December 21 2015
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.
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.
He cites Nielsen, saying:
He also shared this nugget:
"You know how you see all of those Millennials in car commercials? Well, people 75 to dead buy six times as many cars as people 18-24."
Then he dropped this statistical bombshell, met with gasps from the audience:
The biggest problem, says Bob, is this:
Listening to Bob, you immediately start to ask yourself, why? Why is nearly everyone ignoring the most economically powerful generation ever?
He notes that a few decades ago, advertisers discovered it was a good strategy to market to the 18-34 year old crowd because they were the leading edge of a consumer revolution. This strategy is still the right one, Bob explains, except for the fact that these people are no longer young. However, marketers ever since have been continuing to target youth, instead of following this group, which is now over 50, and "the most powerful consumer group the world has ever seen," but are no longer a significant target of advertisers and marketers.
Anyone who looks at the numbers realizes that we should be dedicating the lion's share of our aim at this over 50 crowd, yet we don't. Bob notes that embedded into the ad industry is a bias from "decades of prejudices and legends overwhelm(ing) simple, clear thinking." The real reason is that these advertisers "hate old people: they like the excitement of youth." Adding, "We can't build a hot advertising career talking to old farts."
Then a slide pops up during his presentation to reveal this striking statistic, which really says it all:
Bob explains that the advertising world has been "demographically cleansed of people over 50."
Is it any wonder that advertisers are focused on the younger generation? It is what they know best because it is who they are.
Fortunately, Bob offers some prescriptive recommendations to those who recognize the opportunity and want to market to people over 50:
Bob concluded his presentation citing Forbes, which wrote that people over 50 are "the most ignored wealthy people in the history of marketing." They are, he added, the group that will determine the success and failure of most products.
That list, my friends, also includes real estate.
To view the original article, visit the WAV Group blog.