Daily Factoid: Seniors kick Millennials' butts (investing)

TD Ameritrade recently issued a press release comparing the investment habits of Millennials, Gen-Xers, Baby Boomers, and Seniors.

The company cited the top-10 equities held by each group (including equities held in mutual funds and ETFs which were, in turn, owned by members of each generation.) 

Not surprisingly, all four generations' top-10 lists skew heavily towards the largest American companies by market cap. (Note that TD Ameritrade customers trade on US exchanges almost exclusively.) As such, only 16 companies, in total, figure on all generations' top-10 lists.

Of all the companies mentioned, only Tesla is not amongst the 50 largest US companies by market cap; it was the #10 choice among Millennial investors. Presumably Millennials can afford a few Tesla shares, but not a new Tesla.

Top 10 investment holdings by generation: It's a tribute to the strength of brands that almost every one of these companies is immediately recognizable by its logo alone. (Exceptions: BH logo is the logo of Berkshire Hathaway's specialty insurance business, although Warren Buffett's a big believer in brands, his own brand is low key. Altria is on right, third from bottom. Big Tobacco doesn't want you to recognize that one, so you're excused.)

Notwithstanding the similarities in each generations' Top-10 holdings, TD Ameritrade's customer cohorts have not had similar YTD performance. 

Millennials have earned a 5.35% return

Gen X-ers: 9.1%

Baby Boomers: 8.7%

Seniors: 10.2%

TD Ameritrade doesn't offer any suggestions as to why Seniors have had twice Millennials' success, in terms of return on investments to date. I can think of several possible explanations: Seniors may be more likely to be active investors, choosing individual equities; Millennials may be choosing mutual funds and paying higher fees. Expenses like trading fees also take a relatively bigger bite of smaller purchases.

Still, the Seniors' top returns call into question the old investing truism that as investors age, they should (or do) become more conservative. 

Daily Factoid: Explaining the 'Happiness Gap'

Regular visitors to this site will know that I routinely excoriate ad agencies for creating ads that portray mature consumers as a sad bunch of losers. We’re portrayed at best as clinging to fading youth and at worst as doddering from one drug dose to the next.

For at least a decade, I’ve been genuinely baffled by such portrayals, which fly in the face of my own direct experience and that of my friends.

There’s an obvious ‘Happiness Gap’ between the way mature consumers are portrayed in ads, and the way we actually feel. I blamed that gap on the mindless ageism of the ad industry but I recently had an ‘aha’ moment when I realized that it’s not ad creatives’ fault. They can’t be blamed for their misconception.

Now, I blame this U-shaped curve.

This graph is adapted from "A Snapshot of the Age Distribution of Psychological Well-Being in the United States" by Arthur A. Stone et al. For the complete study -- one of many that confirms the existence of the famous U-shaped curve for happiness -- go here.

Across all cultures and socio-economic groups, research has shown that people’s happiness and enjoyment of life typically decreases from early adulthood until middle age. Then, sometime in people’s late 40s or early 50s, their happiness begins to increase. Their sense of well being (WB, in the graph) continues to increase until the last few years of life.

Considering our current life expectancies, that means North Americans experience three decades of progressively increasing happiness, after they enter middle age.

Why is this relevant to ad business?

The more I think about the U-shaped curve, the more I realize that it supports my argument that young creatives can’t possibly be expected to really understand mature consumers.

It’s not just that they lack direct experience of being mature consumers. It’s worse than that. Because from the time you get your first job in the ad business, you’re on the happiness downslide. Less and less happy; less and less satisfied; more and more worried.

When young creatives extrapolate their own experiences, it's bound to color the impression they have of older consumers. And it helps to explain why advertising portrays older consumers as sad sacks hanging on only to see the grandkids graduate from middle school.

Nothing could be further from the truth. But by the time those young creatives realize it, they will have aged out of the ad business!

People in their 60s – I know, I am one – routinely say that they’re happier now than at any previous age. Or, at least, happier than they’ve been since they were children. Consumers in their 60s and 70s don’t want to recapture lost youth. Time and time again they tell surveys they’re happy right where they are.

You know who wants to roll their age back? People in their 30s and 40s, who miss being in their 20s. IE, people with hands on creative jobs in the ad business.

Ironically, right around the time ad creative would finally realize that older consumers are, if anything, happier than most younger consumers – around the time they’d start crafting ads based on a real appreciation of mature consumers’ emotional lives – creatives get laid off, fired, or otherwise are forced out of the business. They cede their jobs to a new generation of young creatives who, again, dread getting older for a very good reason: in their own experience, getting older = becoming more and more stressed and unhappy.

