Welcome to the boomer and Gen X media revolution

Opinion

Boomers and Gen X are the next big digital audience — and we can learn from existing Gen Z marketing best practice as our media consumptions converge.

Prepare for the Gen X and boomer media revolution — they are rapidly evolving their media behaviours to enter platforms and channels assumed by marketers to be exclusively for Gen Z and millennials.

The behaviours of marketers today would have you believe that when you wake up on your 45th birthday, you are old, stuck in your ways and not a lucrative target worth focusing media spend on. Marketers prefer the ambition, beauty and spunkiness of the young — that means courting Gen Z audiences who are “constantly connected”.

But the widely ignored 45-plus age group will soon be just as addressable in digital media and similarly engaged with TikTok in the coming years.

Despite accounting for 24% of the population and $35tn of spend a year (half of the global spend), just 23% of ads (in the UK) show a 55-plus protagonist, only 5% of influencer campaigns target those aged 45-plus and fewer than 1% of FMCG launches last year targeted those over 50.

We have chosen to ignore the economic opportunity with Gen X and boomers, and instead chase a Gen Z audience who represents $9.8tn of global consumer spending.

It’s a big, missed opportunity, predominantly driven by a focus on digital marketing that champions a young audience because it is simply more identifiable in media.

Converging behaviours

But the tide is changing.

The boomer generation, in particular, are undergoing a digital revolution that requires us to re-evaluate how we communicate with them, ultimately allowing us to adapt learnings from Gen Z we have spent so long optimising for.

Take the UK. In 2015, there was a 58% correlation between time spent with media channels by under-34s when compared with over-55s [IPA TouchPoints data]. By 2022, this commonality reached its largest historic difference — just a 7% correlation.

However, in the UK in 2024, the growth of online channels such as on-demand video (+43%) and the 84% increase in time spent on TikTok among over-50s [Ofcom] have helped close the generation gap to a 21% similarity between time spent within media.

So our generations are becoming increasingly similar in their media consumption behaviours.

Adopt and adapt

Some would have you believe that older generations exhibit a unique set of behaviours that demand a special, lighter-touch approach to marketing.

However, Wavemaker’s data on the purchase journey and the way consumers navigate brands suggest there’s no difference in how biased we are to brands later in life, nor is there a substantial change in the way we navigate brands when we are considering a purchase.

We do, however, measure a subtle increase in risk aversion that may draw older audiences to the reliable and trusted brands they’re familiar with.

Another difference that divides generations’ digital media consumption is their attitudes towards the way they use platforms.

For those aged 55-plus, Facebook is their number one social platform and TikTok is still “appointment to view” [IPA TouchPoints] — a considered activity, rather than an empty-headed scroll, which is how Gen Z use the platform.

But this nuance is not representative of a difference in active attention, which is only +/-1.5 seconds [Amplified Intelligence] from the younger age group to the older 55-plus.

As older people spend more time with short-form video, served by algorithms, they will be shaped by platform design and start to treat it more as a browsing environment.

Ultimately, however old we are, we will adopt and adapt to the design decisions of the channels we engage with, meaning our divergent generation media habits will converge again.

Learn from the Gen Z playbook

Gen Z are early adopters, ahead of Gen X and boomers on the adoption curve for new media channels. What can we learn from our existing best practice to better design media experiences for the older generation?

Bring the Gen Z social energy: Wavemaker’s 2023 research into “finding the Gen X factor” revealed the hidden power of influencer selection with Gen X. Appearing “real” and “for me” leads to a 73% improvement in relevance and 43% more action taken from the influencer post.

For instance, L’Oréal Age Perfect Rosy Oil-Serum embraced older influencers to beat social benchmarks by 450%. Influencers like Trinny Woodall garner huge amounts of trust among this age group and this is equivalent to Gen Z’s love for creators. This trust can be leveraged and many Gen X influencers, like Woodall, are launching their own brands targeted at these “older” digital audiences.

Create truly valuable digital experiences: Both Gen Z and boomers love engaging with brands they enjoy — take two beauty heavyweights as examples. Hit Gen Z beauty brand Elf has driven significant loyalty through a front-and-centre rewards scheme.

At the same time, Charlotte Tilbury has launched a loyalty app that unlocks tutorial content, routine-building and offers. Over 40% of the app’s users are over 45 and it has five times more 55-plus users than the average branded or shopping app, according to Similarweb — proof that this older audience craves content. The key is making it accessible.

Green points of view are more welcome by all: While it’s trendy to label Gen Z as the eco-generation, it’s actually Gen X and boomers who more frequently believe in and act on sustainable principles.

Research indicates that individuals aged 55 and older are more likely to acknowledge the impact of climate change (80% compared with 72% of Gen Z) and prefer companies that “take action” against it (71% versus 64% of the general population, Mintel research suggests).

They often express their values through their purchasing choices. It’s crucial not to stereotype generations as resistant to change; instead, brands should focus on evolving and building the essential trust that over-45s seek.

Older audiences grew up in a very different media world and most of our so-called “older audiences” wouldn’t have experienced social media before they were in their late twenties.

Real brands that want to survive the test of time and grow old with audiences need to build equity, trust and notions of reliability in their communications. Doing so through brand-building initiatives rather than conversions have 65% greater sales impact in the long term — a technique that existed well before Facebook and developed the bias and understanding we have towards brands we love today.

As younger and older audiences’ media habits re-converge, we can apply the highly optimised approach we have to marketing from Gen Z to Gen X and boomer generations.

Brands will come and go, but building equity through valuable experiences and “for me” messaging will ensure the longevity of brands we love as we grow older.

George Munday is global strategy director at Wavemaker