They were the original darlings of Madison Avenue, a generation of 80 million that made marketers think young.
But lately baby boomers have been feeling a little neglected.
Once embodied by beaming, Pepsi-swigging coeds in 1960s ads, the demographic has been cast into a marketing no man’s land, lingering bleakly in the outdoor bathtubs of Cialis commercials.
Yet boomers are leading active consumer lifestyles, accounting for nearly half of sales of consumer packaged goods, according to a report by Nielsen.
But Madison Avenue has been slow to pick up the signal. Less than 5 percent of ad dollars target boomers, while the majority are spent courting the 18-to-49 age group, a puzzling fact considering the size and buying power represented by boomers.
In five years, the post-50 crowd will make up half the country’s population and control 70 percent of its disposable income, according to Nielsen. The same group is expected to inherit $15 trillion in the next 20 years.
Peter Hubbell, chief executive of BoomAgers, a company that focuses on baby-boomer marketing, blames an outdated marketing model.
“There’s been so much inertia around marketing to 18- to 49-year-old consumers,” he said. “Once you get north of 49, suddenly your value becomes worthless to marketers, simply because you’ve aged out of some arbitrary definition.”
Hubbell, who is a boomer, added, “I still have to wake up and brush my teeth, just like a 25-year-old.”