While the endeavor might seem like a no-brainer—why not use a glamorous 60-something to sell an anti-aging regime to this affluent (and rather wrinkly) crowd?—"it's really dicey," David B. Wolfe, head of Wolfe Resources Group, tells Marketing Daily. While women of a certain age certainly don't like the way beauty marketers rely on images of 25-year-olds to talk to them about laugh lines, crow's feet and mature skin, "age alone is not a very good thing to select an endorser on—there has to be some kind of values that resonate, and it's very hard to predict."
Procter & Gamble's Cover Girl uses 50-something Ellen DeGeneres for its Simply Ageless line; L'Oreal uses Diane Keaton, in her 60s, for its Age Perfect, and Andie McDowell, in her 50s, for RevitaLift. Sharon Stone, another 50s bombshell, appears in ads for Dior.