Golden Years -- Marketing Surprise: Older Consumers Buy
Stuff, Too --- Sony, Ford Look to Boomers And Beyond,
Challenging Obsession With Youth --- Grandma Films Some Sharks
By Kelly Greene
6 April 2004
Linda Carter, a
51-year-old hotel manager in
The spot featured a
gray-haired astronaut filming Earth from space with his own camcorder. The
tagline: "When your kids ask where the money went, show them the
tape." Soon after, Ms. Carter walked into a local electronics store and
walked out with a $1,200 Sony camcorder.
Ms. Carter was impressed
by the ad's focus on her age group. "As we got older, we stopped getting
attention," she says. "But we're still spending a lot of money."
The push by Sony Corp.
to hook people such as Ms. Carter is part of a budding revolution in marketing.
After decades of obsessing over people in their twenties, some of the world's
best-known companies are setting their sights on older consumers, an audience
habitually written off as poor, excessively frugal or stuck in a rut of buying
the same brand.
Ford Motor Co. plans to
sell a sedan for empty-nesters with a trunk that holds eight golf bags. Target
Corp. stores are carving out large chunks of space for khaki pants and flowing linen separates aimed at older bodies. Music
retailer Virgin Megastores is redesigning its stores
to appeal to Led Zeppelin and Miles Davis fans.
Driving the shift are
big numbers. The 78 million Americans who were 50 or older as of 2001
controlled 67% of the country's wealth, or $28 trillion, according to data
collected by the U.S. Census and Federal Reserve. What's more, households
headed by someone in the 55-to-64 age group had a median net worth of $112,048
in 2000 -- 15 times the $7,240 reported for the under-35 age group. And within
five years, about a third of the population is going to be at least 50 years
old.
One challenge: How do
you get the attention of older customers while making it clear to younger
people that your brands are still cool? Some companies are discovering that ads
featuring older people can speak to younger people too. Sony found that its
commercials showing a grandmother taking underwater pictures of sharks scored
well with young viewers, who related to the adventure. Other companies continue
to use young models but slip in messages that are likely to resonate with older
audiences -- the approach used by Anheuser-Busch Cos. in its successful
marketing of the low-carb Michelob Ultra beer.
Sony has poured more
than $25 million into advertising to make the company's camcorders, digital
cameras and other high-end gadgets more appealing to people between 50 and 64.
Sony calls them "zoomers" to reflect their
increasingly active lifestyles. The push is successful so far: Camcorder sales
shot up to a "high double-digit growth" rate last year, says Chris Gaebler, market intelligence and strategy director for the
company's
Walt Disney Co.'s Walt
Disney World rolled out a program called "Magical Gatherings" last
year. It allows customers to use a Web site to plan trips and is largely aimed
at people over 50 who are organizing outings with golfing buddies, old
schoolmates or their grandchildren.
And Microsoft Corp.
started publicizing software tools in February -- with easier-to-read text,
audio alerts and mouse alternatives -- to help older workers who are developing
vision, hearing and wrist problems.
David Wolfe, a Reston,
Recent research has
begun to cast doubt on the conventional wisdom that marketing should mainly be
directed at young people. One argument runs that it's best to "get them young" because older people have already decided
their brand loyalties. But a 2002 study by AARP, the Washington-based advocacy
group for people over 50, and RoperASW found that for
most products the majority of people over 45 aren't loyal to a single brand.
Anheuser-Busch, the
largest
In an attempt to woo
older drinkers back to beer from wine and other less-filling beverages (which
people tend to prefer as they grow older), Anheuser-Busch created a low-carb formula and tagged it "Michelob Ultra." The
name plays off a brand better known to older drinkers than younger ones. In
2001, the company started rolling out the product in three retirement hot spots
in Florida -- Punta Gorda, Naples and Fort Myers --
and then in a few larger markets.
The beer maker initially
hired seven "mature marketers" age 50 and older to talk up the new
brand at golf clubs, retirement communities and veterans' halls. It has since
expanded the team to 36 people. As it turned out, the target audience didn't
want Anheuser-Busch to "talk to my age" or show people with gray hair
in Michelob Ultra ads, says Mr. Lachky. "They
said, `Talk to my lifestyle.' They were more interested in learning about lower
carbs and lower calories." So advertising
shifted to younger models in active pursuits.
