Thursday, January 24, 2008

Why do marketers ignore the 50-plus?

This is a question I often get asked. Of course not all of them do but there are still too many around who do. People invariably think it is some complex marketing reason or because of pro-youh prejudice or because they are young themselves. When I tell them my answer they always shrug and say: “No.. can’t be..it must be more complicated than that”.

My answer is the marketers are a conservative bunch (especially of the B2C variety). They hate getting outside their confidence zone and find it much easier to just keep doing what they did yesterday. Also, there is always a bigger issue that must be sorted today rather than think about how the ageing population affects them tomorrow.

My thoughts have received a bit of support from an outfit called the Fournaise Marketing Group that calls itself: "one of the world's leading marketing effectiveness tracking companies”.

In its Global Marketing Effectiveness Report (surveyed 3,000 marketing professionals across the globe) it comes up with a couple of profound claims.

Firstly, 65% of all marketing B2C spend in 2007 had no effect on consumers. 70% of marketers believe that short-term revenue-boosting and lead-generation campaigns are more important than long-term intangible brand building. Overall, most companies don’t have much of a clue about the effectiveness of their marketing.

OK, you might say – so what’s new? Nothing much, but it does help explain one of marketing’s most interesting paradoxes. Dick Stroud

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