This article discusses the lack of attention devoted to the baby boomer generation from big company advertisements. While many businesses target the boomers with their marketing, they mostly consist of companies that make senior-related products like medical devices and life insurance.
In addition, the article examines how businesses are now focusing their advertising towards millennials, attempting to catch them early enough to have a lifelong customer. Many large brands, especially technology companies, market digital ads which are not as friendly to an older audience as traditional ads might be. Although these brands are competing to be in style by marketing to millennials, while doing so, they are overlooking a very large portion of our country’s population: baby boomers. As a millennial, I believe it is vital to focus a brand’s marketing towards the younger generation, while being certain to not forget about the older. It is true that a company can build customer loyalty from an early age and keep that customer throughout their lifetime, but currently the baby boomers are the generation with the most disposable income and time. In fact, the article points out that the smartest strategy is to not choose one or the other but to market to both. In some cases, one brand may better suit millennials while another brand can be targeted toward boomers. Another technique, dual marketing allows companies to use different brands, videos, and messages to appeal to a specific age group, but most still do not equally distribute their attention. It is clear that technology, automotive, and sports companies do not currently devote enough attention to advertising towards the baby boomers. Businesses are missing the opportunity of capturing a customer with disposable income such as someone who is retired and is ready to spend. If you are interested and would like to read this article, please click here. Author - Tyler Tallos
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In 1999, the Martin Agency changed the insurance company advertising game when they debuted the Geico gecko in a commercial. Prior to this, insurance agency’s commercials very often featured depressing reminders of how suddenly things could go awry, sad situations of a family being left without a dime after a parent’s death, or testimonials of an extremely satisfied customer or dedicated employee.
Nowadays, one would struggle to find an insurance company commercial that doesn’t use humor as their vehicle to empathize and communicate with their customers. As Geico went from being the 8th largest insurance agency in the country to the 2nd largest, other companies took note of some of their advertising strategies. Next came Progressive’s Flo, Allstate’s Mayhem, and Payton Manning with Nationwide. From comedy skits to catchy phrases such as “15 minutes could save you 15% or more on car insurance”, insurance companies are doing everything they can to appeal to a younger target audience. I believe this strategy of using humor to appeal to the audience is smart, and is seeming to be quite successful. As stated in the article, the trend setters in this category are the market share leaders in their industry. Humor is a great way to get personal with the audience and allows the companies to “forge a bond with their customers” as said by Cat Kolodij, the leader of marketing strategy at Progressive. I was not old enough to appreciate the switch in marketing techniques 15 or more years ago but I can say that I have always been a huge fan of the comical insurance commercials I am so used to seeing these days. It is so common now that these companies seem to be directly competing with each other to have to silliest commercials, and I believe this is a win-win situation for both the consumers and the insurance companies. If you are interested and would like to read this article, please click here. Author - Tyler Tallos An interesting advertising experiment by Fox Sports TV will be taking place during the NFL’s Thanksgiving Day football game between the Minnesota Vikings and the Detroit Lions. An article titled “On N.F.L. Thanksgiving Menu: Six-Second Ads” by Sapna Maheshwari appeared in the NY Times online Media section published on October 27, 2017.
Nine short ads that only run for six seconds each will run during the game and take over most of the screen while the game is reduced to a small side screen for this brief period of time. The ads will just pop up between plays and are thought to be less disruptive to the viewing audience. Most sports fans who look forward to watching our favorite games on TV have experienced the frustrations from the game being interrupted by too many commercials so maybe if this idea works for Fox, it will improve the game watching experience. However, I doubt Fox would be doing this for TV viewers if there wasn’t also an advantage for the network. Fox plans to replace one standard two minute twenty second commercial block, which is one hundred forty seconds, with the nine six second ads for a net reduction of commercial time of eighty-six seconds. However, Fox is able to charge about the same for the six second ads as it does for typical 15 second ads so actual ad revenue can increase by strategic placement of these short ads. Depending on audience reaction, ads like this can become a regular attraction during other N.F.L. games. Fox V.P. of media strategy and business development, Amanda Herald, explained how a viewer study will use biometrics such as heart rate and skin response, to determine whether fans are more engaged during the short ads or not, along with viewer surveys after the game. Fox, as well as the other major networks, are realizing that fans have become impatient with what they perceive as frequent commercial breaks. Working with the N.F.L., these ads will hopefully improve the fan viewing experience. I will not only be watching how these ads will impact the game watching experience, but it will be interesting to see how effective such advertising can be as far as making an impression about the brands paying big bucks for this advertising. If you are interested and would like to view the article, click here. Author - Tyler Tallos |
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