Millennials, Shmillennials: Why aren’t we marketing to the over 50 crowd?

Advertising contrarian Bob Hoffman gave a talk at Matt Beall's Hawaii Life Real Estate Brokers' Worthshop 5 conference last week, which is a wake up call to real estate agents and brokers everywhere.

Why are we spending so much time, energy and money marketing to 18-34 year olds when the greatest, wealthiest, most powerful spending group in the world in nearly every major product category is 50+ years old?

Remarkably, Bob helps us answer that question and a more important one: How should we be marketing to the over 50 crowd?

Full disclosure up front: The majority of the marketing world hates Bob Hoffman and thinks he's dead wrong. The only problem with this is that all the facts and research say he's right.

Why do we market to Millennials?

Bob has researched this extensively and his findings are jarring. His overall conclusion is that most marketers have a herd instinct; they are marketing to Millennials because everyone else is and somewhere there must be someone who has the facts and knows "why the hell we are doing this?"

Bob's been looking for that someone and looking for the facts to support this movement, but has come up with contrary research at every step.