught on, but what about the rest? Marketers who ignore the over-50 generation are turning their backs on the nation’s fastest-growing age group--one with an annual personal income of $800 billion.
In the Los Angeles market--where Hollywood is famous for glamorizing youth--things appear to be changing. Last week, seven over-50 ad executives opened their own agency, Older & Wiser Ltd., geared exclusively toward creating ads for their under-represented contemporaries. At the same time, one Beverly Hills group is struggling to get the Golden American Network on the air--a cable network that would aim all of its original programming toward adults over 50.
Both the ad agency and the TV network have their marketing eyes on the “boomer generation”--which will account for 38% of America’s adult population by the year 2000. And, when the boomers start to reach age 50--just three years from now--executives say the growth in spending by members of this segment will explode.
Some marketing experts say that firms such as Older & Wiser and Golden American Network are jumping the gun by several years, however. “It’s a big question whether they can draw much interest (from advertisers) in that 50-and-up age group before the boomers reach that age,” said Susan Mitchell, editor of the Ithaca, N.Y.-based Boomer Report newsletter.
Those who have tried to get ahead of the curve haven’t had much success. Last year, one of the largest ad research firms in the world, London-based Research International, established a Fiftysomething division to help the ad industry reach the 50-and-older crowd. The unit, named after the “thirtysomething” TV series, received much fanfare in the British press but attracted few clients. The firm has decided against opening a similar division in America.
“It hasn’t been an outrageous success,” conceded Simon Chadwick, chairman of New York-based Research International U.S.A. “The concept will work some day, but only when major marketers wake up to the fact that they’re missing something.”
Perhaps it’s time they did. “This will be the first ‘hip’ group of older Americans,” said Frank Conaway, president of PrimeLife, an Orange-based consulting firm that specializes in marketing to consumers over 50. “They will change the face of what we have always considered the mature market.”
Executives at Older & Wiser insist that over-50 consumers make up a market just as distinctive as blacks, Asians and Latinos. Advertisers are starting to address minority groups, but most are still ignoring the over-50 crowd.
“I feel as if I’m a ghost in the advertising world,” said Daniel Dixon, 68, former creative director at the ad agency Ogilvy & Mather, who devised the concept of Older & Wiser and coaxed six other Los Angeles ad executives into helping him found the agency. “I want to see advertisers speaking to me.”
Some say the real problem is at the ad agencies, where most of those creating ads are in their 20s or 30s. “They have no empathy for us,” said Ron Phillips, 51, managing director of Older & Wiser.
Opportunities to reach people 50 and older are being wasted by makers of everything from greeting cards to soft drinks. Toy makers could make a mint by marketing directly to grandparents, who spent $14 billion on gifts for their grandchildren last year, Phillips said.
And most fashion retailers are also missing out. “There is a generation gap at the Gap,” said Phillips, who loves the clothes at the Gap but said he feels excluded from the chain’s ads and unwelcome in its stores. “They have no marketing that is sympathetic to us.”
A Gap spokesman declined to comment.
Executives also criticized Pepsi’s latest campaign, which generally pokes fun at grown-ups and glorifies youth. A Pepsi spokesman said the ads are aimed at young people because Pepsi’s core franchise is teen-agers.
What’s more, he noted, in a recent survey of consumers, adults said they liked the ads just as much as did teen-agers.
Some firms are just starting to research how to reach this market. Amway, for example, has retained PrimeLife to help it figure out everything from which of its many products might best be directed at the over-50 segment to what age salespeople should be.
Perhaps no one has a tougher sales job than Bernie Weitzman, a former vice president of Desilu Productions who is trying to sell cable stations and advertisers his vision of a network aimed at the mature market. He’s been out searching for investors in the Golden American Network for two years.
“We want to be the AARP of broadcasting,” Weitzman said, referring to the American Assn. of Retired People. His proposed cable network would offer talk shows, news and entertainment programs mostly aimed at viewers ages 50 to 65.
To help sell his proposal, Weitzman has lined up support from entertainer Monty Hall, who has already filmed 10 weeks of a pilot talk show, “Monty & Co.,” aimed exclusively at older Americans. The show’s themes focus on topics of interest to that group, such as sex after age 50.
Cable TV stations so far have turned thumbs down on the show. “It’s as if they think no one over 49 has a buck to spend,” Hall said. “If there is a cable station for golfers, why can’t there be one for 63 million senior Americans?”
Briefly . . .
Savoy Pictures, the Beverly Hills-based studio that was formed last year, has named the Torrance and New York offices of Saatchi & Saatchi to handle its estimated $15-million to $20-million account. . . . The Venice agency Chiat/Day has parted ways with the Irvine-based client Toshiba America Information Systems. . . . The Los Angeles agency Fraser & Associates has picked up the $1.2-million account for a new restaurant telephone directory service from National Gourmet Network of Los Angeles. . . . A print ad for the new MTV campaign, created by Chiat/Day, asks: “Ever hear anyone refer to the NBC Generation?”
The Next Hot Ticket? Americans over age 50 may be the next hot consumer group. That’s because their numbers are growing so quickly. Americans over 50: Number 63 million. Are the wealthiest group of consumers in the country. Had a combined personal income last year exceeding $800 billion. Control half of all discretionary income. Control 77% of all of America’s financial assets. Head 37 million U.S. households. Spend more money on travel and recreation than any other age group. Purchase 37% of all spa memberships. Purchase 80% of all luxury travel. Account for 40% of total consumer demand. Own 70% of all money in banks and savings and loans. Purchase 43% of domestic new cars sold each year. Sources: PrimeLife, Older & Wiser Ltd., Golden American Network
