Marketing to older demographics is a disgrace to the profession

If you think this is how to appeal to mature consumers, you need to grow up.
 A lot.

By Neil Patrick


Many marketers view older demographics with scarcely disguised distain and patronise them with naive assumptions about who they are and how they live their lives.  The over 40's are a high value and discriminating (in a positive sense) target market, yet brands and marketers regularly fumble their marketing to them. Why?

At the time of the 2011 Census, the median age for the population of England and Wales was 39 years. 27% was aged 40 to 59 years, and 22% was aged 60 years and over. In other words, almost half (49%) of the UK population is aged 40 or over.

Not only that, all the data tells us that people aged 40 plus have greater wealth and disposable income than younger people. The over forties are the most valuable age demographic in the UK today.

No business with any sense would want to alienate its highest potential market segment. So how can such an illogical situation be explained?

I think the explanation is actually very simple. It’s because people in marketing and advertising are generally under 40 themselves. They see the world through a lens which reflects their own likes and dislikes. They simply cannot empathise with those who are older than they are.

Empathy is the cousin of understanding. And without understanding, communication is always going to be difficult.

In their defence, I was no different. When I was 16, anyone over 30 was really old. When I was 30, a 60 year old seemed positively geriatric.

But ageist hiring begets ageist marketing, so the origins are not so much the fault of marketing teams themselves, but rather those who decide who is on those teams.

It’s unconscious bias at its worst. It results in stereotyping and discrimination – something which the young are especially keen to call out - but only it seems when it’s about gender, sexuality or ethnicity.

Brands which either appeal only to the young and/or alienate the mature are setting themselves up as hostages to fortune if they choose to stake everything on the fast-changing and transitory loyalties of the young.

It just doesn’t make commercial sense to target only young people when older demographics are higher spending and less fickle. Chuck Shroeder, a former director at ad giant DDB and now 71 said:

“Advertisers assume that the “old” people of today are some monolithic group of codgers who don’t know anything. Product managers are all young and they don’t want advice from people who could be their grandparents. They have the same attitude I had when I was 30, largely based on hubris and youthful lack of experience. They don’t grasp that they could sell more product if they actually talked to the people who have the money.”

Asked to give examples of ageist ads, he said:

“I nominate the Esurance commercial with the elderly lady who is bragging to her friends that she saves time by posting her vacation photos on her “wall” rather than mailing them. We see her living room wall with pictures stuck on it. Funny eh? It implies that we old folks know nothing about Facebook, even though Facebook has more users over 50 than under.”

Last week I observed a brand in action which would convince any young marketer to rethink their entire preconception of older demographics. But guess what, there were no young people there to witness this live case study of brand loyalty in action.

This is a brand which has endured 50 years of highs and lows, drug and alcohol traumas, fickle fashion changes and more.

I went to see hard rock band UFO play a sold out concert in Cardiff. This band was founded in 1969 and it has been touring constantly ever since. Founder and vocalist Phil Mogg will be 71 this year. The concert hall was packed with men almost none of whom were less than 40 years old. And whilst they didn’t have a mosh pit, they were jumping and singing along just like any audience of on-trend hipsters. This was no chamber music or smooth jazz. It was a loud and sweaty rock spectacular:

This was brand loyalty by the over 40s in plain sight. This tour is sold out nationwide. It’s the very real, cash-till ringing manifestation of 50 years of customer loyalty and spending. And a wake up call to everyone in marketing who thinks older men spend their time and money on gardening and golf. Or hula hooping...

Wake up and smell the coffee kids.

P.S. I learned with great sadness that a few days after this gig, Paul Raymond, seen above on keyboards passed away unexpectedly following a heart attack. As a more or less permanent member of UFO, he will be greatly missed. My condolences go to his friends and family.

Discover the secrets of career suicide for yourself today!

