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About a year ago, executives at CNBC were alarmed to discover that they’d suddenly lost one-third of their audience. They couldn’t figure it out; news programming, as a rule, attracts the 25- to 54-year-old demographic. So the network delved into the data with the Nielsen Company and made a startling finding: That missing one-third was, in fact, still there. They were no longer being counted as viewers, because they’d turned 55.
“They had just turned invisible,” says Alan Wurtzel, president of research at NBC Universal. “And it occurred to me: Every seven seconds, somebody turns 55.”
While the 18-34 demographic remains the most coveted among advertisers — get a consumer young, goes the thinking, and you get them for life — it is actually the 55- to 64-year old demo, the so-called “alpha boomers,” that are the most dominant.
Consider: Alpha boomers are the fastest-growing demographic in the nation. They make up half the population and spend more money on goods and services — nearly $2 trillion — than any other age group. They buy more technology and gadgets — 40% of the market — than any other demo. They drive elections, accounting for the biggest voting blocs in both 2008 and 2010. Alpha boomers have the second-highest median household income, at $69,000, trailing only the 35-44 age group, whose median earnings are $75,000 annually. They own the most second homes in the nation. They largely share the same tastes in online usage as the 18-34s, ranking Facebook and YouTube among their favorite sites, and they buy at least one product online per month. They own more iPads and smartphones than any other demo and record and watch more programming on their DVRs than anyone else. They are less loyal to brands than Gen Xers.
They are almost completely ignored by advertisers.
“Marketers have known where the wealth is for a very long time,” says Jim Fishman, senior vice president/group publisher of AARP. “They’ve just decided not to target them. We had a retailer who decided not to advertise with us, even though they knew their consumer reads our magazine. They did not want to be associated with old age.”
It’s a paradox neatly illustrated by the financials of the No. 1 network in the country, CBS — which also has the oldest viewership of any network. Its smash procedural “NCIS” recently attracted a staggering 22 million viewers, and its star, 59-year-old Mark Harmon, was just voted the country’s No. 1 TV personality in a Harris Interactive Poll.
Yet a recent report in Nasdaq.com hung the future of the network’s stock prices on its ability to attract younger viewers, which the network has been actively cultivating: See the recent dual-demographic appeal of such shows as “The Mentalist,” “Two and a Half Men,” and “The Big Bang Theory.”
Without drawing younger eyeballs, the network’s ad rates will remain substantially lower than its competitors: “60 Minutes,” which draws, on average, about 17 million viewers a week, cannot charge nearly as much in ad rates as the CW’s struggling “Gossip Girl,” which has a viewership of less than 2 million. Because “Gossip Girl” is among the most popular shows for women ages 18-34.
“The most coveted demo remains 18-34,” says Judann Pollack, executive editor of the trade publication Ad Age. “But the average viewer for most major networks is 51 years old. The median age of the ‘American Idol’ viewer is 45. I do agree that the [alpha boomers] are underrepresented, that there’s a stigma to getting older.”
With 35 million readers, AARP has the biggest circulation of any magazine in the world. Yet Fishman says it’s a struggle, month to month, to book celebrity covers. Meryl Streep and Jeff Bridges are exceptions, as is next month’s cover star Robert Redford, who is turning 75 and will be honored at the organization’s decade-old “Movies For Grownups” gala in Los Angeles this week.
At last year’s event, which honors films by and for the 50-plus crowd, Sean Penn, perhaps not quite feeling the spirit of the thing, announced: “If you really wanna feel old, Spicoli’s turning 50 in August.”
And it kind of is depressing. The perpetually stoned surfer dude from 1982’s “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” is as old as “To Kill a Mockingbird,” Barbie and the Pill. Even older than that: Howard Stern, Denzel Washington, Oprah Winfrey. None of them seem old — at least not in the way that Larry King and Regis Philbin are perceived. But perhaps they’ll all age differently — after all, we’re increasingly told that 60 is the new 40.
TV, at least, is fractionalized, but the monolithic film industry remains as youth-obsessed as ever, despite the clear hunger for older audiences to see themselves represented on screen. The recent successes of “It’s Complicated,” Sylvester Stallone’s “The Expendables” and “Sex and the City 2” — which drew middling to eviscerating reviews — are absolute proof of this, yet studios, and even some filmmakers, remain reluctant to associate themselves with what the industry calls “the lost quadrant.”
Nigel Cole, who directed Helen Mirren in the 2003 hit comedy “Calendar Girls,” recently told the UK Guardian that his career took an unexpected hit in the aftermath, that he was considered “desperately uncool” for having made the film. “It was something I’ve had to work hard to get over,” he said.
Cole, it’s worth noting, is 51 years old.