50 over fifty: Florence 'See See' Rigby

Florence 'See See' Rigby is the oldest practicing nurse in the United States. She recently turned 90.

Rigby has spent her entire nursing career in one hospital, Tacoma General. She began there as a student in 1946. She retired once, at the age of 67, but got bored and returned to work after a few months.

"She runs circles around all of us," Sheri Morris, assistant nurse manager, told TODAY.com. "She's a wealth of wisdom and knowledge, and we absolutely love her."

Rigby seems to have been ahead of the curve, as it's only now that a lot of Boomers are finding that the whole idea of being retired is unattractive, since they haven't yet gotten tired in the first place. Nursing's a tiring job, of course, and the fact that she can still do it at 90 suggests that she's an extraordinary specimen. Tacoma General's also to be commended for realizing that older (or in Rigby's case, way way older) employees have value precisely because of the wealth of experience they've accumulated.

A note from the Dept. of Comparisons Which Should Be Absurd, but aren't

This awesome insight comes from the (perhaps literally) insightful folks at Pornhub...

Among male visitors to the Pornhub site, 'Mature' is a more popular search term than 'Anal'. Meanwhile, walk into any ad agency and you're 20 times as likely to meet an asshole than anyone who is middle-aged. The inescapable conclusion? Even porn addicts are less ageist than the advertising business.

Go ahead, pretend that you don't know what I'm talking about, but in the same report, Pornhub points out that the average American visits their site over 120 times per year. If you work in the ad business and really don't know what Pornhub is, you should be fired, because you don't understand the culture you're selling into.

But seriously, folks... 'Mature' is the #3 search term for male users. And it's in the top-10 for female users (who account for over 1/5th of all visits, interestingly.) What does this mean? It means that even the pornography business is less ageist than the advertising industry.

50 over fifty: Journalist/author/screenwriter Dan Lyons

I was listening to NPR the other day as Terry Gross interviewed Dan Lyons.

On Twitter, he's @RealDanLyons, which is kind of a nod to an earlier stint with—if not fame exactly—a kind of cult status as @FakeSteveJobs. 

Lyons, who was born in 1960, had a distinguished career as journalist in the tech sector, including stints as the tech editor at Forbes and Newsweek. But a few years ago, when Lyons was 52, Newsweek laid him off. The print journalism world Lyons came from has been as disrupted by online media as the ad world's been. Lyons realized that he wasn't just going to be able to find a replacement journalism job—at least, not at a salary that would support his family.

So, he turned to the industry he'd been covering, and got a "marketing" job at HubSpot—one of the myriad companies offering recipes to make spam palatable. His experiences on the inside of a typical startup illustrate the new business model for most contemporary tech companies; mainly, it's a lesson in the fact that most founders' exit strategy precedes any commitment to actually adding value to customers' lives or businesses. His book also explains that the tech business is nearly as ageist as the ad business.

Fired at 52, trying something new in a company where he was about twice the average age, then writing a best-seller about his experiences... that alone would justify calling out Dan Lyons as one of re:'s 50 over Fifty. But that's not all, because he's since made another way better career move; he's now a screenwriter on the hot HBO series 'Silicon Valley'. 

Attaboy, Dan.

One thing really stuck with me, after hearing his Fresh Air interview, was Dan's response to Terry Gross—playing the devil's advocate—and suggesting the tech industry is justified in its ageism.

GROSS: Do you think that some of the emphasis on being young, too, is kind of drawing the line between people who are digital natives and people who aren't? You know, like, people who grew up with computers and so a lot of things are just second nature to them in a way that older people had to learn from scratch because it was introduced to them. It wasn't something they grew up with.

LYONS: I think there's validity to that. But there's also this - the way it's described is almost like everybody born after 1980 has a gene that the rest of us don't have, that they were with born with this thing that somehow they can understand this.

Now I do know my kids are very good at picking up new things, and they're learning how to code in Python. And I am not a coder at all, but I'm pretty sure I could learn to write code in Python pretty quickly if I had to.

And I think it's not just that. It's people who have been working as coders, as programmers, as engineers who get kicked out when they turn 40 or 45. They have tech skills, they have degrees in computer science. It's not believable to me that they couldn't learn whatever the new programming language is.

Also, they - they've put in those 10,000 hours that Malcolm Gladwell talks about to gain expertise in a skill. Why would you not want them? They've learned their skills on someone else's dime, and now you can hire them and get the benefit of all that experience.

