For lovers of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy you will know that 42 is a number of immense importance (the answer to ‘the meaning of life and everything’). For 50+ marketers, 54 is a critical number – why?
This is the age of the leading edge of the Baby Boomer generation and marks the point at which advertisers and communications channels jettisons their last vestige of interest in the consumer as a target for mainstream marketing campaigns: or is it?
US radio channels seem to have realised that there is still life; more importantly spending power, in somebody aged 55.
An article, syndicated by Associated Press, discusses how radio channels are finding the need to redefine their audience age profile but how the advertising industry is still wedded to its old ideas about age stereotypes.
I thought this quote from Tom Taylor, the editor of Inside Radio, a daily industry newsletter, was amusing. He says, ‘oldies stations’ in particular have been doing "some serious soul-searching" about how to keep boomer-age listeners past 54 without sacrificing their hold on the 25-54 age groups. He likens the challenge to riding down a river with each foot on a different block of ice.
This example is a microcosm of the whole 50+ marketing issue. Meaningless age segmentation; belief that appealing to one age group automatically alienates another and the begrudging admission of the older consumers’ economic importance. It really is a case of ‘don’t confuse me with the facts, I am happy with my prejudices’.
Many of the comments in the article were taken from an interview with Michele Skettino, vice president of marketing and research at Interep. If you don’t get frustrated by slow loading web sites then have a look (you have been warned). Why do companies have such terrible web sites?
No comments:
Post a Comment