Our Last Car At 65? Are You Serious?

By Karen and Erica

Boomers, as a group, are wealthy. We also buy lots of pretty expensive things that younger folks can’t yet afford. Yet advertisers ignore us. Especially we Boomer women.

Why is that? And why do we care?

Apparently there are two key answers to why that is.

• A representative of a car company explained the first one. They don’t want to sell us “the last car.”

• The other? If we are seen buying something, the vast Millennial market will refuse to buy the same thing. No matter what it is. Forever.

Why do we care? Because our power as a cohort will be enhanced if we are seen for who we are. If markets begin to care, authentic pictures of us will be everywhere.

So why are companies worried that a person who is 65 or 75 will only buy one more of whatever they are selling? We expect to live for three more decades. That’s a long time to keep using the same car, or the same sound system, or the same clothes, or the same furniture, or the same anything. Especially as we are now free to make our own decisions about how we spend our time. Everyone knows that we have a long runway, and money to spend. The data would also suggest we shop. A lot. So where is this counterfactual conclusion coming from?

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?

And about turning off Millennials? 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 used by failing humans? 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. That’s bad for us. If people really think we are buying our last car at 65 it could be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

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