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Belch: Advertising and
Promotion, Sixth Edition
IMC PERSPECTIVE 5-2
144
III. Analyzing the
Communication Process
5. The Communication
Process
Does Advertising Ignore Older Consumers?
In early 2002, a battle was waged between two of the
major television networks, CBS and ABC, over The Late
Show with David Letterman. ABC was trying to lure
Letterman’s show away from CBS to replace Nightline,
the news show hosted by Ted Koppel, which it had been
airing in the late-night time slot for 22 years. The battle
was being fought mainly because Letterman is
more popular among younger viewers between the key
ages of 18 to 32 and brings in $100 million more
in advertising revenue each year than Nightline.
Observers argued that the tug-of-war over Letterman
is just another example of advertisers’ obsession with
younger consumers. While aging baby boomers may
argue they are more active, more fit, more adventurous,
and more experimental than their predecessors,
they are still of less interest to advertisers than
younger consumers.
It has often been argued that people who work in
advertising are different from the typical consumers
who represent the target markets for their clients’
products and services. Some say advertising may better
reflect those who work in the industry than the
consuming public, as it is really about the people who
create it, not about the consumers who actually buy
the products being advertised. A study conducted a
few years ago on ageism in advertising considered
potential problems that might arise because of age
differences between agency personnel and older consumers.
The study found that professionals who work
in advertising agencies are much younger than the
U.S. adult population. Nearly 40 percent of ad agency
professional staff are between the ages of 30 and 39,
while only 20 percent of all adults are in their 30s.
The youth bias is particularly evident in the creative
departments. Agency employment drops like a rock
after age 40, particularly among those involved in creating
the ads. As a result, agencies rarely have creative
professionals with a true understanding of life after
age 40, not to mention life after 50 or 60. Richard Lee,
a principal of High-Yield Marketing, the company that
conducted the study, notes: “Most young agency staff,
reflective of their life phase, are fixated on creating
advertising that is hip, cool, impressive to their peers,
and award-winning. This is more fulfilling than creating
advertising for people with dated tastes who
wouldn’t know Smashing Pumpkins if they stepped on
them.”
© The McGraw−Hill
Companies, 2003
Advertisers who are unable to connect with older
consumers may be squandering opportunities to reach
a valuable market. While nearly 40 percent of American
adults are 50 or older and they control more than
50 percent of the U.S.’s discretionary income, they
receive only 10 percent of the advertising messages.
Many observers wonder why advertisers remain
focused on consumers in their teens, 20s, and early
30s when spending power is becoming progressively
more concentrated among those age 50 and older.
Some point to the conventional wisdom in marketing
and advertising that brand loyalties and consumer
preferences form early and once formed, stay pretty
much the same. Older people are stereotyped as
unlikely to change brands and try something new.
Another reason for the youth bias stems from the
problem of advertisers’ not wanting to have their
brands perceived as being for older consumers for fear
of damaging their image among younger people. As
the senior vice president of Zenith Media notes: “For a
lot of brands we work with, it’s sexier to advertise to
the younger consumers who are trendier, much more
fashion forward, very social and very in the public eye.
With marketing dollars so limited and precious, you
want to bet on the future.”
Of course, not everyone in the advertising industry
agrees with the findings of the ageism study. One
agency executive calls the conclusions ridiculous, noting
that “we have people of every age segment here.”
There are, of course, examples of excellent advertising
targeted at mature consumers, and new media are
being introduced to reach the over-50 crowd.
Many believe, however, that the youth bias in advertising
is still a major problem. They note that the best
hope for the demise of the primary focus on youth in
advertising is the marketing people who are growing
and maturing themselves. Some feel that it has finally
dawned on advertisers that they ought to follow the
green, which is quickly going gray, and that older consumers
are more hip. As one ad executive noted: “Sixtyyear-olds
don’t think like they did in the last
generation. Sixty-year-olds in the last generation wore
plaid pants.”
Sources: Hillary Chura, “Boomers Hope to Break Age-Old Ad Myth,”
Advertising Age, May 13, 2002, p. 16; Richard Lee, “The Youth Bias in
Advertising,” American Demographics, January 1997, pp. 47–50.