My good friend and colleague Rance Crain writes that the advertising industry doesn’t get it when it comes to the buying power and importance of the Boomer market in this week’s Advertising Age. Rance, who is editor in chief of Ad Age and president of Crain Communications, notes that 50+ Americans have plenty of disposable income and are gearing up to “pursue their passions, whether it’s to start another career, go back to school, do charity work, travel, cook, play sports.” Rance goes on to say:

The ad business is woefully out of touch with baby-boomer buying power. Young ad people think older people are stuck in their ways, so it’s a waste of money to try to get them to change brands. But at the What’s Next Boomer Business Summit, AARP’s chief brand officer said 60% of people over 40 research different brands before making decisions.

The sad fact is that older people aren’t worth as much to advertisers as younger ones. If it weren’t for prescription-drug and denture-cleanser ads, the nightly TV news programs would go broke. Barron’s said that Food Network celebrity chefs didn’t want anything to do with its article on boomers because “the talent doesn’t really like to be associated with an older group” — it brings in lower ad revenue.

One of Crain’s other publications, Investment News, recently commissioned a study of Boomer attitudes regarding financial aspects of retirement. The magazine reaches an audience of professional financial planners. Survey results are here.

Rance blames outdated attitudes at agencies, and the perspective of “24-year-old media planner[s]. It’s hard enough to get them to evaluate an integrated marketing plan on the basis of overall effectiveness rather than take it apart and judge each component on a CPM basis. What chance would a magazine have that tried to convince media people that their over-50 circulation actually had value?” I laughed out loud at that line, having been-there-done-that with Satisfaction Magazine.

Full disclosure: I do some editorial consulting work for Turnstile Publishing, a company owned by Rance separate of Crain Communications.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 5th, 2007 at 7:47 am and is filed under Advertising, Marketing, Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.