Peter Hubbell, CEO of the BoomAgers ad agency and author of The Old Rush: Marketing for Gold in the Age of Aging, argues that advertisers need to pay attention to older consumers, not just the younger crowd. Most of us would agree that we’re generally left out of all but specialized (read: negative/indicating decline/impairment/medical) marketing efforts. But Hubbell takes it a step further and now refuses to wear Levi’s jeans:
“Levi’s embodied my values of hard work, authenticity and patriotism,” he says. “Now I’ve aged out of their marketing cohort. I’m looking at their ads of these tattooed kids with messy hair, ripped clothing and pierced skin making out in the back of the car and I’m going: ‘That’s not my brand.’
“Either I no longer matter to them, which is disturbing to me after all my years of loyalty, or they truly don’t get the core values of their brand. So I went out of my way to find a new brand of jeans.”
It’s one thing to decide not to try a brand because their advertising doesn’t appeal to you, but would you leave a brand that works for you just because their advertising doesn’t? Read the interview with Peter Hubbell here, and be sure to read the comments!
[An interesting quote: “Everybody thinks aging people are trying to feel younger, but they’re simply trying to stay current.” And a hat tip to Ann Davis Garvin for the link.]