It’s this complicated relationship with aging — and the ways in which Boomers, who are more youthful and relevant than any other maturing generation before them — which accounts for advertisers’ reluctance to be associated with the older demo. The Boomers came of age during Woodstock, Vietnam, the sexual revolution — they were cool, and they believe they still are, but cool has always been the currency and province of the young.
“The alphas are about sex and drugs and rock ’n’ roll,” says NBCU’s Wurtzel, himself a Boomer. “The myth about them is that they’re ready to retire and are slowing down. But they over-index” — account for more sales — “all other demos in luxury travel, car purchases, pharmaceuticals, home improvement. The way people think about age though — it’s as if they disappear.”
“Look at the ads on shows aimed at this audience,” says AdAge’s Pollack. “They’re for denture creams, retirement houses, insurance companies.” Let’s not forget reverse mortgages, calcium supplements and Viagra.
“I don’t understand why the liquor industry isn’t all over AARP,” Fishman says. “Twenty-five percent of all beer is consumed by people over 50.” He points to the few companies who have taken what he calls “innovative” approaches to this market: NASCAR, which has taken a huge hit among the 18-34 demo, has allowed AARP to be Jeff Gordon’s premier sponsor for the next three years (Gordon is 39); Anheuser-Busch advertised its low-carb Michelob Ultra in the magazine for five years; Procter & Gamble, and Jeep. The latter, Fishman says, has been doing an excellent job of targeting what they call “the cool grandparents.”
“The image most people have of grandparents is of doddering old fools who come by a few times a year to pat the grandkids on the head,” says Peter Francese, demographic trends analyst for Ogilvy & Mather. “That is not this group.”
Francese recently finished a paper on this very demographic, which he calls “early boomers,” for a major corporation. He found that men ages 55-64 are the best-educated group in the country, “because they went to college in large numbers to avoid going to Vietnam.”
He believes, as do most other researchers, that this group will stay in the work force long past 65. This is partly due to increased life expectancy and quality of life, partly due to the recession, but largely because they enjoy their purchasing power.
“Five out of six Americans make it to 64, and if you do, life expectancy is another 20 years,” says Nicholas Eberstadt, researcher at the American Enterprise Institute. “People are living longer, more robust lives. Maybe expensive, but longer, lives.”
Medical strides and education about diet and exercise are factors, but most crucially, says Eberstadt: “Alpha boomers had the biggest reduction of smoking in their early adult lives. The fastest growing segment is senior citizens. The Census Bureau is projecting growth of 60 million over 20 years, and half that growth will be extra people over 65. That’s unprecedented.”
“Aside from the rise of the Hispanic population and the digital revolution,” says NBCU’s Wurtzel, “the transformative effect of the alpha boomers is the hugest in recent memory.”
Less noted is the trickle-down effect this demo is having on the economy, one whose retraction is felt far more keenly by their own children.
“The most important factor of all,” says Francese, “is that they’re grandparents, and they’re deep into competitive grandparenting.” His research found that many of this demo’s second homes are bought with their grandchildren in mind, and that between one-third and one-half of all private secondary-school tuition in America is paid for by grandparents.
“That’s partly because they’re highly educated and they recognize the value of an education,” Francese says, “and partly because their children aren’t doing well. As a result, this is a terribly influential group, and they influence their adult children’s purchases because, many times, they’re footing the bills.”
Yet for all the data accumulated in recent years about the purchasing power of older Americans — even in the midst of a recession — advertisers remain wary of becoming associated with an aging consumer base. NBCU’s Wurtzel says he’s trying to convince the Nielsen company to track and report the viewing habits of 55- to 64-year-olds, just like they do with every other demo. Fishman says he’s still shocked to see cosmetics ads in which the “aging woman” is in her 40s.
“I’ve seen collagen ads aimed at 20-somethings,” says Ad Age’s Pollack. “The minute you see that first wrinkle . . .”
Europe isn’t that much better; British journalist Jane Shilling’s new memoir, “In the Mirror: A Memoir of Middle Age,” chronicles her devastation and suddenly feeling sidelined by the culture. “In my 20s and 30s, I was used to finding images of women just like me reflected wherever I looked — in magazines, films, radio and television programs, and fiction,” she writes. “But to arrive at middle age is to discover that your story is apparently no longer worth telling.”
Perhaps it will take another generation for older people to be as represented in film and TV and advertising as they deserve, and perhaps it will take even another for aging to lose its stigma, to be terminally uncool. There have been a few people who made it to their senior years who never lost it: Miles Davis, Dennis Hopper, Mirren, David Bowie, Jack Nicholson. So it’s not inconceivable.
“The fact that the entire population is aging — at one time, the fear of aging was, ‘If I get old, I’m going to be sick and in bed, and I don’t want to live like that,’ ” says AARP’s Fishman. “Now, people can expect to live long and healthy lives. And then die.”