This is, of course, just as true of the ad industry. I wonder what the Millennial response would be if that 'digital native' attitude was turned on its head, and Millennials were immediately dropped from consideration from any position that involved direct interaction with other people.

I can imagine conversations that go something like this...

"Well Courtney, you're doing a great job here in our digital content department, but we can't really consider you for a manager's role. You see, managers need interpersonal skills, so we only really consider older workers who are Analog Native. It's not your fault that you grew up interacting only with devices and not people..."

"But that's just prejudice," Courtney would protest. "I could learn to have face-to-face conversations."

"Courtney, look at yourself. You're actually texting as we speak."

Daily Factoid: Ironically, the oldest candidate seems to have the youngest support

"We love you, Bernie!" But will we vote?

Much has been made of the way Bernie Sanders has galvanized young voters. Exit polls at recent Democratic Primaries suggest that he's an overwhelming favorite of Millennials (and Gen Zers, the oldest of whom will vote for the first time in 2016.)

Obama was an overwhelming favorite of young voters in the 2008 general election. But of the 60 million eligible voters between 18-35, only 32 million reported that they actually voted.

That's great, for what it's worth. Sanders' challenge is that, even in 2008 when Barack Obama was swept into power with unprecedented youth participation, Americans under 35 were far less likely to vote than Americans over 65.

According to the latest U.S. Census estimates, there are currently about 75 million Americans 18-35 compared to 'only' 46.2 million senior citizens. IE, Americans in the age group presumed to favor Sanders handily outnumber the 65+ cohort who seem to favor Hillary Clinton.

The thing is people over 65 are about 1/3 more likely to vote than people under 35.

It seems likely that if Hillary Clinton is the eventual Democratic nominee, a lot of young voters will stay home; after all, from a purely statistical point of view, they're not committed participants in the democratic process.

That's bad news for the Democratic Party for two reasons: The party fares better in elections with higher rates of participation generally, and Democratic-leaning voters skew younger. You'd think the Democratic Party would, as a result, favor the candidate most popular with young voters.

Thoughts on “peak stuff”

A few months ago, Ikea’s ‘Chief Sustainability Officer’ made the news when he suggested that we’ve reached ‘peak stuff’. The specific example Ikea’s Greg Howard used was ‘peak curtains’, but what he meant was, many consumers in developed nations have all the stuff they need. 

After Ikea's Greg Howard talked about the west being at 'peak stuff' people wondered how that idea could possibly be consistent with the chain's growth targets. Clearly, Ikea can continue to grow at the expense of its competitors' market share. But mature consumers already know that bigger isn't better, and more isn't better. 

That was obvious. In the U.S., homes have gotten bigger and families have gotten smaller; you’d think that means American homeowners have more space than ever, right? And yet, storage lockers are a fast-growing business, precisely because people really do have too much stuff.

But if it was obvious, why was it news? The answer is, it was newsworthy because it was coming from a retailer. Ikea, after all, is in the stuff business; it’s one of the world’s largest suppliers of stuff. So it seemed an unlikely admission. And, suggesting that people are consuming too much is almost un-American.

Or is it?

Mature consumers are already ‘downsizing’. Empty nesters are selling big homes in the suburbs and moving into lofts downtown. They’re ditching the massive SUVs and people haulers they needed to chauffeur their kids to hockey practice, in favor of smaller hybrids that get better gas mileage, are easier to park—and, by the way, are way more fun to drive.

The thing you need to understand about peak stuff is, from a mature consumer’s perspective, less really is more. Especially because the older you get, the more you know that nothing, or at least no thing, is really going to make you happy.

Younger consumers chase the latest trend, in the hopes that some brand or gadget will make them seem cool to friends who've bought into the same fad, but older consumers are far more skeptical. That doesn’t mean older consumers don’t want to spend, or won’t. It just means that we spend differently.

Mature consumers don’t want more or bigger; we want better. And while we are less likely to think some thing will make us happy, we’re more likely to spend on experiences. That’s why we account for such a large share of money spent on travel. (The ‘bucket list’? That’s a real thing with us.)

So if your brand’s growth is stalled and you think you’re bumping up against peak stuff, take another look at mature consumers. Want to attract us? Understand that bigger isn’t better. More isn’t better. Better is better.

Rather than making empty promises that a newer, bigger thing will make us happy—promises that we disproved decades ago—tell us why your product or service is better. Make the pursuit of happiness as rational a decision as possible. Better yet, offer us experiences—something we can collect while filling our hearts and minds, instead of our closets.