By Neil Patrick

Are you the CEO of a global advertising business? Are you feeling out of step with the 21st century and in need of a career change? Well I have great news for you. You could transform your career faster and easier than you ever thought possible. Thousands of old white guys know this secret to career transformation. And you could too. Just follow our FREE step by step guide below! Act now before it’s too late.

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If there’s one thing that is guaranteed to get business leaders into trouble these days, it's trying to deny a problem exists when all the evidence points to the contrary. Whitewashing the truth might be the essence of what  advertising companies do, but in an age where media is more democratic than ever before, it's also dangerous and potentially career terminating.

And one group of people are especially vulnerable to this; people stereotyped as ‘old white guys’. I am sensitive to this because I am more or less one myself and it dismays me when I see my demographic peers damaging our increasingly fragile standing in the world.

Last week, via an interview on Business Insider, an old white guy who ought to know better, Chairman of Saatchi and Saatchi, Kevin Roberts got into a spat about his views about women’s careers in advertising and for expressing his opinion that the issue of gender was “done and over.”

He was confronted by Business Insider with the challenge that the advertising industry is sexist because not a single CEO of the six largest advertising agencies in the world is female.

You'd expect that a man at the head of a large global business whose very nature revolves around communication, persuasion and sophisticated messages, would produce an elegant, visionary and inclusive response.

But he didn't.

Having spent about 20 years of my career working almost daily with advertising firms, I've observed at close quarters that the advertising industry is sexist for many reasons, not just its attitudes to the women it employs.

Moreover, its ‘creative’ output for clients is often ageist, elitist, patronizing and worst of all, frequently devoid of any sort of moral compass. Changes to the law have been necessary to stop tobacco advertising and control advertising to children. Basically, provided your business isn’t illegal, almost any advertising company will gladly take (a lot of) your money and spend some of it to promote and lavishly entertain you whilst pocketing the rest.

Commenting on Roberts' fall from grace, CEO of 20-first, Avivah Wittenberg-Cox pointed out in her Harvard Business Review post that:

“Roberts’s kind of willful blindness (in Margaret Heffernan’s wonderful phrase) is widespread. Those who explain the dominance of men in leadership by citing women’s “personal choices,” which of course they respect and have no wish to influence. Others who make a fuss of visibly promoting alpha females (usually without kids) to prove their gender neutrality, while alienating the next generation of women. Those who proudly say they hire the best candidate regardless of gender, without ever considering that their definition of “best” might be rigidly male.”

This blindness and denial is not only unconscionable, it's harmful to business effectiveness. Avivah goes on to say:

“That’s where many managers still are, mostly unconsciously. Denying differences. Some, like Roberts, use the differences to rationalize the gender gap. But without understanding all the issues that affect, influence, and irritate women, it’s pretty hard to create gender-balanced workplaces or to connect with female consumers sustainably.”

“Rather than ignoring gender issues, it’s increasingly important for 21st–century leaders to understand them — deeply. When you can speak to both men and women, without alienating either, that’s “gender bilingualism.” It has nothing to do with Men Are from Mars–esque stereotypes, and everything to do with embracing gender differences along a whole range of masculine and feminine career cycles, communication styles, and differing attitudes to power. And in the world Roberts describes, “a world where we need, like we’ve never needed before, integration, collaboration, connectivity, and creativity,” gender bilingualism is increasingly a leadership skill.”


This is the first reason that Roberts got it so wrong. He didn't just suggest it is not an issue, he clearly stated that the problem is solved, because he believes that women who think and behave just like the worst kind of stereotypical old white men, are doing just fine in the advertising industry.

Mainstream and social media were quick to cotton on to Roberts’ expressed views in the interview and he was promptly suspended pending internal disciplinary processes. He resigned on 3rd August.

Advertising agency creative work is collaborative, fast paced and can be great fun. Agency leadership roles managing business and people usually isn’t. But this is hardly solid grounds to conclude that no women really want to make this transition.

Historically, the principal measures of career success have been rank and pay. The default generalisation is the higher we climb on these particular ladders, the more successful we are assumed to be. And the more fulfilled and happy too.

