Retiring Boomers. Make Us Your Assets. Not Your Liabilities.
By Erica and Karen
Younger people are cool, and beautiful, and brilliant, and they own the future. We love them—especially the ones that are our children. We like to believe they think well of us, too—despite the snarky OK Boomer meme.
Brands and their marketing campaigns (mostly designed by younger men) also prize younger people. As they should. But they seem to think younger people are the only people on the planet, or at least the only people who have any money to spend for fun. That’s wrong. It doesn’t make any sense.
Why do we care? Because brands spend billions on visual ads, and we want marketers to show us as we are, which they will not if they think we are decrepit sorts who don’t buy things. When was the last time you recognized yourself in an ad, in a good way? If marketers instead provided you with an authentic image, and products that were appealing, you would feel better and they would be richer.
Why should brands focus on making us look good? Let’s talk about our numbers.
-
There are a lot of us. Of the 330 million Americans, about 73 million are Boomers.
-
Our numbers are growing. The number of Americans over 65 will double by 2060, to 95 million.
-
We have long runways. Average life expectancy is now in the 80s, and if you live until you are 60 you are likely to live until you are 90.
Obviously, we will necessarily have an impact on our collective future. What will society choose—smart or dumb? The smart way: we are offered products we enjoy, we buy them, we remain integrated into society, and we are productive. The dumb way: we are never offered brilliant products that are never invented for us, we don’t buy them, we are sidelined as irrelevant, and we become dependent. One way, we contribute to the economy. The other way, the economy supports us.
Brands and their marketing choices have a big role in driving this critical decision. But they seem to be missing the point.
The right answer is obvious. Look at the dollars:
-
70 percent of disposable income in the U.S.— about $4 trillion—is controlled by boomers, who drive over 50 percent of retail sales, compared to millennials’ 10 percent. Boomers spend $548 billion annually, nearly $200 billion mire than Gen X, the next highest spending group. We are the third largest economy in the world.
-
We worked for decades. The spending power of consumers age 60 or older hit $15 trillion in 2020, up from $8 trillion in 2010.
-
Boomer women control 95 percent of consumer spending. The net worth of women 50 and over is $19 trillion. Women over 50 own more than three quarters of the nation’s wealth and buy 65 percent of new cars, 92 per cent of travel.
As the Harvard Business Review points out: In any industry, the first brand to transform its outreach to the 50-plus set could win over millions of consumers—consumers with more money to spend than their children.
We are at a stage in our lives when we have both time and resources. We are looking for fun and challenges and growth. We are not decrepit now, and most of us will never be. We don’t want to be offered only products for incontinence. We want to be offered products that reflect the lives we live now, and we want to see ads showing us, valuable and vital members of society, using those products.
But brands and marketers are ignoring us, spending very little time and energy on us, and very seldom trying to appeal to us. We find that baffling. Why are they limiting their upside for no good reason?
Brands, wake up. We are here, we are spending, we have long lives ahead of us. See us as we are, show us as we see ourselves, and you will profit.