Kate Christie (lead image) is a time management expert and best selling author. Her most recent book is targeted at 50’ish women wanting to live an audacious life by design – The Life List: Master Every Moment and Live an Audacious Life. In this guest post, Christie says brands who continue to ignore 50-plus women do so at their peril…
Brands, take notice. There is a new player in town and she has the cash, discernment, network, sass and a brewing sense of discontentment to either make or break you. It’s time to rethink your marketing budget and broaden your horizons away from endlessly pursuing Millennials and Gen Z – it’s time to crack a new, highly under serviced, incredibly lucrative market.
Meet the ‘mid-life Super Consumer’: 50+ woman who are finally stepping into the spotlight and challenging the invisibility myth once and for all.
Before you laugh and scoff and return to your oat latte while scrolling Tik Tok – read on and learn. Because here’s the thing – you simply don’t understand us, you don’t appear to want to understand us, and you are only spending between five to 10 per cent of your marketing budget on us.
More fool you.
Because, if you did get us – if you were attentive, thoughtful, engaged, fun and could genuinely ‘see’ us as opposed to ignoring us (or worse, patronising us) – then trust me, you would be richly rewarded. Rewarded to the tune of $15-20 trillion, because that’s our estimated global purchasing power.
So, who exactly are we? Listen up – We despise the term ‘mid-life’. Being ‘our age’ today is very different to when our mothers were ‘our age’ and worlds away from when our grandmothers were ‘our age’. We are not old. We are not invisible. We are fit, youthful, energetic, sexy, sensual, confident, comfortable in our skin, thriving professionally, successful, full of life and champing at the bit to live life in a big and beautiful and spectacular way.
We are the most healthy and active generation of 50+ women – ever. And yet, can you name one fitness fashion brand that uses images of us? Nope – their focus is on the young, leggy, taut and very, very trim, and less on the woman seeking an elastic waste that won’t dig into her old cesarean scar.
We are highly educated. And yet, we can all name brands that love to mansplain…
Our average life expectancy is 83.20 years – so if you get us right you have 33 more years of us wanting to engage with your brand.
We are adventurous, curious and empowered. And yet, a recent study – ‘The Influence and Affluence of Solo Women 50+ in Travel’ – found that 70 per cent of women felt the travel industry doesn’t understand our needs. Oh, you fools – this year I am spending seven weeks in Bali, one of my girlfriends has just booked a month in Spain and another, three months in Italy. Are you listening yet?
We have money. Forbes cites data showing that we are the largest demographic group with incomes over $100,000 pa. We control 95 per cent of household purchasing decisions and 80 per ent of luxury travel purchases. More than 30 per ent of us are happy to upgrade to a new car even if our current one works ‘well enough’. Ford gets us – having recently launched a terrific car advert for International Woman’s Day for a ‘Men’s Only Car’ – google it car brands and learn how to appeal to us.
We are loyal (if we love you, we really love you) and yet, we will vote with our feet if you annoy us – 82 per cent of us are very willing to try new brands and 64 per cent of us will drop you like a hot potato if we think you are ignoring us.
And guess which brands we will turn to? The ones that market to us – it’s not rocket science for gods sakes.
Today’s 50’ish woman is tenacious, courageous and fearless. She is brimming with wisdom and experience and knowledge. She is self-reliant and self-assured and somewhere along the journey her confidence and her common sense and her prudence and self-knowledge have allowed her to discard that part of her ego that used to care what other people think of her. She is bold. She is willing to experiment. She is curious. She wants you to see her – to really see her.
And I promise you this – if you understand her and appeal to her, she will be the making of you.
