NEWSLETTER #107 / March 25, 2018
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ADVERTISERS HATE OLD PEOPLE
I figure you've had enough of Facebook this week so let's lead with something else. We are undergoing the largest demographic change in human history and it is being completely ignored by the absurd marketing and advertising industries.
Marketers obsessed with millennials and "Gen Z" (don't get me started) are paying no attention at all to the startling demographic changes that are happening in society. The chart to the right, from the UN, shows how radically our population is changing. Along with age changes go economic changes.
The advertising and media industries have no idea how to deal with this, or even how to depict it. Last week, The Wall Street Journal ran an article entitled "Elderly in U.S. Are Projected to Outnumber Children for First Time." In the article, the US Census Bureau is quoted as projecting that by 2035 "...people over 65 years old would outnumber children." This is the photograph of feeble dodderers the WSJ used to represent people over 65.
Just a heads-up for the photo editor at the Journal, here's what some people over 65 actually look like...
Yeah, they can walk without help and everything!
But it's not just the depiction of mature people that's so ludicrous, it's the way marketers ignore them. People over 50 are responsible for over 50% of consumer spending in the US. If Americans over 50 were their own country, they'd be the 3rd largest economy in the world -- bigger than Japan, Germany or India. They are the target for 10% of US advertising.
Why do we ignore older people? Because we hate them. We like the volatility of youth, not the stability of age. So we have created all kinds of clichéd bullshit for why we ignore them. But the truth? We can't build ourselves a hot advertising career writing ads for old farts.
And Speaking Of Ignorant Ageist Bullshit...
Nothing has given me greater pleasure over the past months than watching Dos Equis go down in flames. They had a goldmine in "The Most Interesting Man In The World" (sales tripled during the campaign's life) and incompetent marketing imbeciles destroyed it.
They replaced the brilliantly cast star of the campaign because he was too old. Of course, they would never have the balls to say that out loud, so they camouflaged it with nonsense about "stories" and "millennials" -- the dimwit's default explanation for every bad marketing decision of the past 10 years.
The VP/Marketing, reading from The Big Book of Marketing Stupidity, had this to say, "Our Millennial drinker has changed quite dramatically. We just want to make sure that the (Most Interesting Man) story evolves."
Well, it evolved alright... the "improved" millennial-friendly Most Interesting Man "story" was an unmitigated disaster. Then, naturally, they fired the agency. Finally, two weeks ago, Dos Equis announced they were dropping the whole campaign.
The lesson: Great ad campaigns are rare and precious. They are also fragile and easily destroyed. When a creative idea catches fire keep the marketing morons away from it and keep your greasy hands off it.
Question Of The Day
“The ability of anyone to know what you’ve been browsing about for years, who your contacts are, who their contacts are, things you like and dislike and every intimate detail of your life -- from my own point of view it shouldn’t exist,” Apple CEO, Tim Cook.
Where is the ad and marketing industry "leadership" on this question? It's time for them to crawl out from under their rocks. Any minute the press and public are going to wake up and realize who the real the puppet masters of all this surveillance bullshit are.
Resistance Is Futile
- The very first thing I talked about in BadMen was those lovely lads from Cambridge Analytica -- months before the Facebook scandaI. I hate to be smug about this (ok...not really) but BadMen nailed that mother...
- BadMen was a featured prop in The Times of London last week in a story about some ad guy who wrote a dumb email (by the way, not me. I just write dumb newsletters.)
- Your intrepid reporter was interviewed on several iHeartRadio stations this week about the subject of Facebook, Cambridge Analytica, and online surveillance. You can listen here.
- Finally, last year at the World Federation of Advertising's annual global conference I tried to warn industry leaders about the dangers that have exploded in our face this week. You can watch it here.