Embracing the idea of peak stuff is better for the planet and future generations. (Ironically, the longer you’ve lived, more you care about the future!) But that doesn’t mean it’s bad for business. If anything, it should be better.

50 over Fifty: Astronauts Scott Kelly and Mikhail Kornienko

American astronaut Scott Kelly (left) is 52. His Russian cosmonaut counterpart, Mikhail Kornienko, is 55. The two recently spent 340 days in orbit, setting an American record for time spent in zero-gravity.

Scott Kelly was an extensively decorated Navy pilot who retired from active duty at 48. That makes sense, right? Carrier landings; being a test pilot... that's a young man's game. Except that after he retired from a distinguished career as a fighter pilot, he became... an astronaut.

Kelly turned 52 in orbit. His Russian cosmonaut partner, Mikhail Kornienko is even older; he turned 55 early in their history-making mission. 

Fun fact: Kelly was briefly two-inches taller than his twin identical twin brother Mark Kelly (also an astronaut). That was the result of his spine decompressing in space, but the effect is short lived. Speaking of short lived, because the International Space Station is traveling to fast in orbit, Kelly is technically about 1/100th of a second younger than he would be, had he spent the past year on earth.

Comparing Scott and Mark will help NASA learn about the effects of prolonged space travel on the human body. But 50-something space travelers like Scott and Mikhail are not nearly the oldest-ever astronauts. That record is held by John Glenn, who was a mission specialist on the Space Shuttle in 1998, at the age of 76.

Daily Factoid: Scion's demise, in a single statistic

In 2003, the average new-Toyota buyer was five years older than buyers of new Volkswagens. In response, Toyota introduced the Scion brand in the U.S. market.

Scion was positioned and marketed as a first-new-car, to attract Gen-Xers to the Toyota fold and keep them there. The new brand was initially successful with quirky models like the xB.

But Scion's been dealt a one-two knockout by the economy and demographics. Just before the '08 recession, the average age of a new car buyer was 43. Today, it's 52. (For reference, the average new car buyer is now about a decade and a half older than the average American, and has an income about one and half times as great.)

But wait, it gets worse; the '08 recession didn't just take Millennials out of the market for new Scions, it reprogrammed a lot of them to think about cars differently. Uber and car-sharing suddenly looks like a real alternative to life with a car. And among younger buyers who need or want a car of their own, new cars seem to have lost their shine. Part of the blame for that shift falls on Toyota, too. Manufacturers have spent the last 30 years improving quality and durability, to the point that used cars are more reliable and desirable than ever. 

Over the long haul, Toyota (like every other car maker) needs to find a way to ensure that when people finally buy new, they buy a Toyota. But between now and then, the reality is that if they want to be in the new car business at all, they've gotta' pay attention to mature consumers.

R8’d highly: VB&P’s Super Bowl spot for Audi works on dual demos

Adweek cited Venables Bell & Partners' ad for the Audi R8 as one of the best spots in last night’s big Advertising Championship Game. 

This spot has a 94% positive rating on iSpot.tv. It's not an accident that the soundtrack ― from David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust album ― was released in 1972. That was when the people right in the middle of the Baby Boom were coming of age. (Advertising Championship action was broken up by the National Football League, which bought a lot of time which it used to show off the sport of football, in between the ads. Unfortunately for the NFL, it wasn’t a particularly good game.)

Audi's commercial was not just a solid effort, it also worked effectively across the age range of R8 buyers. Here’s why...

First, let’s look at R8 demographics... 

According to a 2011 RL Polk survey, the average age of Audi owners was 49. In the intervening five years, the average age of new car buyers has, if anything, increased. (In 2015, according to a study conducted by NADA, the average new car buyer was 51.7.)

What about the age of buyers for the $115,000-plus R8 model? 

Audi isn’t sharing numbers with me, but I’d be surprised if the median age of R8 buyers is under the brand average. There is an R8talk.com forum ― which is almost certainly a selective filter for younger owners. I found a thread there, in which R8 owners listed their ages. In that small sample of 27 respondents, 8 were over 50; the oldest was 65.

Worth noting: I’ve also seen quite a bit of anecdotal and/or statistically incomplete evidence to suggest that Audi is one of the luxury brands that has done the best job of targeting Millennials.  That goes a long way towards justifying the premise of VB&P’s creative, which is that the Millennial R8-owning son comes to visit his ex-astronaut dad, and gives him a spin in a vehicle that makes dad feel young again.

