Marketing and Midlife
I am a woman on a mission. To raise the visibility of midlife women in the media.
Why?
We are a sizeable population, we make around 50% of buying decisions and we are IGNORED by mainstream media.
This has to stop
Midlife is the age from 45 to 70 where women are in their prime. We have life experience, we have worked, had relationships, lived life (a bit or a lot) and we still have about half our life to live. And if you just looked at the adverts on TV and print media you’d think we didn’t exist.
Women of this age group are invisible.
Why is this?
Well the media tells a story about women through the advertising produced and presented to the buying public. It runs something like this:
- Little girl
- Troubled teenager
- Sex object
- Career woman
- Mum
- Old woman waiting to die
This ageism is hard wired into our society – young kids understand it – and it gets ugly when you realise the amount of airbrushing and photo editing that goes into published advertising and media. It’s dishonest. And although we may crave youthfulness, any decent marketing person will tell you that the advert has to be targeted to the right buyer. Who’s making the decisions?
Midlife women are.
Let’s reverse this trend
If you have any media budget, if you select images for sharing on social media, if you are a product manager, a buyer or a journalist – try to find images that represent us.
Let’s make midlife women “Uninvisible”.
Hyundai is leading the way
When I first became aware of this trend, I started watching adverts to see how old the women were – and I found two with midlife women who are front and centre characters.
The perennial Briscoes lady (now 59) and still wearing the wig….
And Hyundai.
In May 2021 they released this advert for their new Kona Series II electric car.
How refreshing.
Hooray for Michelle Langdon Marketing Manager at Hyundai NZ. Go tell her how wonderful her work is.
What can you do?
Advocate, challenge when images for media do not line up with the age of your consumer – make it real, New Zealand.
We can make this change happen.
Tell us your story in the comments – we need more examples of brands leading the way to #uninvisible.