A powerful “invisible” audience that is educated, savvy and has money to spend - but a finely honed bullshit detector - is effectively being ignored by advertisers, Bauer Media’s Jane Waterhouse has warned agency land.
Waterhouse, general manager of Bauer’s content marketing Story54 division, told an audience at Publicis Groupe Sydney HQ that a defiant demographic of women aged 50 to 64 were either not being spoken to by advertising or they were misrepresented by outdated, patronising stereotypes of older women.
“These women are not curled up in a menopausal ball, depressed about life,” she says. “They emerged from an era of rebellion and opportunity. They are smart, vibrant, confident, have experienced life’s ups and downs and come through stronger. They do not feel `invisible’ even though they do not enjoy the same media `profile’ as their younger counterparts.”
This anomaly was unveiled in Story54’s groundbreaking 2019 research study The Defiant Woman, which surveyed 1200 in metro and regional areas. In particular it honed in on 655 women aged 55-64 who, according to Waterhouse, have slipped through the cracks in terms of they way they are reflected – or not – and what matters to them in advertising messages.
Waterhouse says Defiant’s findings are even more relevant in 2020, and need to be reinforced, because the situation isn’t substantially changing. That the pervasive perception of ageing is still as something negative, almost a reality to be avoided.
"We have roughly 2.3 million women in this age group. They see themselves as growing, rather than growing older."
Yet, she says, women questioned in the Bauer study accused marketers of treating them “like your mother”, as “idiots”, of being “technologically inept” and of “fighting against who they really are”.
Supporting that were figures showing 70% of respondents believde advertisers were just not interested in them, compared to 30% of women under 35.
“One of my favourite stats from the research was that 70% of women under 35 say they don’t find older women unrelatable in advertising," she says.
“The female economy is worth $28 trillion worldwide. The biggest slice of this market is women over the age of 50, yet brands are invisible to her.”
Waterhouse suggests part of the issue is that there isn't a large proportion of women in media or advertising over the age of 50, and especially in senior positions such as creative director.
"Too often, we see marketers talking to older consumers as past their sale-by-date," she says.
Waterhouse cited a presentation she attended where a client stopped proceedings with a "Wait! We don't want old people in the ad!", expressing fear that the execution would alienate young people.
These perceptions are fed, she says, by media coverage of celebrities over 50.
"We've seen the gorgeous Danish supermodel Helena Christensen being lambasted for daring, aged 50 at the time, to wear a black lace bustier to a celebrity bash in New York," she says.
"Alexndra Shulman, a former Briish Vogue editor, atsonishingly wrote in a newspaper column: `[It] doesn’t mean older women should give up and go into purdah. There’s nothing wrong in wishing to be desirable – it’s just not best achieved wearing a black lace corset in public'.
"Then Dame Helen Mirren, 73 at the time, was rubbished for strapping on a backpack. Apparently carrying a backpack is a `no-no for anyone over 19'.
"And of course Madonna, 61, is always being trolled about her looks and the way she dresses and so has become almost a poster child for this generation of women.
"There is an enormous opportunity here for brands to properly engage and connect with this age group of women who are living some of the best years of their lives.”
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