Why it's good...

I bet it tested gangbusters with 30- and younger 40-something guys who still wrestle with parental expectations! (Note: the actor portraying the son is Gunner Wright, who is technically a young Gen-Xer, on the cusp of being a leading-edge Millennial.)

What about Baby Boomers? Does the ad also work for them? After all, from one perspective the dad's crap evening is only rescued by the arrival of his kid in a new sports car. The old guy literally seems to have lost his appetite for life. Hardly an uplifting image.

But as always, execution is everything. They cast an actor who’s height-weight proportional, and who doesn’t particularly walk like to the car like an old man. And, to be fair, he was an ex-astronaut. Retired life probably really is a bit boring, by comparison.

This is not a guy who other old guys are going to read as pathetic. It’s a guy who other old guys are going to read as an ex-hero, of a type that hardly exists any more. The Apollo program ― the heroic period of American space exploration ― ended in 1972. So the actual astronauts were not Baby Boomers, which also gives people like me just enough emotional distance from the father figure and his pathos... while still maintaining enough relate-ability to connect, at least, with the idea that we came of age in a different (and better) time.

When that old guy ― a guy I can relate to, but who is even older than me ― reconnects with those lost feelings in the R8, it makes millions of Baby Boomers think, at least for a moment, maybe I could do that too. And it was all done without ever suggesting anything about an embarrassing mid-life crisis.

For the Millennial Audi-driver, it’s a hard-won validation. Audis really are aspirational targets for a lot of Millennials, and this spot while nominally touting the R8 clearly has to carry an overarching brand message (Audi can’t sell enough R8 models to justify the cost.) But VB&P skillfully layered in a recapturing-lost-youth message that will not be lost on the 50% of Audi buyers who are closer in age to that ex-astronaut than they are to his son.

Gray is the new Blonde, Part II

Of course, once the Times picked this up, it was repackaged on dozens of web sites. Does that make it a bona fide trend? The mere fact it can be believably reported as one suggests that Millennials are beginning to see maturity as a positive trait.

We've been noticing about 50 shades of grey in the hair of young people lately. At first it was Millennial (and even younger) women embracing their inner grannies. But now it seems men are in on it.

As the Times reports...

Gray and silver hair has definitely been trending, said Aura Friedman, a senior hair colorist at Sally Hershberger Salon in New York. “The demographic of guys who come to me to go gray are doing it more as a fashion statement,” she said, as opposed to a more natural look. 

At re: we don't really care whether Millennials are making a fashion statement, as opposed to actually trying look naturally gray. We see this as further evidence that the widespread belief in the advertising world ― that associating a visibly older consumer with your product will drive away younger ones ― is probably false.

Daily Factoid: Bernie Sanders has pulled a Betty White

It's not that Bernie, or Betty, are cool in spite of being old. Being old is actually a key aspect of why young people dig them. They see Betty as especially arch, and her sexual innuendo is especially funny because it's coming from her and not, say, Lena Dunham. And they love the fact that after all these years, Bernie still has the fire in his belly. Role models like these two make getting old seem a lot less threatening (or boring.)

One of the most striking facts that emerged from the Iowa caucuses yesterday was the age bias shown by Democratic voters, who were split almost equally by Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. We expected that Sanders’ voters would skew younger, but the extent of that skew still bears examination ― and provides interesting food for thought, whether you’re marketing a politician or a more conventional brand.

There’s been a lot of attention paid to Sanders’ age ― if elected, he’d be the oldest President ever sworn in for a first term. To wit, my blog post on this topic is the most-read post on this site. But the reason Hillary Clinton’s campaign has laid off Sanders’ age is obvious: Hillary, at 68 would also be among the very oldest Presidents (and her health is, if anything, more of question than Sanders’.)

That noted, I think it’s pretty fair to say that although they’re only about five years apart in age, Bernie looks older than Hillary. Moreover, judging from Bernie’s consistently disheveled, charming-but-cantankerous-old-fart public persona, his campaign’s decided not to downplay his age.

That’s smart; by letting their candidate’s age show, the campaign’s making it harder for potential rivals to turn it into an issue. And, however improbably, Bernie’s pulled a ‘Betty White’. He’s become one of the rare people who are both unabashedly old and who are seen as cool by Millennials.

But ironically, the older Democratic contender in Iowa has by far the youngest supporters. Today, The Atlantic is reporting an exit poll that suggests Democratic voters under 30 voted 6:1 for Sanders. Even voters aged 30-44 were one and a half times more likely to say they’d voted for Sanders. 

