Re: Senior Demographic Ad Report

[dan.strassberg@att.net]

Of course. Send us the message that we don't count, and 
the prophecy becomes self fulfilling. Sooner or later 
the message will get through to the clowns on Madison 
Ave (and the advertisers behind them) that if you 
alienate or simply ignore the most affluent part of the 
population, you will turn off an important part of your 
potential customer base.

I have never heard anything besides anecdotal evidence 
to support the thesis that people over 55 tune out 
advertising. Maybe now that more and more boomers every 
day turn 55, the advertisers and agencies will finally 
get the message that traditional approaches to 
advertising and demographics don't work. I'm 65--a 
depression baby. My generation was simply not numerous 
enough for the advertisers to consider us important. But 
the boomers are much more numerous.

And before Bob Bittner chimes in with his rather stale 
message about advertisers not selling products but 
selling credit, let me assert that I think that argument 
is largely bunk. (I'd use a longer word that begins with 
the same two letters, but this is a family mailing 
list.) Yes, car dealers are selling credit, not cars, 
but most merchants rely on credit-card sales. The 
merchants don't make money from the credit aspects of 
those sales; the banks that issue the credit cards do. 
And the banks don't advertise the credit-card side of 
their business on radio (at least not very much).

> Research firm "WSL Strategic Retail" reports that
> ads are too "youth oriented" and seniors are 
> spending less time in malls and retail stores
> than ever before. 18-34 spending is up 20% and
> senior spending is down 9%.