The stats show the female boomer has money and time to spend, but she’s invisible to advertisers. With a little myth-busting and fact-checking, marketers could tap into this booming gold mine.
“Do you not see me? Do I not exist? Do you think it’s alright to ignore us?” yells Grace Hanson, the retired cosmetics mogul played by Jane Fonda on “Grace and Frankie,” a Netflix comedy about two women navigating new challenges later in life. A cashier and others at a grocery store are ignoring Grace and Frankie Bergstein, played by Lily Tomlin.
Grace apologizes to Frankie for her outburst, but asserts: “I refuse to be irrelevant.”
“We are 100% invisible to marketers. That’s pretty easy to establish,” says Marti Barletta, author of Marketing to Women and PrimeTime Women: How to Win the Hearts, Minds, and Business of Boomer Big Spenders. “You only have to look at what’s online, what’s on television, what’s on radio. We are such a pop-culture country and in this country—in every country, I think—pop culture is defined by the young because it’s about novelty and it’s about what’s different and what’s exciting.”
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Sarah Steimer is a writer, editor, podcast producer, and yoga teacher living in Chicago. She has written for Marketing News, Chicago magazine, Culture magazine, the Pittsburgh Post- Gazette, and other outlets.