Older voters skewed almost as heavily towards Clinton. Senior citizens preferred her by a margin of 3:1.

I’d love to do a deep dive into the ‘why’ of this age divide, but the primary season would be over before I posted it. So, I’ll limit myself to two key observations that should be relevant to any marketer, political or otherwise: Older consumers are not necessarily drawn to someone that seems to be ‘like them’. And younger consumers are not necessarily turned off by someone who is obviously not ‘like them’.

51% of Millennials say they lean Democratic, compared to 35% who lean Republican.

Among Gen Xers, the ratio drops to 49% Democratic, 38% Republican.

Although the gap has closed to within 7%, even Boomers skew Democratic.

Only senior citizens view the two parties equally.

According to Pew Research, age is a powerful predictor of whether a voter identifies as Democratic or Republican. So, it’s ironic that the Democratic Party is fielding two older candidates, while the Republicans’ presumptive candidates are in their mid-40s. Basically, the Dems are going to field a candidate that looks like a typical GOP voter, while the GOP is going to field a candidatewho resembles a Democratic Party voter.

When it come to an actual campaign, will Cruz or Rubio try to make age an issue? (In the unlikely event of a Donald Trump candidacy, the point’s moot; he’d be sworn in at 70.) 

Here at re: we think that attacking a candidate’s age is dangerous. Sure the Clinton campaign could draw attention to Bernie’s age in the primaries; and the Republicans could portray either Democrat as over the hill in a general election.

But both Hillary (in the primaries) and the Republicans (in the general election) are obviously counting on older voters. So neither Hillary nor the Republicans can afford to make old people think, “Wait a minute, are you saying there’s something wrong with old people?”

Do you want to know why, in the nasty runup to the first Republican primaries, no rival has dared criticized Chris Christie’s physique? Because most Americans are overweight and about a third of the country’s obese. Mobilizing all those fat people to vote for Christie out of sympathy and shared sense of outrage would turn him from also-ran to contender overnight.

As I’ve noted in the past, the probability that an eligible voter will actually cast a ballot increases with age. The most committed voters are Boomers and senior citizens who are all old enough to view Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio as upstarts and punks. That’s especially true of voters who lean Republican.

Pew Research refers to those pre-Boomer senior citizens as ‘The Silent Generation’. As Bernie Sanders has so ably shown though... when you get those old people riled up they can make a lot of noise.

Calling anyone too old might piss 'em all off.

Daily Factoid: Play with the Administration for Community Living's interactive map

The Center for Community Living (an office of the Administration on Aging, which is itself a part of the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services) recently posted an interactive online map which allows you to compare states, examining a number of age-related statistics. Click the map below to go straight to their site and try it for yourself.

This map makes it easy to get an overview of the numerical size of the older-consumer market, because you can compare states’ overall populations with the share of population that is 60+ and 65+. 

Not surprisingly, California is both the most populous state, and the state with the largest number of people over 60. But the size of the senior market really hits you when you realize that there are more people over 60 in California than there are people, period, in Arizona.

New York has more 60+ residents than the total population of either Oklahoma or Oregon. Illinois and Michigan have more 60+ residents than the combined populations of Utah and New Mexico.

Are you running a national marketing effort for a national brand? Because if you are, this is a question you should ask yourself: Which whole states are you willing to completely hand over to your competition? If your message doesn’t resonate with older consumers, you’re losing a big share of population and an even bigger share of wealth.

Sure Geico’s ‘Mom’ is a caricature. But all’s forgiven in this genuinely funny spot.

Geico’s latest commercials, created by The Martin Agency are diverse. They’re set in situations ranging from a medieval dungeon to a modern operating room. All they share besides the “It’s what you do” button is a tendency to open with a common movie or TV-show trope.

In the latest one, a James Bond-style chase scene is interrupted when the spy’s mom calls, at the worst possible moment. Cut to mom, a very comfortably retired suburbanite, played by actress Cindy Drummond.

This spot has a 97.5% positive rating on ispot.tv. Several comments on YouTube suggest copywriter Ken Marcus' observation about his own mom is consistent with moms everywhere. 

Cindy Drummond's deadpan 'mom' is a caricature of the 60-something parent who is utterly clueless when it comes to understanding what’s going on in her kids’ lives. 

I presume Geico’s brief targeted a broad demo ― and of course all TV ads tend to skew older these days, since the TV audience is, frankly, old. So consumers who are the same age as the mom character are amongst the ad’s target (or should be.)