The pitch seems to be
working. The Ultra brand, rolled out nationally in September 2002, is now on
the verge of breaking into the top 10 beer brands sold in the
Ford is attempting to
solve the riddle facing all auto makers: What will baby boomers, who have
snapped up sport-utility vehicles, start driving as their kids move away from
home? It's a crucial question, since the average American household buys 13 new
cars over the course of a lifetime -- including seven after the head of the
household turns 50, according to CNW Marketing Research Inc., of
About five years ago, as
The Five Hundred will
include popular SUV features such as raised seating, all-wheel drive, space to
haul a 10-foot ladder and a roomy trunk for all those golf bags. It's also the
first Ford to be built on a Volvo chassis, in an attempt to appeal to boomers'
affinity for European styling, Ms. Marentic says.
The sedan's marketing
won't mention that the Five Hundred is designed for an aging population because
Ford believes boomers are fighting the idea that they're getting older. The car
would be a good fit for Ms. Marentic's own father,
for example, who commutes 60 miles each way to his job in
Older music lovers are
an increasingly important audience for retailers at a time when many young
people are downloading music free or at low-cost Web sites. Music sales slipped
to $12.6 billion in 2002 from a peak of $14.6 billion in 1999. Retailers would
like to take a cue from the concert business, where boomers have made $100-plus
ticket prices routine and many of the biggest-grossing acts are boomer
favorites such as the Eagles.
In November, the Virgin
Group's Virgin Megastores revamped its
"There are a lot of
people who want to buy music but aren't quite sure where to start," says
Dave Alder, senior vice president of product and marketing for Virgin
Entertainment Group,
Virgin declined to
release sales figures, but Mr. Alder says the experimental store is
outperforming the company's other 21
Many companies are just
starting to reach out to older adults. When Procter & Gamble Co. began
research 18 months ago to pinpoint a variety of consumer "segments"
it should target, "it quickly became very clear, due to the sheer number
of people who fall into [the 50-plus] segment, that this is . . . an important
group to focus on in ways that we haven't before," says P&G
spokeswoman Stefani Valkonen.
P&G has started to
shake up stereotypes among its own marketers and managers. One tool: a video
depicting a day in the life of an older consumer. So far, P&G has
pinpointed about 30 existing products -- such as Puffs tissues and Downy fabric
softener -- that it can market more directly to people 50 and older. Work has
begun on advertising plans and on a new partnership with AARP that may include
joint marketing and research.
Marketers at Sony had to
overcome skepticism within the company before targeting older consumers.
"It's very easy to convince executives here that we have to target
generations X and Y, because it's easy to think that if you get that first
purchase, you get set in your brand ways," says Mr. Gaebler,
the market-intelligence director. He used demographic research to show the
significant differences in buying power between generations.
"A hundred dollars
is a lot of money for a 20-year-old, but it's not a lot of money for a lot of
people over the age of 50. You're at the senior end of your earning career, and
you might contemplate buying a $5,000 home-theater system," he says.
Sony's commercials
featuring older videographers resulted not only in a
sales spurt but even more surprisingly in a boost to younger generations'
"youthful perception of Sony." Mr. Gaebler
thinks the younger crowd could relate to the risky feats played out in the
spots, including the ad in which a grandmother gets into an underwater cage and
takes pictures of sharks attacking.
The results convinced
"executives inside our company that this is a group worth targeting,"
Mr. Gaebler says. "Now, it's almost as if we
don't have a distinct `zoomer' effort. From
executives to engineers, they're thinking about zoomers
when they make decisions."
---
Gray Means Green
Median net worth for U.S. households by age as of 2000
75 and older
With home equity: $100,100
Excluding home equity: $19,025
70-74
With home equity: $120,000
Excluding home equity: $31,400
65-69
With home equity: $114,050
Excluding home equity: $27,588
55-64
With home equity: $112,048
Excluding home equity: $32,304
45-54
With home equity: $83,150
Excluding home equity: $23,525
35-44
With home equity: $44,275
Excluding home equity: $13,100
34 and younger
With home equity: $7,240
Excluding home equity: $3,300
Source: U.S. Census
Talking it Over and Thinking it Through:
1. What is the purpose of advertising?
2. How does advertising accomplish a shift in demand?
3. How can advertising be evaluated from an economic perspective?
4. How is
advertising related to monopolistic competition?
Thinking About the Future:
The article indicates that prior to 2002, older consumers were largely ignored. That strikes me as a huge oversight and you can expect to see more and more companies realize that fact. As they do, you will see more advertising geared toward older consumers. This demographic controls the bulk of the wealth and does not appear to be as brand loyal as previously thought. Watch the ads for the next couple of years and see if you can identify the shift in focus.