Are marketers guilty of ‘FOMO’: a ‘Fear of Marketing Older’?
Ageism in Advertising? Marketing for Changing Consumer Demographics
Last month we wrote about the recent economic experiences of six young Australians. The inspiration for the topic came from some compelling data published by Commbank iQ on the current spending behaviours of different age cohorts. We had been surprised to see that Australians aged 24-29 have cut back on their consumption in real terms by about 7% since last year – but also conspicuous in this data is how much older Australians are consuming. On average, those aged 55 and up are outspending inflation. Here’s the relevant graph again for reference:
Source: Commbank iQ Cost of Living Insights Report, May 2023
So – in addition to reflecting on the contemporary struggles of young people in the Australian economy – we wanted to think about the relationship between marketing and older consumers. The first thing to point out is that, not only does it appear that older Australians are spending more, but our aging population will also lead to a significant increase in their numbers in the coming decades. Remembering that the latter, at least, is a trend for the global population, two Swedish academics recently noted in an article for the International Journal of Consumer Studies that, “the growth and importance of this consumer group has inspired an increase in the marketing research articles focusing on elderly consumers.” And we draw on a little of this kind of literature throughout this blogpost. Nonetheless, even if an academic interest in changing consumer demographics has been piqued among market researchers, it seems to us that not much has changed, on the ground, in marketing practices. Is there – as Jeff Weiss from Age of Majority Research recently put it – a form of ‘FOMO’ at play, a ‘Fear of Marketing Older’?
Back in 2013 the Australian Human Rights Commission published a research report on ageism in media and, specifically, advertising portrayals of older Australians. The Commission engaged Urbis to conduct the research with the hope of getting some insight into how we could achieve more of the economic benefits of an aging population, as “older Australians are a large and growing consumer market for an extensive range of products and services.” After a month-long ‘social media audit and advertising scan, Urbis found that people aged 65+ were only represented in 4.7% of ads (despite comprising 14.2% of the population). Urbis then surveyed 2000 people representative of the Australian population. 47% of the respondents felt that older people were unfairly represented in advertising. Some words which commonly came up for such respondents were: ‘forgetful’, ‘sick’, ‘slow’, ‘old’, ‘needy’, and ‘vulnerable’.
So why are we often failing to market to older people, or drawing on only a caricature of aging when we do? One possible reason is that market researchers assume that, by about 50, people tend to spend less and save more; thus we should focus on reaching young and middle-aged people who are actually prone to buying clothes, cars, furniture, and so on. Obviously, the Commbank iQ data we’ve referred to suggests otherwise – but perhaps this record of the spending behaviours of Australians over the last year presents some anomalies. Here this 2020 bulletin on demographic trends and spending from the RBA is helpful. While the authors note that:
"Some portion of the slowing in consumption growth over the past decade is likely to be due to the ageing of the population. This is because … spending generally increases through the working life of a household, rising noticeably for households aged 35-54 in the stage of their life where many households support children and then declines once they retire.”
They go on to observe that:
“The impact of the growing number of older households on aggregate consumption has been partly mitigated by a shift in the shape of the lifetime consumption distribution over the past decade. Average consumption per household aged 55 years and above has grown nearly twice as fast as the average of other households. … By contrast, the youngest households (those aged 24 and below) on average saw no growth at all in their consumption.”
The authors suggest that this increase in spending among older people is likely due to strong growth in asset prices given the “relationship between household wealth and consumption.” And, indeed, “older households now save less of their current income than younger households.”
We think it’s possible, then, that the Commbank iQ data – as opposed to being merely anomalous – fits into a larger trend of changing consumer demographics, tracked between 2005 and 2018 in the above graph. The upshot is that older people are a consumer group to be taken seriously.
But there are other reasons marketing professionals may have a ‘fear of marketing older’, including unconscious biases about the way older people live now. The research published by the Australian Human Rights Commission found that, when it comes to advertising, when older people are represented it is usually for products specifically geared towards ‘the elderly’. So 7% of the 2000 respondents brought up the focus on funeral advertising. Grim. Older people, of course, wear shoes and watches, drive cars, ride bikes – or, in a word, live. As a woman in her early 60s put it:
“The only thing I actually see from real advertising on TV is about funerals – and incontinence. There is nothing out there to say just a normal run of the mill [older] person – let’s have a bit of life.”
Why assume a person in their 70s won’t buy an EV, won’t wear fashion sneakers or attend an outdoor music festival?