With that in mind, you might think re: would slam The Martin Agency for the ageist stereotype. But, you’d be wrong, I’m actually more than cool with it. First of all, the son is a caricature too, and the opening sequence is a spy flick parody. So it’s all in good fun. And, all’s forgiven when spots are genuinely funny; I especially like the button when we come back to mom and she asks if her son’s at a Zumba class. At least she knows what Zumba is.

Adweek credits Sean Riley (CD) and Ken Marcus (copywriter) on the spot. That’s a pairing with a combined age of at least 90. While neither is anywhere close to the age of the mom character they created, those two are old by ad agency standards. Maybe that’s why they were inclined to handle the retiree character with good humor.

Marcus told Adweek that his mom calls him at the worst times. That gave the creatives the segue they needed to get back to Geico’s “It’s what you do” theme. The primary demographic target in this commercial are people whose moms call them, not the moms themselves. And if they’d executed the spot poorly, Martin and Geico would’ve alienated older women.

But, there’s no demo so old that ‘funny’ stops working.

All the Beautiful Young People

So, every week or so I get an email from Ad Age that includes appointment notices. Here are all of the Creative Directors in this week's batch. Please don't get me wrong: I'm sure all these people are creative, have great books, and deserve their recent appointments. But come on; if you're a client who wonders why your agency can't seem to create ads that resonate with mature consumers, just look around the table the next time your agency makes a creative presentation. The answer isn't written on their faces, it is their faces; their beautiful young faces.

50 over Fifty: Craigslist founder Craig Newmark

The tech industry gives the ad business a good run, for the title of 'Most Ageist Industry'. Craigslist founder Craig Newmark was over 40 (a senior citizen by Silicon Valley standards) when he started his site. He was an impressionable teenager in the '60s. Now that he is in his 60s, he's definitely reconnecting with the idealism and social activism of that period.

The founder of Craigslist—one of the most-visited websites—was born in 1952. He was one of the Boomers who were the first ‘digital natives’; a self-described nerd who studied computer science at Case Western Reserve University, and then went to work for IBM. He created Craigslist in 1995 (he was over 40 by then, a senior citizen in the tech world!) 

Although he is no longer active in the management of Craigslist, he continues to have a hands-on role handling customer service. He typically focuses on helping Craigslist users who have encountered problems with spammers or scammers. Considering that he could do anything he wanted, either inside or outside Craigslist, the fact that he chose this assignment says a lot about how grounded he is.

You just have to open a Google search window and start typing “Why are baby boomers so...” to see that Boomers are often thought of as selfish. Newmark is a counter-example. 

Although he worked for capitalist bulwarks like IBM, GM, Bank of America, and Charles Schwab, when it came to creating his own business, he designed Craigslist as a mostly free—and commercial-free—service. When Craigslist took off, he kept it as a largely free community service, even though the decision to do so literally cost him billions. (Don’t feel too sorry for him; Forbes estimates his wealth at $400M.)

When he’s not righting wrongs on the web site he created, one person at a time, Newmark is active in philanthropy as a donor, and perhaps more important, a ‘connector’; he links causes he admires with people in a position to help those causes. 

For more information on Newmark’s unique approach to philanthropy check out Craigconnects.

Daily Factoid: Divorce rates for those over 50 have doubled since 1990

A recent story in the New York Times highlights the fact that while divorce rates have been falling for couples under 50 for the last few years, divorces are climbing among older couples. And, the divorce rate has climbed fastest of all among those over 65.

There are a number of big-picture factors influencing divorce rates among Baby Boomers. Once the kids have left home, there's no incentive to stay together for their sake; longer lifespans leave disgruntled 65 year-olds thinking, "I might have to put up with another 30 years of this." 

But here at Re: we think that rising divorce rates among senior citizens prove that the ad industry is wrong about at least one thing: That mature consumers can't change their minds about brand allegiance. If you can change your mind about your husband, you can sure as hell change it about the make of your next car, or which brand of toilet paper to buy.

Divorce, obviously, is a sign of a failed marriage, but a rising divorce rate among Boomers is also a sign that at 50, 60, or even 70 they're willing to take risks and reinvent their lives. It's more evidence that today, mature consumers aren't just more numerous but fundamentally different. They embrace change and love to try new things. Marketers should take note.

More on ageism in Presidential politics: Bill Maher had this to say

A year ago, Bill Maher riffed on the fact that California  governor Jerry Brown, at 77, was too old to be seriously considered for as a Democratic candidate for President. His comments are just as relevant, now that Bernie Sanders is encouraging a discussion of America's last acceptable prejudice.

