Branding to the Young…of Heart

Age is a HUGE differentiation factor in our society. “How old are you?” seems to be one of the top-asked questions by all of us. And it seems to me that marketers are constantly focusing their attention on the 15 to 30-something crowd. Younger, cooler, more stylish, much more prone to accept fads and fashion, spending money, not full of responsibility, etc; are qualities that many marketers are continually looking for their target market; even if its not the appropriate one.

One of the main reasons marketers tend to focus on young markets is because there is a strong perception that they are 1) very open to new things, 2) in the need to fit in, and so adopt brands easily, and 3) they will go to extra lengths to achieve what they want, usually image and status. However, by doing so, many marketers have lost sight of another group: the baby boomers, and who happen have a special advantage over other groups: they are very financially stable and haveplenty of free time, as most of them are retired. As a BusinessWeek article quotes Paulo Timoni: “The boomers are particularly attractive because they tend to have free time,” and its true, they are no longer raising families, they’re retired, and lately they are very open to new experiences.

Every 7 seconds another person in the US alone turns 50. That is an impressive market growth rate. Especially when we factor in the amount of money and credit line this market has. Credit cards alone, the totality of this market carries over 140 million cards on their back pockets; providing them with an enormous shopping power and allowing them to have a shop-on-the-go/desire attitude.

The whole Marketing to Baby Boomers has been all over for this past year, and will be even hotter during next year. In 2007 many companies (including Gap, Old Navy, Ford, etc) will finally take a step towards marketing to this important group. Companies across the vast product and service industries are facing a big challenge: should they continue marketing to the young and hip, or should they (at least) double-market to this two groups, risking losing their attractive hip factor towards the young.

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On the branding side of marketing, many managers believe that young people are the -most- favorable group towards adopting new brands. Though not entirely false, should only one group be allowed to adopt and take over new brands? Recent studies have shown that baby boomers are great brand adopters. They are actually just as open as teenagers to use and try new brands. Although the huge misconception that baby boomers are brand loyalists and are closed to new brands is still looming over most branding agencies, the reality is actually a big different; and it presents with a great window of opportunity to brands targeted towards them.

If we take the baby boomer attitude of brand loyalty + new brands targeted especially to them = a whole new group of consumers that are loyal to new brands.

This is a very juicy issue right now, and I will definitely keep on writing about it on the future. In the mean time check out this FastCompany article that sums up a great deal of information around this topic.