The Uncool Audience Problem
Your best customer is 54 and completely invisible to your media plan.
I recently joined a prestigious panel debating the future of TV advertising. Everyone on the panel was 44+, 90% of the audience was probably 40+. Almost everyone was outside the beloved A18-40 target audience we buy media against.
Yet next to me were super-successful professionals with high spending power, not at all "old", but totally ignored by our common obsession with young audiences.
We keep doing this for 3 reasons. All 3 are wrong.
"Go get them while they're young and they'll stay forever."
The myth that converting a 20-year-old guarantees a lifetime relationship is false. All people buy from a repertoire of brands, especially in low-engagement categories. The more brands available in the category, the higher the rotation.
Growth comes from an extra purchase. Everyone matters. So, I'd rather nudge a 54-year-old to try my product today than hope a 21-year-old falls in love with me forever. No one can guarantee FOREVER in marketing science.
"Our target audience is young, urban, and digitally savvy."
Have you ever seen an audience named "single parent, unemployed"? Or "retired, struggling"? Or "rural, low income"? Me neither. But these people buy soap, candy, and chips. In low involvement categories like these, everyone is a potential buyer.
Growth comes from the places you barely touch, yet when talking about audiences and segmentation, we love to paint the picture of the cool consumer, maybe because we aspire to be one, forgetting the number one axiom of marketing: YOU ARE NOT THE CONSUMER.
"Older people don't engage with media..except TV"
They're watching more TV, but they're also spending time online. They're financially independent. And like everyone else, they're not loyal to a single brand.
The median age in the EU is 44. In the US, close to 40. Mathematically, your Adult 18-40 target dismisses more than half of the potential buying audience. Financially, it's well over 50%.
The next time someone presents you with an audience segmentation, ask one question: where are the uncool people?