January 25, 2023
Commentary
Media X: Wasted on the Young
- by Jack Feuer , June 30, 2009
Every time.
All the time.
You think we're brand loyal. You think we act like any other senior group, only friskier, and with a bizarre fondness for Foghat. You're wrong.
Again.
And here's a real attitude adjuster, kids: We aren't now and never were a Generation just about Me. Not that ignorance has ever been an impediment to marketers or their agency partners. If it was, by now you'd have broken the enchantment that clouds your eyes and befuddles your brains into thinking that the only good consumer is a young consumer.
Which is why, brothers and sisters, we need a communications Strawberry Statement. We need a new revolution. A corporate rebellion, not a cultural one.
Boomers are going to have to go back to the barricades and do what we do best: Force the issue. If there aren't bodies in the streets, there's no truth in the communication and no value in the channel.
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So hunt down your least favorite social-media maven and bitch-slap the hell out of the young sonofabitch. Track down the creative directors responsible for all those asinine, tie-dyed, surfer music spots and shove their Smartphones up their service entrance.
And the next person that hires Dennis Hopper to star in their commercial will find their house thoroughly TP'ed. I don't give a rat's ass about a movie Hopper made 40 years ago. The man's a Republican. Find somebody else to represent the Sixties. Stanley Owsley would work.
You don't know who that is, do you? Exactly.
References to infamous underground chemists aside, what really defines boomers is our desire -- our need, actually -- to do good. To make a difference. That's what we were always really about, and it's still what motivates us. That's the kind of messaging we'll respond to.
As for our media behavior, look deeper than your own assumptions. Did you know, for example, that older Americans are the fastest-growing group online?
Don't take my word for it. There are any number of baby-boomer specialist shops out there, many a hell of a lot smarter than the "consultants" you've made wealthy by hiring them to create wildly unsuccessful campaigns targeting people who think "Steve McQueen" is the name of a Sheryl Crow song.
Jamie Korsen, former president of Interpublic's KSL Media, runs a shop called 50Plus Advertising that's doing some interesting research into my cohort -- the agency calls it "Gen B." He suggests that marketers earn what he terms a "tremendous" cost advantage by targeting 50+ consumers. That strategy is based upon a bunch of media-industry babble that's no doubt convincing to you, but might as well be Aramaic to me.
Maybe the numbers can be persuasive. Maybe marketers will wise up, for once, and rise to the opportunity. As long as they don't trust anyone under 30.
And for the love of God, stay away from executions featuring Dennis Hopper.
This is everything I've been bitching about for years - in my book, my blog, in articles all over the place.
A recent blog post:
http://tinyurl.com/no86m7
<a href="http://tinyurl.com/no86m7">http://tinyurl.com/no86m7</a>
I sense a Boomer backlash brewing.
If Boomers don't like your mass-market product or marketing, you're doomed? Could be.
YEA ! JACK!
Just explained the Dennis Hopper lunacy to a 30 year old brand manager last week.
There are specialist firms who do get it and achieve great results for their clients. The car goes into the ditch when the client says to their agency, "I need a Boomer strategy" and the creative team assigned believes they are talking to their grandparents. Seen it happen!
I had to blog this piece:
http://tinyurl.com/knx76m
Every little bit helps to kick-start the revolution ...
To shift thinking about marketing to the 50+ demo will require new thinking about what it means to be old in western society. Boomers not only face an intractable marketing mindset that eschews older markets, they confront a century of sociologically embedded ageism. All the traditional metaphors of aging involve loss, decline, withdrawal and irrelevancy. So, the way I interpret Jack Feuer's call-to-action is that Boomers must address the barriers of aging (including lack of marketing inclusiveness) with the same pugnacious confrontations as they once addressed sexism and racism. This is the generation's final social revolution. If this was only about the money, then we'd be seeing a rich variety and quantity of marketing campaigns targeting Boomers, including appeals to their sense of social responsibility. As I wrote in the first edition of my marketing book in 2003, "The point for marketers is this: as Boomers grow older and enter their retirement years, they will continue to appreciate companies' products and services when marketing communications portray this generation's role in advancing all areas of human thought and exploration." Thus, Jack Feuer and I are in concordance fundamentally about what's important to this generation, then and now. Finally, I'd like to add that our colleague Chuck Nyren started out as a singular voice about the problems and opportunities with advertising targeting this generation in its aging, and I'm pleased to see new voices coming forward and expressing their views on the same topic (and quite cleverly in Mr. Feuer's case). Boomers have always had the greatest impact changing social norms when we've come together to "rage against the machine."
Right on Jack, great post. Couldn't agree more man. Peace.
Only one thing, wasn't his name Owsley Stanley (well Owsley was actually his middle name, but that's the one he went by)? Though I suppose if you can remember it you weren't there. How much do we all miss Jerry and the rest of the Grateful Dead? (And long live Owsley's Wall Of Sound)?
I was gonna call you Jack to check, but I don't seem to be able to find my smart-phone since I sat down to write this.
Gotta go - I'm off to man a barricade.