No. This Is Not the Last Car!

By Erica and Karen

Want to hear something shocking?

We have been wondering why Boomers, especially Boomer women, the richest cohort in the U.S., are ignored by people who want to sell things. Including pretty expensive things that younger folks can’t yet afford.

Well, here’s why. A representative of a car company explained it. They don’t want to sell us “the last car.”

What? Is it that one car is not worth their effort? Or that they worry the excitement of buying a car will cause us to drop dead right in front of them? Or maybe since we only have one big purchase left in us, better to target our children, who will inherit everything?

The facts are completely to the contrary. If you live to sixty, you’re more likely than not to live to ninety. That’s a lot of years to be driving the same car. Or to be wearing the same clothes. We’re not going to do that. We’re full of beans and we will be spending our money on new stuff.

But everyone knows that we have a long runway and money to spend, right? So ignorance can’t be the real problem. There has to be more.

And there is. But none of it makes any sense.

We have been told that branding and marketing firms are populated with younger folks who don’t really know or understand what we older folks want, so they don’t even think about selling to us. Those younger folks are our children, so we suspect they are not entirely clueless. But having said that, we also think that having us around to speak for ourselves might make sense. Perhaps those branding and marketing firms should consider hiring people in our demographic as consultants. Perhaps they might portray us as sentient beings with a lot of life left in us. What do they have to lose but profits?

Another thing we have heard is that if marketing targets older folks, it will turn off younger folks. We have no doubt that will be true if marketers show our cohort as decrepit old geezers on the brink of death. Who wants to be buying stuff connoting that the end is near? But what if we are shown as we are--vibrant, energetic, engaged, stylish—very much like our children, only more experienced and richer? Would the same be true? We doubt it. Our kids borrow our clothes—and our cars. They wouldn’t reject a Porsche just because we had one.

This conversation, we know, has been going on forever, but it’s more urgent now that there are about eighty million of us. Images reflect the way society sees a person, and impact the way that person sees herself. That’s why we are talking about how people who create images think about us. Or do not think about us.

Marketers are letting prejudice get in the way of facts, and profits. That’s bad for them. Because of that, we are invisible. If people really think we are buying our last car at 65 it could be a self-fulfilling prophecy. That’s bad for us.

Let’s change things. Make some noise. Say something—with our voices and our pocketbooks. Let’s make those marketers change their bad old ways. Everyone wins if they do.