But this is a way too simplistic view. Reality is different. It is nuanced and often it is entirely the contrary. I know a lot of other old white guys who hold senior positions and would gladly give them up if they knew how to survive without them. They are tired, disgruntled, cynical and burned out. They have little or no fun at all in their work. They’d gladly hand their jobs over to another man, woman or hermaphrodite if they were given half a chance.

This disengagement is because too many organisations have retained cultures which place a premium on Alpha-male competitiveness. Cultures where only lip service is paid to collaboration and inclusivity. Cultures where there is tokenism. Cultures where a winner takes all mentality prevails.

Why do we continue to define success simply in terms of positions on an org chart and pay scale? The millennials have it right. Success is about doing the things at work from which we derive most satisfaction. Whatever those things are and whatever gender we are. But implicit in Robert's comments is that connectivity, collaboration and gender appreciation might be useful for his staff but are not terribly valuable characteristics for industry leaders. It reflects an old world view, not the reality of 21st century business leadership.

He said:

“So we are trying to impose our antiquated shit on them, and they are going: ‘actually guys, you’re missing the point, you don’t understand: I’m way happier than you.’ Their ambition is not a vertical ambition, it’s this intrinsic, circular ambition to be happy. So they say: ‘We are not judging ourselves by those standards that you idiotic dinosaur-like men judge yourself by’. I don’t think [the lack of women in leadership roles] is a problem. I’m just not worried about it because they are very happy, they’re very successful, and doing great work.”

And this is where Roberts committed hara-kiri; he asserted that there is no problem, because women are choosing to work to different definitions of success. Not that these definitions are essential to everyone at all levels of the organisation.

The thing that astonished and disappointed me most though was that a man who is (was) at the very top of a huge global business which specializes in media and communications somehow thought that he could express these opinions and not get killed for it. He more than most people should understand how the media, his peers and the public would be likely to react to any statement of denial on this topic.

It seems to me that the real issue for organisations in the 21st century isn’t how to make organisations blind to gender, measuring 'equality' using old world metrics of  pay and seniority; it is how to harness and fulfill the unique talents and aspirations of all employees regardless of age, gender or race. And to recognize that leadership teams exclusively reserved for alpha men are at a serious competitive disadvantage in the digital age.

But then I’m an old white guy, so what do I know?

Why social selling is not advertising

By Neil Patrick

I have a slide which I use in almost every social media presentation I give. It’s this:

I am looking forward to the day that I can ditch this from my slide deck. That’s the day when everyone has learned that social media isn’t a sales platform.

But I fear that this slide is going to remain in use for a long time to come.

I’m not about to say that social media is a waste of our time and money. It’s not. Far from it. It just should never be used to try and sell people things. It’s a great way to build goodwill, to share information, to get noticed, to have our say and to build communities.

Why isn’t that enough guys?

I get huge value from social media. Because of it, I make great and valuable connections with amazing people all over the world. These wonderful people help me out on a daily basis. And I try to do my bit to help them out in return. Am I going to abuse those relationships by telling them I’ve got a great offer for them? Hell no. I’d rather poke myself in the eye with a sharp stick.

It helps me get my voice heard. It saves me a shedload of money on marketing. Google adwords at £1.80 a click? No thanks.

Social media keeps me up to date on who is talking about things I’m interested in. It allows me to easily follow the thoughts and ideas of people I look up to. It allows people to connect with me and tell me what they think.

Almost every day social media brings me astonishing opportunities that I’d never have if all I did was use it to try and flog stuff to people.

Social media gets me clients and business all the time. But that's not because I advertise, it's because they come to like and trust me. They choose if and when they want to do business with me. I don't presume that they will want to. Or pretend that I can second guess when they will want to.

That’s a pretty amazing heap of valuable benefits I think. Am I going to chuck it all away by naff advertising to people? NO WAY.

So please sales people please stop abusing the goodwill of the people you want to be your friends online.

'Nuff said.