Talking About My Generation
Its not just you getting old, those whippersnappers in advertising are getting younger, as recent IPA research has proved. But with the middle aged population growing, Anna Wise, editor of MediaTel NewsLine, asks whether the industry should be letting the experienced hands walk away.
The fact that baby-boomers are coming of age has not come as a terrible shock. The current bulge in the over-16 population, according to the ONS’s Social Trends report, was in the 25-34 and 35-44 age categories in 2000. By 2011 it is expected to be in the 35-44 and 45-54 groups. The average age of the population in 2000 was 38.8. By 2025 it is expected to be 42.6.
Similarly, we’ve known for some time that improvements in education and health care mean that middle aged folk are more likely to be active and wealthy than in years gone by, not to mention less likely to refer to themselves as “folk” and more likely to have a smarter mobile phone than you. The media has duly come up with new euphemisms such as “the grey pound” and “middle youth” to describe these slightly saggy spenders.
Teenagers are traditionally seen as the individualists of society, but who didn’t want to fit in at school? By the same token, the older generations are traditionally seen as boring and conservative, but are now probably as likely to be buying motorbikes as hover mowers or wearing Prada as Pringle. Similarly their level of multi-media savvy varies hugely: My grandmother has just got herself email because her sister is already online, whereas TV presenter Fern Britten (some considerable years younger) admitted on This Morning last week that she’d never been on Friends Reunited because she didn’t understand the technology.
So who is actually managing to milk the middle-aged cash cow? Where is the glossy magazine for middle youth women, or men for that matter, that manages really sky-high circulations? Where is the must-see, press-hyped TV aiming for an unashamedly middle-aged audience? One of the few recent media success stories to have relied on older people is Radio 2, whose ever-expanding weekly reach now includes 4.7 million 35-54 year olds and 5.1 million 55 and overs, but only 1.3 million 25-34 year olds. None of which is much use to the advertising fraternity.
But even if the media does supply the older audiences, perhaps with acclaimed dramas such as Clocking Off and strong magazine titles such as Red and Good Housekeeping, are advertisers taking full advantage? A large amount of advertising still relies on stereotyped images of older people- they are, primarily, mums and dads or grannies and granddads- think AOL or Tesco, for example. Providers of food and money, misunderstanding trends, disapproving of modern ways and amusingly thick when it comes to technology. Why?
A big clue could lie in the results of the latest IPA Census, which revealed that almost half the employees of its member agencies are under the age of 30, and that less than 20% are over 40. The excuse is that older people leave for “obvious lifestyle reasons”. Bruce Haines, IPA President, says: “The last few years have proved tough for the advertising industry and agencies are lean machines. Hours are getting longer, margins are down and more is being asked of staff. I think a lot of those aged 40 and over are moving on to less stressful areas of business.” Times may indeed be tough, but if the lifestyle of working at an ad agency isn’t right for those with what Haines calls “precious experience” as well as a few miles on the clock, surely that’s a loss for the industry.
Fifty years or so ago, when advertising was still invented by men in suits, a seemingly impossible task was to appeal to the newly invented “teenagers” with their impenetrable language, dress codes and music – trying to “get with the kids” by remembering a long-distant youth. Now that the ads are made by men in baggy pants and Camper shoes, pleasing teens with the requisite branding, celebrity endorser and dance remix backing track is a relatively simple task- the new challenge is getting with the grown-ups.
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