New research has revealed that the “super consumer” demographic brands ignore is funding the next generation’s purchasing decisions.
Australian advertisers have spent years chasing the 25 to 54 demographic while all but ignoring the cohort now quietly propping up the rest of the population’s spending power, per the research.
That, according to Powered by Nine, is a problem.
The research, conducted by Crowd DNA, found that Australians aged 55 to 64 — dubbed the “super consumer” segment — are becoming the country’s most consequential financial decision-makers.
Not because they’re spending on themselves, but because cost-of-living pressures are forcing them to fund or part-fund their children and grandchildren’s biggest life purchases.
The research, titled ‘Succession’, saw academics, families and wealth editors interviewed and surveyed a 2,000 person-strong consumer panel. It is the latest instalment in Powered’s cultural conversation series.
The scale of the shift is stark. Currently $120 billion changes hands between generations in Australia every year; over the next two decades that figure is projected to hit $5.4 trillion making it the largest transfer of wealth in the nation’s history.
But according to Powered’s director of strategy and innovation Remi Baker speaking at an event launching the research, the money isn’t just moving at death. It’s moving now, in smaller, more frequent instalments. It’s a shift the research labelled “breadcrumbing”.
“Gen X understands that their role is to help younger Australians, and they want to see that investment working in real time. They don’t want to wait for 30 years,” said Baker.
In 2010, just 3 per cent of Australians under 30 needed family help to buy a home. By 2026, that figure has hit 59 per cent.
Of those under the age of 45, 43 per cent say they’ve received support for a property deposit, while 40 per cent say they’ve had financial help with other major purchases including cars, education, home renovations and IVF treatments.
A further 38 per cent report receiving everyday support from parents, for expenses including rent to gym memberships.
Baker argued brands are missing the opportunity sitting in front of them, both in media spend and creative representation.
According to the research the average Australian receives an inheritance aged 50. This, it say, reinforces that the cohort isn’t just supporting younger generations financially, it is often absorbing wealth at the same time.
“They are the most valuable generation in marketing. Yet none of us are talking to them. We’re actually surprisingly ageist in advertising. Everyone talks about Gen Z but no one is talking about Gen X and Boomers,” said Baker.
The research also found today’s big purchases increasingly involve more than one decision-maker. Crowd DNA’s director of qualitative research Tom Hayes described parents as “silent partners” who aren’t simply handing over cash but sitting at the negotiating table over how it’s spent. Even down to which appliances go into a renovated kitchen.
Not every family is positioned to give. The research found 20 per cent of the population stands to inherit 77 per cent of Australia’s wealth, leaving the remaining 80 per cent splitting just 23 per cent between them.
It’s a divide that Baker and Hayes said is pushing younger Australians who won’t inherit toward higher-risk, DIY paths to wealth, from “skill stacking” side hustles to fractional property investment.
The research splits the market into what it calls “heirs” and “hustlers”. The former are an asset-backed elite, largely Gen X, sitting on property and inherited wealth. The latter is a younger cohort building from nothing and increasingly convinced the system is rigged against them.
Baker argued the emotional register for each is close to opposite, which makes a single, one-size-fits-all campaign close to impossible for anything high-consideration.
“If your brand is very removed from the conversation, for a lot of brands that are more of those high ticket purchases, You absolutely will need to pick a side,” Baker said.
“It is a very different mindset if I’m feeling like the system is rigged against me and I’m working to try and get ahead, versus feeling in a place of security.”
Baker pointed to Australian fintech brand Raiz as an example of what it looks like to pick the “hustler” side deliberately and go hard after it, tapping directly into that sense of being locked out of traditional wealth-building.
On the other end, the research found the “heir” segment is shifting away from visible status symbols altogether, favouring what the panel described as “stealth wealth” as a way communicating value without ostentation. This would be aimed at an audience that already knows what it’s looking at.
The split gets sharper still once dark social and targeted media enter the conversation. One panellist raised the idea of a “chairman’s lounge” approach to luxury targeting, where mainstream campaigns stay firmly value-led while a parallel, unlabelled layer of communications quietly reaches the wealthier end of the audience.
For brands operating in high-ticket categories, the message from the research is that trying to hedge across both audiences risks landing with neither. The “heirs” don’t want to be sold hustle, and the “hustlers” don’t want to be sold aspiration they can’t access.
For an industry that has spent a decade fixated on Gen Z, the research is a reminder that the demographic actually underwriting the next generation’s spending has been sitting largely outside the media plan.