Daily Factoid: Is Bernie Sanders too old to be President?

Although the Democratic Party machine still seems determined to ignore Sanders’ populist appeal, it’s time to consider the possibility that he’ll be the Democratic nominee. That begs the question, “Is he too old to be President?” The statistical analysis is interesting, but of course it is based on the law of averages. Here at re:, our take on it is that if Bernie survives the grueling year-long primary process and becomes the Democratic nominee, that in itself suggests a vitality that belies his chronological age.

Ronald Reagan—doddering through his second term—is the obvious cautionary tale here. At 75 Bernie’d be the oldest man ever sworn in as President; even older than Reagan was the second time ‘round. 

So... Is he too old? Or is 70 the new fifty, as people say? 

Those are the wrong questions. The right question is, What’s Bernie’s life expectancy? 

The average life expectancy of U.S. males is now nearly 80. So if Bernie even achieved that average, he would (just) live out his term as President. But as any good actuary will tell you, the average American man who has reached the age of 75 can expect to live about 11 more years. Bernie would have a mere 4% chance of dying in his first year in office. At inauguration, the smart money would bet that Bernie even had enough time for a second term.

No President has ever been sworn into his first term in his 70s. In fact, the average age of first-term Presidents at their inauguration is around 55. But the question shouldn't revolve around age. It should revolve around life expectancy. Sanders' life expectancy at inauguration (at least a decade) would exceed that of many, if not most, past Presidents.

How does Bernie’s life expectancy compare to earlier Presidents?

Before 1900, an American male’s life expectancy was less than 50 years of age. With that in mind, virtually all early U.S. Presidents were sworn in at an age that exceeded average life expectancy at the time. But, it’s hard to meaningfully compare Presidents’ ages in the 18th & 19th centuries, when life expectancy was skewed downwards by high rates of infant mortality, dangerous and debilitating physical labor, and when now-treatable age-related diseases were a death sentence.

However, I compared age-at-inauguration with life expectancy for all the 20th c Presidents. On average, a new President took office at an age that represented about 90% of the figure for average life expectancy. Teddy Roosevelt took office at the youngest age—42 years and change. But relative to life expectancy, Clinton was the youngest president—he took office at 46, at a time when the average American man lived to be 72.

Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and Dwight Eisenhower were all sworn into office at ages when—after correcting for increased life expectancy—they were about as old as Bernie Sanders is now.

Taft, Wilson, Harding; FDR (later terms); Truman, Eisenhower and of course Reagan were all Presidents who were, in actuarial terms, at least as old as Bernie is now. 

Admittedly, Harding died of natural causes in office. FDR, too, died of natural causes but it was in his fourth term (his time in office extended by WWII.) Although he was visibly frail in his final term as Commander-in-Chief, FDR is consistently ranked one of the best Presidents ever.  Truman, Eisenhower, and Woodrow Wilson are also rated highly by history; even old Ronald Reagan is fondly remembered.

Author's note: This later post looks at some of the implications of Bernie's age, vis-a-vis his supporters and his electability.

Daily Factoid: 3,000,000 new rental households headed by people over 60 by 2024

After years of a soft overall U.S. housing market, the Mortgage Bankers Association now foresees a decade of strong demand for both single- and multi-family housing.

"Household formation has been depressed in recent years by a long, jobless recovery and by a lull in the growth of the working age population," said Lynn Fisher, MBA's vice president of research and economics. "(However,) improving employment markets will build on major demographic trends - including maturing of Baby Boomers, Hispanics and Millennials - to create strong growth in both owner and rental housing markets over the next decade."

According to MBA estimates, the number of households headed by people 45-60 will decrease over the next decade—because of the relatively small size of the Gen-X cohort. The number of rental households headed by Millennials will increase by 2.7 million units. But the largest increase—3 million units—will come from Baby Boomers.

The MBA doesn't make it clear what percentage of this increase will come from existing tenants simply aging into the 60+ category, compared to the number of Boomers who move into rental accommodation as part of an expected downsizing trend. Either way, the relative importance of older tenants is bound to increase. 

Since an increased demand for rental housing is inevitable, it seems likely we'll see an increase in multi-family housing starts. It will be interesting to see how big multifamily owners like Hunt Companies and Boston Capital, and big developers like Alliance Residential, Mill Creek, and Lennar adapt their offerings—and marketing—to attract older renters.